Video-essayist-turned-filmmaker Kogonada made his feature film debut in 2017 with the lyrical and poetic “Columbus,” a film we loved so much we declared him one of the breakout talents of the year. Describing him at the time as “coming out of the gate fully, and beautifully formed,” we all waited with bated breath to see what his follow-up would be.
The wait was worth it, to say the least. Premiering at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, our review of his sophomore feature, “After Yang,” adapted from a short story by Alexander Weinstein, praised it as “a soulful and heartbreaking meditation on impermanence full of poignant wonder and riches of human grace,” with Playlist Editor-in-Chief Rodrigo Perez calling Kogonada “one of the greatest humanist filmmakers we have.”
For someone to achieve such high plaudits, it’s remarkable how gentle and unassuming the director’s films remain to be. That’s part of his allure, as “After Yang” once again draws the viewer into an environment where they are afforded the space to have their own individual experience with the film, bringing themselves into this story of a malfunctioning android named Yang (Justin H. Min), and the family who attempts to fix him — father Jake (Colin Farrell), sister Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), and the more practical matriarch Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith).
Despite the lo-fi trappings, “After Yang,” like all the best science-fiction, offers us boundless reflections on our own existence. What does it mean to live? What does it mean to die? What do we leave behind for those we love? What parts of them do we take with us when we go? kogonada tackles many of life’s biggest questions with his trademark sense of calm, and a soothing aesthetic that lulls you into a sense of peace despite the massive emotional undercurrents lurking within, threatening to come to the surface at every moment. He packs the weight of mortality into a vessel of acceptance.
In order to capture the humanity of this decidedly high concept, kogonada needed a gifted ensemble of actors, yet he never once put pressure on them to fit his vision. Instead, his guidance was as open and inviting as his approach to viewers, allowing the actors to feel the space and find the characters themselves — a unique form of collaboration that yielded tremendous results.
I sat down with Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith to discuss the gift of being able to work with kogonada, finding the meaning of a story within its silences, film as a form of memory and, of course, that stunning dance sequence set over the film’s opening credits.
Let’s start with a serious question. The opening credits dance sequence. Completely jaw-dropping. What was it like putting that together? Did it take a ton of time to get the choreography down for it?
Colin Farrell: Jodie, that was your first day, wasn’t it?
Jodie Turner-Smith: It was!
CF: Oh, that’s a story. We were already up and running. Somebody else was cast in the part of Kyra, and for reasons beyond her control or anyone’s control, it couldn’t work out. The ship had already left the port and we’d started shooting when Jodie came in, so it was incredible. On that note, it was a really good way to get to know each other because it was awkward and fun, kind of lighthearted and somewhat foolish, as those dance sequences can be. Especially compared to how melancholy and somber in moments the rest of the film is.
JTS: kogonada said something amazing. We were doing press the other day and he said the choreographer, Celia [Rowlson-Hall], said to him that the dance, in the beginning, is like an explosion of confetti, and the rest of the film is the confetti falling. I think that’s such a beautiful way to describe it.
And yeah, I don’t remember how soon after I was hired that I had my first rehearsal, but it was like, “Yes, I got this really amazing movie! I’m working with Colin Farrell!,” and then like the next day I had to totally embarrass myself in front of him. I had to kind of throw any of the trying to be in my head stuff out the door because I had to just get straight into it, like “Let’s go. Let’s go.”
How was that process of integrating yourself into a production that was already up and running with this whole family already connected together?
JTS: You know, I was really empowered by everyone involved. Colin and kogonada both made me feel like I was the piece to complete the puzzle. I felt really safe to go in there and explore, and because of the way the experience unfolded so quickly there was no time to be self-conscious. Again, in working with Colin, it was the first time on a set that I felt myself being so present because I was just watching him to see what he was gonna do in a scene. It was so great to get to create with these people.
CF: We were so relieved, man. We just needed her. We needed her badly. We were all pretty upset and anxious and nervous about the fact that we had lost the actress who was originally going to be in the film. Then Jodie came into the room and just inhabited the role and was so passionate and brilliant and so present and so full of love and light and all the things that made perfect sense. I obviously can’t imagine the film any other way now. We really were kind of in awe that she came in as late as she did and just hit the ground running. It was very bold.
