Written and directed by playwright and first-time filmmaker Celine Song, Past Lives tells the story of childhood friends Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who part in elementary school but re-emerge in one another’s orbits twelve and twenty-four years later. Told across three parts following a brief, meta prologue, Past Lives traces their connection at twelve, at twenty-four, and at thirty-six years old, charting what critic Tim Grierson calls a “pragmatic” love story.
I first learned about Past Lives on the Grierson & Leitch podcast last June, and I watched a screening for the first time at the Tower Theater on June 16, 2023. Over the next two weeks, I saw the film four more times, once with Jacqui and four times alone. I cried every time, and the credits rolled with my brain buzzing after each viewing.
During the months that followed, I’ve watched the Blu Ray or accompanying digital copy seven more times and written about the film constantly. Today, I confidently proclaim it my favorite movie, but my attachment to it runs deeper than affection. Past Lives fascinates me on a technical level, with every scene and line of dialogue rich with meaning, but the film stirs me emotionally. No media has ever imprinted on me like this film does on every viewing.
This is my third attempt at drafting a piece with the simple thesis “This is why I love Past Lives”, and that fact speaks to the challenge of adapting all I think and feel about the A24 Best Picture nominee. I want people to watch it, so my careful breakdowns of every line and cut aren’t tenable; likewise, when I pared back the cinematic analysis to make room for a personal lens, I forfeited the film’s thread.
As a resolution, I have opted to break Past Lives into its three parts. These three parts differ dramatically in on-screen runtime, but this structure will help me balance analysis and synopsis with reflection inspired by that analysis. The resulting piece, I think, serves as a viewing companion to the film. The commentary I would add and the details I would point out, if we were watching it together, comprise the bulk of what follows.
Hopefully, this will nurture interest in a great film, as this movie says powerful things about a world far more comprehensive than mine. This piece should also address (if not outright reveal) several themes from this newsletter over the preceding twelve months. Still, if you watch the film and return to this later, that’s great, too.
If Past Lives were still in theaters, rest assured, I’d be extending invitations right and left. As it stands, Showtime hosts it on streaming platforms; otherwise, the film is available as a $5.99 rental everywhere.
SPOILERS of the most relentless and extensive kind follow.
*****
PART ONE (Twelve Years Old)
I had a crush on some girl every year of elementary school. Some years, her identity shifted midway through the year, but there was always someone.
Despite those ages being more than three decades (!) ago, I still remember every one, even the girl from kindergarten (Megan P.). Lost to time in most of those cases is why I developed an affection for each of them, but that makes sense: there didn’t need to be a thoughtful reason then. It was just a feeling, nothing more robust than having an imaginary friend.
After its brief prologue, Past Lives opens following the twelve-year-old versions of Na Young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min) walking home from school in Seoul, South Korea. Na Young sniffles with every step, her academic supremacy in shambles after Hae Sung finally beats her on an assessment. We watch Hae Sung clumsily attempt to console her, calling her a psycho and playfully shoving her.
There’s more to those tears: impending immigration from Seoul to Toronto will rebrand Na Young as Nora, separating her from her home and friend. As a consolation for that departure, Na Young’s mother offers to arrange a date for her daughter with a classmate of her choice.
“Is there anyone you like right now?” Mrs. Moon asks flippantly while grinding through passport paperwork.
Adorably, Na Young pretends to think this over before saying the name “Hae Sung” with a broad grin she immediately suppresses. She refers to her twelve-year-old friend as “manly” and proclaims that the two will marry someday. When the mom questions Hae Sung’s assumed agreement, the daughter blows off her concern.
“He will if I tell him to,” she says matter-of-factly.
That table scene tugs at my heart. There’s such a chasm between these two conflicting perspectives: while Mrs. Moon treats her daughter’s interest almost anthropologically, Na Young stands immune to her emotional distance: Hae Sung is the biggest thing in her world. Innocently projecting to a future as so many kids do, Na Young has already locked up the boy who lets her pin down his hand and doodle flowers on his forearms.
Therein lies the difference between my crushes and the relationship on-screen: these two actually have a long history together. This might be different than just a random firing of hormones at the dawn of puberty.
