Logline of Celine Song’s Past Lives: Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.
Unfortunately, as the script is unavailable online, I’m basing the below analysis off of a screening.
Summary of Past Lives:
Celine Song’s Past Lives opens in a bar with Nora (Na) Young (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), and Arthur (John Magaro) talking. We spot them from across the room, as though the point of view is of two people-watchers who wonder, via voiceover, how these three are connected (especially since Nora and Hae Sung are deep in conversation and Arthur maintains a third wheel presence).
Flashback to 24 years earlier. Nora and Hae Sung, who seem to be 10-12 years old, are friends who walk home from school every day; Nora’s family is immigrating to Toronto because her father is a director; her mother is an artist; and presumably, there are more work opportunities. The two friends are sad, but they reluctantly accept their circumstances.
Flashforward to 12 years later. Hae Sung is still in Korea and completing mandatory military service as well as studying engineering; Nora now lives in New York City and is pursuing playwriting. They connect over Skype, reminiscing and admitting that they’ve both missed each other. After several sessions, Nora admits that she wants to stop talking because, as she finds herself Googling flights to Seoul, she really wants to commit to her life in NYC.
Afterwards, she goes to an artist retreat on Montauk where she meets Arthur. In one of their first encounters, she explains the Buddhist concept of in-yun (“providence” or “fate”); in-yun is about relationships between people, how the interactions between two people in this life occur due to interactions in past lives. They are clearly attracted to each other.
When the three of them go out to the bar that was featured in the opening scene, Hae Sung and Nora continue speaking in Korean. Hae Sung notes, “I didn’t know that liking your husband would hurt this much.” They talk very deeply about their relationship, noting that there was something in their past lives but perhaps not so much in this one.
As Nora and Hae Sung wait for an Uber to take Hae Sung to the airport, there’s a gigantic pregnant pause between the two. No one moves. They say their goodbyes sans kiss, and she walks back to her apartment to live with Arthur.
Analysis of Past Lives:
Often, in life, people don’t get what they most want or crave, and this theme permeates the Past Lives. This felt like a graceful exploration of a deep, transcendent relationship and explored the theme of “what-if” with much nuance and depth.
- Tension – The pauses between Nora and Hae Sung were loaded. I wanted them to kiss, hook up, do anything, and, when they didn’t, my tension for them heightened. That they never did anything physical beyond having deep conversations was unique, and it reminded me that, while Western theater and film push towards heightening stakes, rising action, etc. perhaps Eastern-influenced stories do not (or they do it a different way). What if the allusions to past lives only serves to heighten the tension where, according to our Western standards, they’re supposed to kiss, but don’t? What if that moment is super-charged because it’s the culmination of hundreds – if not thousands of years – of built up in-yun tension? This moment of built-up tension felt different in the best possible way.
- Language Barrier – Perhaps the most poignant scene in Past Lives occurs at the bar, where Nora and Hae Sung have an incredibly deep conversation about their relationship right in front of Arthur. We assume that he feels their intimacy, but the language barrier prevents him from directly understanding what they mean. It’s a delicate scene, and it creates the effect that Nora’s practically cheating on Arthur in front of him – and yet all she’s doing is talking. I had never seen a language barrier be used quite that way, and I can only imagine that it gave the actors A LOT to play with.
- Metaphor/motif – Nora and Hae Sung believe that they knew each other from a past life; what’s interesting about Past Lives is that they seem to hopscotch their way through time in 12-year increments, which fits with the theme. I don’t know if the Brooklyn Bridge merry-go-round they sit in front of is a part of the script (or if it was a production detail added later), but I couldn’t help but think that that also fit with (and I hate to sound corny here) what goes around comes around, that perhaps time is circular.
- Character Complexity – It seems that Nora was caught between two cultures. When she’s with Arthur, her mannerisms seem more American in that they seem expressive and casual, even a bit glib; when she’s with Hae Sung, her mannerisms seem introspective and serious. Feeling caught between these cultures only heightens her personal conflicts because she’s probably searching for (and finding) elements of home and identity in both of her male characters. And yet neither one wholly gives that to her.
This film challenged me because, as I watched it, I couldn’t help but feel that it was breaking the cardinal rule of film which is “show don’t tell.”
But then I thought, what if this film is deliberately defying those Western conventions? If the film had shown these characters in past lives, then it would’ve become a completely different movie in terms of tone (and perhaps budget). Showing past lives in this way would’ve ruined it and turned it into something that it’s not.
What if all that is presented is all you need to know?
Open to your thoughts…