Past Lives
- Directed by: Celine Song
- Starring: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
- Drama/Romance | PG-13 | 1 hr 46 min
Best Picture Nominee
By Reed Ripley
There’s a familiar game most have played with a significant other or a group of friends at one point or another—you’re out in a public place, maybe a bar, restaurant, or park, and you collectively focus on a group of strangers in the distance and wonder aloud, what’s their story? How did they get here? What are they thinking? What are the dynamics? Essentially, communal people-watching.
Past Lives takes that whimsical game (the opening few moments are from the perspective of unnamed players), actually answers those questions, and in turn, implores its audience, and its subjects, to ask what’s my story, and more importantly, how did I get here and where could I have ended up.
It does so through two Korean-born people, Nora (Greta Lee), who immigrated with her family to Toronto at an early age, and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who remained in Korea. The two touched each other’s lives in a special, though brief, way as young children, and the film shows both Nora and Hae Sung grapple with the import of that connection and the nature of their relationship as they grow older and apart.
The specificities of Korean culture from which both Nora and Hae Sung came, and Nora’s assimilation into North American culture as a Korean immigrant, color their story, and necessarily so. But, at its core, the three distinct phases of life through which we view their relationship, each a stretch of time in which their lives intertwine, are universal. First, it’s Hae Sung and Nora as twelve-year-olds in Korea, innocently believing their playful banter would blossom into a full life together. It’s that period right before the creeping responsibility of growing begins to take over, and it’s full of possibility.
Then, the film shoots forward 12 years, where Nora’s an aspiring writer in New York and Hae Sung is coming off mandatory military service in Korea. They relatedly reconnect over Facebook and a now primitive-seeming Skype connection, and their choice to step back into each other’s lives forces a reconciliation of both their feelings toward one another and their personal ambition.
Finally, the film progresses another 12 years, where Nora’s settled down with her New York-native husband, Arthur (John Magaro) and Hae Sung enjoys a moderately successful career as an engineer. It’s the period in life in which one’s choices have likely coalesced into something permanent, and it’s a perfect framing for Nora and Hae Sung (who flies to New York to finally seek closure) to assess their choices and how they want the rest of their lives to play out.
As many of these types of intimate, window-into-another’s-life films are, Past Lives is semi-autobiographical. Mining from one’s own life is a staple of screenwriting, and many of those stories come and go each year without much notice. However, what sets this film apart is the sheer level of success the filmmakers achieved in realizing the story. Not only does one understand Nora and Hae Sung as they work through complicated feelings toward one another and how those feelings have affected, and could continue to affect, their lives, but also one can’t help but look back on their own lives, the relationships and choices they’ve made, and the consequences across decades, both good and bad.
That realization comes from a wonderful script from debut writer-director Celine Song (nominated for Best Screenplay) and brilliant performances from Lee, Yoo, and Magaro. Each character’s motivations are clearly understood and lived-in, especially impressive given the best acting comes from body language, which tells the story better than 10,000 words could.
Past Lives revolves around the Korean concept of in-yun—essentially, the idea that the universe can draw two people together across multiple lifetimes with chance encounters, even as simple as touching sleeves on the subway, until those people are joined together. It’s a beautiful thought—every special relationship in one’s life, no matter how short and no matter the resolution, is part of a more grandiose, universal plan that eventually brings one together with what amounts to a soulmate. There’s comfort in that.
Discover more from Martin City Telegraph
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.