Film-ruining spoilers for After Yang, Klara and the Sun, and maybe Click? If you're looking for something poignant and melancholic, you can do a lot worse than this!

This reminded me so much of Klara and the Sun, in terms of its tone. The mute grief is played so well across the board, I could almost see a movie adaptation of Klara being pretty identical to this.

I didn't get the need to carry on with Russ and Cleo's branch of the story once Jake starts exploring Yang's memories. For me, the ethical question about Yang's relevance as a museum exhibit, or his right to privacy after his death, aren't relevant to the story. Maybe those will become questions humans need to ask ourselves in future, but a half-baked attempt to do it speculatively just doesn't work for me. The important part of that branch is that we get access to Yang's memories and explore his past lives.

This forms another parallel with Klara; the exploration of what happens when you leave an old life behind. When we see Yang's first life; full, bitter-sweet, come to its inevitable end, and his memories roll up and get compartmentalised, his grief forbids him from engaging in his short second life. These ends made me feel very similar to how I felt when Klara was disposed of.

The synopsis of this film describes everything from Jake's perspective and re-establishing his connection with his family, and I suppose I get why. But it does make the whole thing feel like an artsy Click, rather than a study of grief, rebirth, and one's capacity to start again and keep going.