Movies
“Past Lives” Is Retrospection Done Beautifully
Have you ever wondered what it’d be like if you could go back and revisit life altering decisions?
“Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront notions of love and destiny.”
Director: Celine Song
Writers: Celine Song
Starring: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
Release Date: June 23, 2023
IMDB
Have you ever had a “what if” scenario walk into your life after years of forgotten dormancy?
Have you ever wondered how you’d react if your romantic and cultural past invited itself into your current life and injected thought provoking hindsight?
Have you ever wondered what it’d be like if you could go back and revisit life altering decisions?
Past Lives (2023) examines these questions along with far more thought-provoking hypotheticals.
Breakout director and writer Celine Song creates an atmosphere that welcomes the audience to revisit past experiences through the eyes of forgiveness and hopefulness. Past Lives is a movie about self-reflection and acceptance, yet it also keeps the door open for longing. The story Song sings is that yearning for something different and doubting oneself is natural, and these moments where we find ourselves vulnerable is where we learn a hell of a lot about ourselves. Past Lives shows the romantic danger of holding onto the threads of the past for too long while also acknowledging that dropping the past too fast can lead to personal doubts that can fester if unresolved.
We love a good take on self-reflection.
People may walk into Past Lives thinking it’ll follow the hallmarks of long lost lovers rekindling something that could, and possibly should have been. However, what if I told you that the most beautiful and romantic part of Past Lives has little to do with the literal allure between Nore (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo)?
Yea, went a little 30 for 30 there, sue me.
Past Lives is a love story between a person and their own life. Past Lives is poetically written in a way where Nora is not falling back in love with Hae, but she is falling in love with the idea of reconnecting to a culture, language, and life that she left behind. The audience can feel Nora getting swept up in the surprising comfort of seeing something she thought was gone forever.
Song’s screenplay plays with the idea of choice by having the lives of the two main characters mirror each other in opposing aways. Hae still speaks mainly Korean and has that culture ingrained in him while Nora is relearning the language while feeling fully Americanized. Hae is single, still living at home, and drinking with friends at night while Nora is married, living with her husband and remaining a homebody whenever she can. Nora sees the traditional life she could have had with Hae in him and it forces her and the way Greta Lee shows us that inner conflict and self awareness is staggeringly honest.
The conversation that Nora has with her husband Arthur (John Magaro) while getting ready for bed is sublime. It’s just perfect.
Arthur asking “Is he attractive?” to Nora opens a pathway in her mind that she seems surprised to slip down. She immediately conflates that with a Korean masculinity, which is obviously different from what her husband possesses. Arthur is a shorter, harrier and less body-build man compared to the rigid, clean shaven, doll-like cultural allure that Hae emanates.
Arthur then has the confidence and comfort to ask “Are you attracted to him?”, and Nora simply states “I don’t think so.”
The beauty from the character Arthur and the screenplay is his silence after hearing that answer. One could say he has a right to be like “Hey, what the heck?”, but Arthur just turns around and listens. He can sense that Nora is going through something and talking it out to him. Nora comes to the point where she connects the dots that by her missing Hae, she misses where she grew up, Seoul. She has the self-awareness to connect those two dots and Arthur allowed her the time to talk it out and explain it.
Without appearing to hurt, Arthur asks whether or not Hae missed Nora. The obvious answer is yes, but Nora responds by saying that her old friend misses the younger version of Nora where she was a crybaby. Arthur’s antennas are up and caution flags are being waved, yet his voice and demeanor stays calm and welcoming, even when he asks when Hae is leaving.
Boys are dumb, but Arthur is smart here. He has the right to feel perturbed by his wife hanging out with a man who has loved her for his entire life, yet Arthur gives the emotions space and grace. He does this for Nora because he knows her well enough that this is something she needs to do, whether she knows it or not. That is an immense amount of faith to put in your partner.
Greta Lee is most likely going to be nominated for an Oscar, as is Celine Strong for her original screenplay. Both are deserving, but some respect has to be put on John Magaro in the Best Supporting Actor category. All three parts of Past Lives; Lee and Magaro’s acting as well as the screenplay, wrap themselves up with a powerful, tear-inducing ending.
When Nora says goodbye to Hae, the audience is already on an emotional cliff with tear ducts swelling. Then there is the tracking shot of Nora walking down the streets of New York back home, where Arthur is waiting on the steps. He lets Nora and Hae have their one-on-one goodbye, and then he is there in the end to comfort his wife when she comes home.
When Arthur invites Nora to rest her head on his shoulder while she is breaking down, hell man it gets me every single god-damn time. Having rewatched the ending on YouTube numerous times, I can’t get over how understanding a man and husband Arthur is. Magaro is able to infuse this loving patience throughout the film and his most touching moment is allowing his wife to cry on his shoulder after saying goodbye to Hae, Seoul, and her past lives.
All of this from a first time filmmaker! Absolutely bonkers! All credit to Celine Song for putting these personal thoughts onto paper and on camera for all of us to see. You can’t make a movie as personal as Past Lives without there being some sort of biographical effort. It’s as if Song is acting as Arthur, being quiet while asking the audience questions via its characters and allowing us to ponder our own thoughts.
Right from the jump, Past Lives welcome you into the relationship between Nora, Hae and Arthur from an outsider’s perspective. The opening minutes are unseen characters looking across a bar and dissecting what is happening between the three main characters. Song sets the tone for her microscopic look at one’s self by putting the audience at a familiar outlier location. Being the curious voyeur to a first date or group of people is universally known. Who doesn’t love dissecting people you don’t know with no consequence from far away? But just as the opening scene and dialogue comes to a close, Nora looks at you. Greta Lee has the perfect look into the camera, acknowledging that she knows what we are doing, and smiling because we are about to see all the behind-the-scenes we tend to only speculate.
Past Lives is outstanding. Frankly, my initial rating may be too low, but still it’s one of my favorites from 2023. I plan to rewatch it again with my fiancée and after that I can almost rest assured my grade is going to go up.
Watch Past Lives!
STANKO RATING: B+
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