Is there anyone less likely to pass muster as an android than Justin H Min? The Korean American actor best known for playing a dead person in the wildly successful Netflix show, The Umbrella Academy, has such a lovely, easy charm that he transcends even the sterility of Zoom. Besides, no bot designer could manufacture skin so marshmallow soft, or a smile so dazzling. When Colin Farrell met Min for the first time, he took one long look at him and said simply, “You’re beautiful.” Well, who wouldn’t? “When Colin looks at you he really looks at you,” recalls Min. “I’d never heard those words resonate for me in that way before. I was just, like, ‘Maybe I am beautiful, because Colin Farrell said it.’”
Anyway. Farrell and Min are both beautiful in After Yang, a small, quiet bombshell of a movie in which Min plays the titular character with a soulfulness that is atypical of robots, but thoroughly typical of the film’s director, Kogonada. The first time they met, Min asked how robotic he should make Yang. “And in his very coy, mysterious way he was, like, ‘I’m not sure, you tell me.’ And I was, like, ‘No, you tell me’.” Min grins. “Now I realise that he was being strategic. He wanted it to remain a mystery, even while filming.”
