The wind, the leaves, the streets, the towers; everything exists with a supple glow. There's a love for environment behind the camera, where director Celine Song stands, telling her story. Kirchner, her cinematographer, lends immense craft to the film's 35mm scenery. Nora, Hae Sung, Arthur; the three central characters are handled with wonderful grace. They easily communicate complex emotion. They're likable, and they're relatable. New York City, Seoul; I hardly know either of them practically, but now I feel like I do, in some intimate way. These two cities are dearly loved. Longing; what did you think of when you finished this film?
Past Lives is an honest, delicate, and ambling movie. Nora, once a little girl from urban Korea, chooses her path as an American writer after immigrating with her family. She marries a different writer (Arthur, a Jewish New Yorker), adopts the culture of NYC, and chases her ambition. She's still Korean, but the identity ebbs. She doesn't sound like it anymore. Hae Sung, her childhood friend who never left the country, is very much Korean; his path is that of an engineer living with his parents, which he describes as ordinary. He loves Nora deeply. He loved her when she left Seoul at twelve, and loved her still at the points in which their lives intersected. Nora loves him too, in her own complicated, almost grieving way. He is her connection to a childhood she longs for, washed away in her memories, and seldom revisited because of the complicated feelings that come with being a child immigrant.
The story is simple but it bursts at the seams with emotion and humor. Admittedly slow, but without wasting your time. I connected with all three of the main characters to some degree, each carried by an actor with the apparent gravity of a veteran superstar. They are emotionally intelligent, and they react to each other in interesting, startlingly realistic ways. Celine Song plays on a very specific feeling of aching; for a forgotten time in one's life, for an identity, or for a lover. It's particular, but looking around the audience as we left the theater, you could see that most people were in their own heads, thinking of something (or someone). We all long for something lost.
Perhaps not all of us, but probably most, have also wrestled with the feeling of permanence in the journey we choose for ourselves. You only live once, said Drake, but that's really a terrifying thought sometimes. Carving out one lifetime - engineered across thousands of individual decisions - means foregoing an infinite number of others. People deal with this in a number of ways; providence, reincarnation, and an afterlife, to name a few. Nora and Hae Sung might be soulmates, but will they know it in this lifetime, or the next?
I really can't wait for the next project Song works on, and that goes double for the cast. I sunk my teeth into this deeply romantic, deeply resonant film, which is capable of bringing immense longing to the surface. It is coated with a beautiful score and draped atop memorable settings. It's a home-run.
9/10 for making me want to visit Seoul.