Colin, you said this beautiful thing in another interview about how as a filmmaker kogonada “doesn’t curate emotions” and that you “don’t recall ever being given such permission by a filmmaker to feel whatever the story was provoking within you.” What was it like having that kind of latitude from a filmmaker to find that space inside yourself?
CF: It was kind of terrifying and also lovely at the same time — liberating in a way. I knew from reading the script and seeing “Columbus” that he was a filmmaker whose touch was so unassuming and whose visual, cinematic language was very clear and very strong and very particular. At the same time, he allowed the performances to exist in a space of whispers and silence and intonations. To go and do the film, I knew that it was going to be an exercise in exploring vulnerability as an actor.
I’ve always felt very safe with kogonada. He’s a really kind dude, he’s such a thoughtful man. There was no sense of agitation in the production, no sense of hurry, even though we didn’t have much time. The energy that he exuded every day was one of quiet confidence and belief and curiosity. It felt like it was a collective, you know? It was scary at first just because there were no moments in the script. Even in reading the script, there’s no moments that are hysteric or emotional or peaking or any of that. It was just one kind of unusually and vaguely linear travel through the psychologies and the emotional wellbeing, or turbulence, of each character as they were presented on the page. It was an utter joy, to be honest with you.
You’ve made a career out of balancing larger pictures with these smaller ones, but there’s a common theme I’ve noticed in that you have this wonderful art for stillness in your performances. Even in your earlier work like “The New World” or “Miami Vice” you’ve got this knack for going internal where others would go big. What is the value for you in using that stillness and quiet interiority to find your characters?
CF: God, I struggle with it [laughs]. I feel so much — I was gonna say naturally inclined, but I think it’s actually learnedly inclined, to obfuscate through motion and through volume as a man in my life. Less now, at 45, than I was in my twenties. But, for me, there’s nothing harder, and more rewarding, than feeling an undeniable connection to the person you’re working with in a scene. And sometimes the quieter the scene is the more you have the opportunity to maybe share a thought, and ultimately to listen to the thoughts of the person you’re working with. My job doesn’t get more deeply felt than that. I always say my favorite thing in the world to do is a well-written scene with one other actor over a coffee table.
There’s all that other stuff — all the screaming, the crying, the shouting, the running, the this, that, and the other — but the silence and the paying attention to another human being and what they’re experiencing is so hard to do because you’re just leaving yourself open. You feel like you’re not informing the film. You feel like you’re not doing anything. You feel like you’re not bringing anything in a place, and to your own ego as well. But that was the great thing about this film, was that Kogonada finds truth and finds great interest in the spaces between the words. We were given the space to just pay attention to each other — to listen, to react, and to not react. That was a rare state of grace that I found myself in on this film.
Jodie, you said that playing Kyra “spoke to all the quiet places in yourself that you don’t often get to live inside,” which I thought was a beautiful way of describing how this film feels different from your other work. How did playing her allow you to tap into these parts of yourself as an actor that you felt you maybe hadn’t gotten to tap into elsewhere?
JTS: Yeah, I don’t know if I can articulate it any better than Colin just did. It’s really about being given the opportunity to just do, and what that brings up. It’s like, people meditate right? They sit in silence and see what comes up. There is so much emotion, and some things cannot be expressed with words, and should not be expressed with words. Some things, there’s just the truth of them. There’s the knowledge of them, and the feeling of them. It’s cool to exist in that space on screen.
I feel like I’m often in roles where I’m doing a lot, you know? People always want me to do stuff. I have an appearance of being very action, and very sci-fi. Obviously, this film has sci-fi as well, but you know what I mean? It’s interesting to just explore a relationship and all of the spaces between the frustrations, in between the things you can’t talk about with each other that need to be spoken about. The things that are broken without a conversation. It’s really beautiful to be able to tell stories like that, and I’m so glad that I got to do that here.
Kyra has quite a different response to what’s going on with Yang than Jake does. She’s not necessarily cold, but perhaps more practical about it, and you unravel the layers of her wonderfully over the course of the film. You said this great thing about her “feeling alone in the one place where she doesn’t want to — which is her own family.” Could you tell me a bit about how we see her respond to the situation in comparison to how Jake responds to it?
