How ‘Past Lives' Helps You Learn From Your Life
Our final assignment in high school, senior year English, was a speech to the class on any topic we wished. More personal stories were encouraged. Apropos of my early days of film nerdery, I decided to write about my personal growth in the school through the lens of a traditional 3-act plot structure (I drew a graph and everything). While being embarrassingly self-centered and melodramatic, I tried to tell a cohesive story that would connect all the disparate events of my life. Truthfully, this was a fraught attempt to create a singular meaning out of my time at this school, condensing months into sentences to build and present myself as a complete character. It was an exercise not in reflection but in summarization. While I was performing, it dawned on me how much I skipped. While filling in the spaces between plot points with montages, I failed to represent the truly revealing nuances in my experience. There were countless stories to be told, not one of which could alone capture the complexity and diversity of life. Four years later, I find that one of my favorite films of the year, Past Lives by Celine Song, takes the opposite approach.
Past Lives is a 2023 American film that premiered earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival, distributed by A24. Simply put, the film is about two childhood sweethearts whose lives intersect at three different points. In the first section, young Nora (Moon Seung-a) emigrates from South Korea to Canada as a little girl, leaving young Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) behind. There’s a special feeling here that might resonate with many viewers, a kind of pure romance that only exists when you’re that young. The emotions and the visual language are simpler here, but still evocative. When the two part ways, they do so without much drama, as kids would. Signs and moments here are remembered for their specificity rather than their relevance to the story; it seems to capture the way we record memories from childhood. What sticks to us and what forms us is often as inane as we were.
Twelve years later as a young professional, Nora (Greta Lee) finds and reaches out to Hae Sung (Yoo Teo) and they instantly connect and fall for each other. The nostalgic use of mid-2010s Skype here as a medium helps us frame this section as another memory. Visually, this section gets more dynamic and cleverer. The characters are connected across shots with precise continuity editing that transcends continents, and then are separated in the same way when Nora ends their relationship. So far, I’ve been describing the film impressionistically, but this section is the one in which it visually uses impressionistic imagery. Nora goes away to a writer’s retreat, represented like a magical world outside of her emotional baggage, in which moments are captured with a beautiful haze and serenity. Here Nora meets Arthur (John Magaro), and we’re launched into a dream. The film introduces us to the idea of in-yun, which to me is the very embodiment of impressionist storytelling. It’s the idea that two people are tied to each other across generations, and that fleeting moments hint at millennia of history between two souls. Nora uses this as a line on Arthur, but it serves as a thematic keystone throughout the film.
Yet another twelve years later, we’re again dropped into these people’s lives. Hae Sung visits New York, where Nora and Arthur, now married, consider what this means for them as partners and individuals. When Nora finally shares a frame with Hae Sung again, a tangible tension fills the screen. Long, unbroken shots keep us intently focused on them, searching for a hint of chemistry and passion. The camera itself seems to tease us. We want to get lost in the romance, but then we’re pulled back to Arthur and Nora. It’s in their conversations about insecurity and passion that we realize how much we’ve missed. Nora’s a completely different person now, more jaded and resigned. We miss what she used to be, except we didn’t really know her then, either. She’s always been just an idea to the audience, in the same way Hae Sung has been to her, but perhaps that’s precisely the beauty of the film. It’s not the information we know about a character, but their simultaneous familiarity and unknowability that compels us.
We’re put back into a scene that the film opened with – Nora, Hae Sung, and Arthur sitting at a bar talking. This is a semi-autobiographical scene, a real conversation that inspired Song to create the film – another memory. The first time, we’re in the perspective of some friends playing the best game in the world: trying to figure out these peoples’ relationships to each other. Now, with twenty-four years of backstory in our minds, we watch them from the other side of the 180 and try to do the same. We feel for Arthur as the camera leaves him behind to talk to Nora and Hae Sung; we’re awkward when Nora leaves them alone. It dawns on us that these people don’t know their relationship any more than we do.
The topic of in-yun returns and they consider what they might’ve been to each other in other lives. Song remembers from this moment not a total encapsulation of who they were and what they’d done, but how they were connecting. It’s much like the first section of the film; they share the joy of fantasy, of wondering what their lives could’ve been. It’s both a childish game and a mature reflection on the fleeting nature of relationships. Song sees these characters in their dreams and goals and only in these moments of intersection. We never know them all that well, but we see them learn and grow into familiar strangers. Past Lives doesn’t teach us to know ourselves, but to recognize our inherent identities in the lives we led and those we only dreamed of.