57: Past Lives

Celine Song's directorial debut Past Lives is keenly aware of the spaces its characters occupy, both mentally and physically. It's one of the rare movies that handles digital communication well; it manages to capture the weight of a Skype conversation or a Facebook friend request without treating those interactions with undue reverence or skepticism. The film also uses blocking to great effect, locating its characters and their emotional landscapes in the real world. Here is a movie that understands the consequences of a conflicted feeling, and that treats those feelings as realities, rather than plot devices to drive character development along.

Past Lives is preoccupied by place. As are its characters: Nora (Greta Lee) emigrated from South Korea to Canada when she was twelve, and from Canada to the United States when she was in her early twenties. She left behind a childhood sweetheart, Hae-Sung (Teo Yoo), whose heart followed Nora across the ocean even as he himself was left behind. The film checks in on Nora and Hae-Sung at pivotal moments in their lives every twelve years–the top of the Chinese zodiac, the renewal of time and season and possibility. When Hae-Sung and Nora reconnect in their twenties, they locate each other in their respective pasts. Nora remembers Hae-Sung as a childhood friend; Hae-Sung refers to Nora by her Korean name, which she'd left behind when she moved away.

This spatial awareness extends to the ways that Nora and Hae-Sung see each other, mediated as they are by an internet connection and a computer screen. They're flat to each other, though we see them as whole and complete human beings. Hae-Sung maps his hopes on Nora's face; Nora sees Hae-Sung as a connection to her home country, but they're separated by the very thing that brings them together. When Nora suggests that the two stop communicating for a while, the camera focuses on her face in silhoutted profile. We see the tears and the steeling of her body that Hae-Sung cannot; Nora knows that she cannot be located in the past forever, and that both characters need to move forward. Crucially, when Nora meets Arthur (John Magaro), the two do so in a physical space, able to see each other in all three complicated dimensions.

When Hae-Sung and Nora reconnect again, it's in that same complexity. Both characters have grown since their twenties; Nora's married to Arthur, Hae-Sung has suffered heartbreak, and life has happened to both of them. All three characters move about New York in an uneasy renegotiation of who they are, who they were, and who they might become. They travel back and forth in time mentally as easily as they walk up and down a quiet street. In a past life, they might have all been different people to each other. In the future, who knows what they'll be. But here and now, in the present, they ache, and we feel that aching and the beauty that comes along with it keenly.

Past Lives is out in limited release.

What I talked about:

For Seeing & Believing podcast, Kevin and I reviewed Past Lives. I chose to pair it with the Merchant/Ivory film A Room with a View.

What I watched:

I rewatched Alien: Covenant for maybe the half dozenth time. I've had the itch to revisit it for a little while–it's been a couple of years–but this time around I had a doubly good excuse. I'll be talking about it for another podcast...

What I'm listening to:

...which you can catch up with here! Frankenstein's Podcast is about movie monsters in all their forms; the hosts have been talking about xenomorphs for the last few weeks, and I've been enjoying the conversations quite a bit.