‘Past Lives’ and an uncertain future | review and analysis

I've been thinking about a monologue from Before Sunset, the second film in Richard Linklater's masterpiece Before trilogy, recently. “Each relationship, when it ends, really damages me. I never fully recover. That's why I'm very careful about getting involved because it hurts too much. Even getting laid! I actually don't do that… I will miss the other person—the most mundane things.” Celine, played by Julie Delpy, continues, “I see in them little details, so specific to each of them, that move me, and that I miss, and… will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details.”

This is also how Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), a Korean man who reconnects with his childhood crush after more than two decades, perhaps go through life in the same way — looking for meaning in every moment that makes up the fabric of our lives. How does each interaction, each success, each failure build us up (or tear us down) as a person — or change the trajectory of our lives? When a moment ends, can that really be it? Was it something meant to be contained to just that split second of my life? Does it really matter if it doesn't mean more than just that split second? 

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Those are the questions in writer-director Celine Song's debut feature Past Lives. An intimate character drama with the scale of a romantic epic, Song presupposes that looking to the past as a path for the future is a fool's errand. And as time passes — rather than saying “12 Years Later,” Celine Song uses the title card “12 Years Pass” to remind us that life is still happening in those gaps — so do the people that filled these moments that at one time felt so meaningful.

Past Lives is made up of these brief moments covering three eras in its protagonists' lives — quick glimpses that come and go like a memory reminiscent of Charlotte Wells' Aftersun. We were first introduced to Hae Sung and Na Young (Greta Lee) twenty-four years earlier in Seoul, Korea where they're on the precipice of a life-altering moment as Na Young's parents make the decision to immigrate to Canada leaving Hae Sung heartbroken. That isn't before her mother sets them up on a date to make “good memories” for her. Little do they both know that that memory will cascade into something larger for them. An entire movie could be dedicated to just Na Young's journey to Canada, but the brilliance of Song's direction is she let's lingering shots do the talking — like one of Na Young standing in a corner at her new school observing her new strange environment.

Twelve years pass and Na Young, now going by her English name Nora, is a writer living in New York City — as a kid, she jokes about her dream of winning a Nobel Prize, and since moving that dream has “diminished” to winning a Pulitzer. Realizing that Hae Sung was looking for her years ago, she reaches out leading to a digital relationship that puts the years prior into perspective. Nora realizes how easily time can be halted by revisiting your past — something Past Lives puts a magnifying glass to — so she asks Hae Sung for a break in communication. But as so happens, weeks turn into months and months into years.

Eventually, another twelve years pass and an older more established Nora is married to fellow writer Arthur (First Cow's John Magaro). Meanwhile, Hae Sung has reached back out to say he's planning a visit to New York which Arthur (half-jokingly) says is a ploy to win Nora back. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the beauty of Past Lives — and this is perhaps a spoiler — is that nothing does. Life isn't quite as dramatic as we hope it to be as much as the fantasy scenarios we concoct in our heads are. It's why the movie's cheeky cold open where two people play my favorite game, “make up a backstory for strangers at a bar” is oddly a meta assessment of the trio's story. As is Arthur's lament to Nora that in this story he's the “evil white American husband keeping you two apart.” Besides, that's not the story Song is trying to tell.

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The movie covers themes as broad as the Asian diaspora and how leaving where you're from forces you to change and adapt — but can also blur your sense of identity. Nora observes that her Korean is softening, but when she talks to Hae Sung she says she “feels more Korean.” However, Song dives even further into the individual experience. Rarely are we afforded the opportunity to reobserve the moments that form us into the person we are today. Some of us, like Hae Sung, fight desperately to hold onto it. Maybe his time with Nora was the last time things made sense. Others, like Nora, are in direct opposition to that feeling. She actively runs from it — maybe to assimilate, maybe to chase a future that she's already formed for herself. The beauty of Past Lives is that it doesn't assume either is wrong only that the only path is forward.

Past Lives perhaps hits its themes too directly but the effect is never less than profound. The final moments, both devastating and triumphant, are miraculous — Greta Lee gives a star-is-born performance that begs not to be forgotten come awards season. For all three of our protagonists, a new chapter is opening — full of possibility, an old chapter is closing — healing old wounds and an entire story is being rewritten. Song's screenplay, littered with beautifully simple yet deeply affecting insight, is simmering with romantic tension even if Past Lives isn't quite a romance. Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro play off of each other with astonishing realism that still mines the almost melodramatic (and slightly comedic) tone of Celine Song's stage work for which she is known. The result is a charming, funny, and swoon-worthy 100-minute meditation that left me lightly sobbing on the way home.

Past Lives reminds me of the ending question posed in Arrival, “if you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?” If you were to ask Celine Song, I'd imagine she'd answer with a hearty “no.” Because the beauty of this lifetime is that it is your lifetime — even if you share it for brief glimpses with others. It is your reality.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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