Relearn­ing the mean­ing of life through After Life and After Yang

The fast paced world we live in today thrives on the con­stant move­ment of peo­ple. Our atten­tion is relent­less­ly being fed into the stream of new infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by dig­i­tal and social media. Com­pet­i­tive job mar­kets have trans­formed us from col­lec­tive to indi­vid­ual beings, claw­ing our way through a career in the hopes of achiev­ing a big dream, just to find our­selves clam­ber­ing to stay alive. The tran­si­tion between lib­er­at­ing youth and bustling adult­hood has not always been kind to me. I find myself under stress and uncer­tain­ty of my own future – a moment spent rest­ing or hav­ing fun is imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by a feel­ing of unproductivity.

In the con­text of a world that is rush­ing you to get ahead in life, films like Hirokazu Koreeda’s After Life and kogonada’s After Yang become a great reminder to find inti­ma­cy in the short and fleet­ing sec­onds. In an attempt to remem­ber (read: roman­ti­cize) the small moments in my life, I pur­chased a dis­pos­able film cam­era. Being a lover of movies, I thought per­haps freez­ing a moment in a sin­gle frame would remind me that joy, affec­tion, sad­ness, and all the things that we are alive to feel hap­pens to all of us and not just char­ac­ters on screen.

Among the many sim­i­lar­i­ties of After Life and After Yang is the lan­guid pac­ing; a slow explo­ration of loss and human­i­ty that con­trast the rapid­ly chang­ing world. Aspects of real­ism engulf the two films despite both sto­ries exist­ing in an alter­nate, oth­er-world­ly uni­verse. Direc­tor Hirokazu Koree­da emu­lates doc­u­men­tary-style film­ing by intro­duc­ing inter­view-for­mat­ted mono­logues and fre­quent uses of long-take hand­held scenes. The audi­ence acts as observers and con­ver­sa­tion par­tic­i­pants as well. Com­pa­ra­bly, kogonada’s sci-fi film retains the famil­iar aspects of life through visu­als and sound. With­out overt­ly fan­cy set design or CGI, After Yang rev­els in nature imagery and the ambi­ent sounds of domes­tic backyards.

The styl­is­tic palette of the two films sets a ten­der and nos­tal­gic tone for explor­ing themes of grief – not only for the liv­ing, but for moments passed. In After Life, a group of new­ly deceased are com­pelled to select a mem­o­ry to car­ry with them through­out eter­ni­ty; a mem­o­ry that would sum up their time on earth. Mean­while, the after­life bureau­crats – who in their own way, are unable to move on from their deaths – are tasked with the duty of guid­ing the deceased with choos­ing and man­i­fest­ing these mem­o­ries into film.

In After Yang, the sud­den pass­ing of the android old­er broth­er Yang guides the fam­i­ly to his mem­o­ries, which comes in the form of short videos tak­en each day of his life. Through Yang’s record­ings, the fam­i­ly gets a glimpse into his past lives and in turn, dis­cov­ers his inner thoughts and emo­tions – some­thing they nev­er thought would have been pos­si­ble for a pro­grammed robot to carry.

After Life and After Yang pro­pose sim­i­lar ideas about the mov­ing image: a cap­sule of life. Mem­o­ries – more specif­i­cal­ly the frag­ment­ed, inten­tion­al­ly framed, delib­er­ate­ly nit­picked mem­o­ries – gives the char­ac­ters’ death sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. Dis­play of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and remorse comes for­ward, ren­der­ing what­ev­er ​“pur­pose” or mark they may leave on earth insignificant.

Among the group of recent­ly deceased in After Life is Mr. Watan­abe, a wid­owed man who spent most of his life work­ing until retire­ment. Only remem­ber­ing the tedious cor­po­rate rou­tine and a hum­drum arranged mar­riage, the old man felt dis­sat­is­fied with his life and refused to choose a mem­o­ry. In the end, it was a warm autumn after­noon of shar­ing a park bench with his late wife which Mr. Watan­abe decid­ed to bring with him for­ev­er. For Koree­da, mem­o­ries shape iden­ti­ty, so when Mr. Watan­abe is grant­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have his life be defined by a sin­gle moment of peace and affec­tion, his soul is no longer bound by the shack­les of work and a col­or­less existence.

Sim­i­lar­ly Yang, whose pur­pose on earth was to ful­fill a func­tion­al role, dis­plays a sense of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty through his record­ings. Fill­ing his mem­o­ry bank are images of trees, a shared embrace between par­ents, the swirling dry leaves in a warm cup of tea, and oth­er ordi­nary occur­rences. Accom­pa­nied by the soft pianos of com­pos­er Aska Mat­sumiya and cin­e­matog­ra­phy that echoes many of Koreeda’s dra­mas, kogana­da frames Yang’s indi­vid­u­al­i­ty in such a humane way that con­trasts the sci-fi con­ven­tion of a ratio­nal and soul­less robot.

In kogonada’s video essay about Hirokazu Koree­da for Sight & Sound, he men­tions the way the Japan­ese film­mak­er cap­tures mun­dan­i­ty. Dai­ly activ­i­ties and rou­tine are por­trayed in a com­pas­sion­ate and roman­tic way, but in a famil­iar­i­ty that doesn’t stray too far from the every­day. In the grand scheme of things, when we take on a jour­ney towards a big goal, achieve an impres­sive mile­stone, or get too caught up in the flur­ry of career or stud­ies, what may go unno­ticed is an appre­ci­a­tion for the unevent­ful and small moments of inti­ma­cy; In shar­ing meals, train rides, com­fort­able silences, or in the sun­light that sifts through trees. This val­ue for the seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant paus­es can be found root­ed in After Life and After Yang. It is mun­dan­i­ty that char­ac­ters chose to return to dur­ing death.

Through the pas­sage of time, noth­ing sur­vives. Revis­it­ing the past (per­haps through the open­ing of a pho­to book or a con­ver­sa­tion with an old acquain­tance) is often nos­tal­gic and painful. What fills us is a yearn­ing to go back in time, or a sense of regret for not cher­ish­ing some­thing enough. Before we knew it, time has forced us to move on to oth­er things, oth­er peo­ple, and oth­er dreams. But I believe that it is not because time is cru­el that we have regrets, it is that we often let these things fleet away before we have the chance to ful­ly embrace them for what they are.