FILM · 2021 · USA
After Yang
17 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
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The family's house was based on the mid-century "California Modern" structures developed by Joseph Eichler. In fact, one of the Eichler homes in a Rockland County suburb just outside New York City — one of only three built on the East Coast — was used by the production team, who completely renovated it during the 29-day shoot to prepare the house.
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The global virtual dance scene in the opening was inspired by Yasujiro Ozu's Early Spring (1951) and The Golden Arm (1979). Early Spring centers on a family that is genuinely in sync in its earlier scenes, eating breakfast and going about their daily tasks. The rest of the film then deals with that family's dissolution. According to Kogonada, he had always loved the idea of seeing a family in harmony, so the dance scene was that idea realized. The Golden Arm, which Kogonada watched as a child, has a title sequence in which each gang member wears a metallic suit and demonstrates their own specialty.
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There is a passage from Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer" that stayed with filmmaker Kogonada: "The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair." The filmmaker explains, "While writing and making After Yang, I found myself returning to this idea, especially as it relates to the father who has trouble connecting with this world."
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None of the children depicted in the film are biologically related to their parents; Mika was adopted and George's children are clones. This indicates that the story takes place in the midst of a kind of fertility crisis, possibly as a result of the decades-long war between the United States and China or of an unspecified ecological disaster.
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In two scenes of the film, the first at 39:46 and the second at 1:15:41, the "Yellow Dragon Flag" of the "Great Qing" in a gold frame can be seen on a shelf in one of the house's bedrooms. This was the Imperial Flag of China during the last 23 years of the Qing Dynasty's reign, specifically from 1889 to 1912.
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In Chinese cosmology, Yang is the masculine active principle in nature, exhibited in light, warmth or dryness and combining with yin to produce all that exists. In Chinese cosmology, the universe creates itself out of a primary chaos of material energy, organized into the cycles of Yin and Yang and formed into objects and lives. Yin is the receptive and Yang the active principle, seen in all forms of change and difference, such as the annual cycle (winter and summer), landscape (the shadow facing north and the brightness facing south), sexual union (female and male), the formation of both men's and women's characters, and sociopolitical history (disorder and order). The word "yang" has various meanings: (1) [Chinese philosophy] the positive/active/masculine principle in nature, (2) the sun, (3) male genitalia, (4) relief, (5) open; overt, (6) of this world, (7) [linguistics] masculine, (8) the south side of a hill, (9) the north bank of a river.
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