JTS: It’s interesting because, in a way, the reality of how I came into this film — where everybody was already doing it and then I joined — I think that’s a little bit like a parallel. I think it’s easy to understand this idea that the things we can’t express to each other are the things that then make us feel like we’re alone, even when we’re surrounded by people. Obviously, Kyra is going through something that she’s not speaking about with her family, and at the same time no matter what we’re going through, life moves and life goes on and crises come up and you don’t exactly get to stop in the middle of all of that and not keep moving. You sort of have to keep moving.
Colin spoke earlier about how kogonada doesn’t really write for us what the character’s internal feelings are and where they’re coming from. It’s for us to create that, and break into it, whatever inner life and story we inhabit for our characters. My approach with Kyra was that she’s trying to get this work done and be a good parent and sort of struggling to find that her husband is participating in that in a way that makes it less stressful for her. And, I mean, that’s all we want as partners.
Now, as a person who’s married and has a kid myself, when you are raising a family together, you need everybody to pull their weight and to do what needs to be done in order to make sure that you have a child who seems emotionally stable and happy and intelligent and kind. You know, all the things. It seems to me like Kyra meets Jake with a lot of compassion. She’s hurting as well, because as much as she’s frustrated she’s still holding this really big space of love. I think maybe that is also what is so exhausting for her. It’s hard to try and hold everything together, which I think often is women’s role when the men are going through whatever crisis of existence they’re going through. We as women are meant to be strong and hold it together.
From the opening moments of the film, with Yang taking the picture of the family, there’s this theme throughout of how pictures or films are capturing memories in a way. Certainly we see this with how Jake is discovering Yang through seeing his memories. With that idea of film as memory, does that conjure up anything for both of you in terms of how you reflect on your own work, and how the films you make are enshrined forever as capturing this memory of yourself?
CF: Not really my own work, Mitchell, but certainly film plays such an important role in the memories I have of my life up until this point. Whether it’s the first film I ever saw, “E.T.,” or the first time I ever fell in love, with “Some Like It Hot,” — and it wasn’t Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis. I’ll give you a guess who it was. The first time that I really felt a depth of psychology and emotion and loss and fracture and an existential complexity in film was with “Paris, Texas” when I was 16 or 17. Film for me was always, even before I dreamed of being an actor, a psychological and emotional touchstone. And it is now for my kids as well. I see it in them now. A lot of memories I have in my life, even recently as a father in going through the “Harry Potter” films with my kids or whatever, a lot of my finest and most beautiful memories of life are around film — as a fan of film, more than as an actor.
But then again, you know, I can go through my kids’ lives and my own life in the last twenty years and it’s not about what the films I’ve done say, or what I leave behind, but where we were when I was doing that film. What was going on, you know? I was on “Alexander” when James was born. I met Henry’s mother on “Ondine.” She was acting in that, and I was acting in it, and now Henry is 12. So my life has been lived also, as a fan initially, but then as an active participant through the experiences that film has allowed me, and they’ve been really powerful experiences. I’m honest to god just incredibly grateful for the adventures and the life that it’s allowed me, and those I love, to have.
JTS: Yeah, I’m incredibly grateful to be making films. When I think about how films have made me feel, like you said Colin, and what made me have this experience and that experience, and what resonated with me, and how it broke my heart or made me feel seen, then I think about the fact that this is what I do for a living, and I’m so madly in love with it. And I think that perhaps somewhere one person might feel anything that I felt while watching something I’ve done, and that I love so deeply. That’s all it takes. I just feel like I’m so grateful that I’m able to do this. I’m honored that anybody would watch anything that I ever make and feel seen or heard or represented or in love with somebody or whatever, and I’m just like “wow” that I get to do that. It just blows my mind. I think about it all the time.
Well, I’ll tell you both that “After Yang” is a film that has become really ingrained within me. I’ve seen it a few times now, and it’s one that is going to last with me for a very, very long time, so thank you both for that.
CF: Oh wow, that’s beautiful to hear, man. Thank you so much for sharing that.
JTS: Thank you so much.
“After Yang” releases in theaters and on Showtime on March 4.