The afternoon date they embark on, supervised by dispassionate parents watching from a distance, includes plenty of frolicking and platonic touching as they dance around art installations and climb statues.
Alas, melancholy approaches. These two children could well be enjoying their first official acknowledgment of burgeoning love—whatever chemistry looks like for tweens, they’ve got it—but the skies sit idly gray, raining down on their personal parade while the statues centering their first and final rendezvous in Korea appear as faces. Those faces are nose to nose but with eyes that gaze in other directions, foreshadowing their so-close-yet-so-far futures.
A magical day concludes with a car ride home. Na Young dozes on Hae Sung’s shoulder, her fingers interlocked with surprising tightness around his. Hae Sung’s expression carries vindication and security but also ambivalence: he knows this bliss is temporary.
If there’s one thing I love about this part of Past Lives, it’s that Song refuses to patronize the affection between these children. Whereas both mothers treat the date as a marker of growth rather than love foretold, the filmmaker resists that mindset. Every scene is shot with loving warmth. The kids don’t say adult things in a graceless attempt at stoking adult emotion; they are just kids, playing around in the park as kids are wont to do. The parents’ unsentimental observations speak for a world that rolls its eyes at the legitimacy of puppy love, but Song does not slather on schmaltz, either. Innocent authenticity wounds here; like Na Young, we too can imagine a trajectory that sees these two together forever. In a way, the film lets adult voices provide background chatter to a tragic childhood romance. Indeed, the filmmaker treats this relationship with gentle reverence.
Of course, this relationship has an expiration date. On their last walk home, the two don’t talk at all, each aware of the impending moment’s magnitude but both too young to honor it, their vocabulary for this ill-fated affair too limited to capture in words. Just as I, at ten, struggled with the compulsion to kiss my Na Young before moving to Irvine, Hae Sung calls to the one who holds his heart, intending to convey all that she means to him. But he is only two blocks more mature than before; just as I did nothing with Julia as a pizza breath’d ten-year-old, he also opts for inaction.
“Bye,” he says, before their two paths visually and romantically diverge.
These two have come together at just the wrong time. They’re too old for this spark to have been wholly erased by other novel emotions, but they’re also too young to express, in words or actions, what they each mean to the other. Neither finds closure as they part; their worlds change all the same. My heart aches for them, the weight of my every “What if?” boiled to a head as two children slink away from their potential soul mate.
Part one of Past Lives is less than twelve minutes long. I’ll never forget a single second.
*****
PART TWO (Twenty-Four Years Old)
Dunking on smartphones and social media has become the norm now.
Look around any crowded restaurant, and you’ll understand that inclination. I’ve been in dining rooms where rows of tables feature unspeaking customers, every person’s eyes on a different device. Extrapolating “smartphones disconnect us” from that endemic experience makes sense.
Although I won’t refute that a problem exists, I bristle when the sanctimony starts. I can’t decry social media or online communication because they’ve played prominent, positive roles in my life. Some of my most important relationships have grown organically online through little more than typed words.
The middle section of Past Lives doesn’t detail precisely parallel experiences to my own, but I feel accepted and seen watching it as it features Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) reconnecting via Facebook, email, and Skype.
The second act of their relationship begins almost as a joke: Na Young, who goes exclusively by Nora and has left Canada for a graduate writing program in New York, sits on Facebook searching up old classmates while chatting with her mother. As a lark, she hunts down Hae Sung, only to discover he’s been asking after her. One friend request and several messages later, Nora sprints home from her classes, eager to Skype with her old friend.
Before I deactivated Facebook, I had friended my fifth-grade crush, Michelle, from Irvine. There’d been zero thought of a relationship—I’d not be outsourcing romantic leads to my eleven-year-old self—but there was a fascination. Who did this girl who once charmed me turn out to be? What is life like for the woman I naively imagined myself one day marrying?
Granted, those questions carry greater weight for Nora and Hae Sung; theirs wasn’t just a crush but a sustained friendship layered with proto-romantic inklings. There is an instant spark when the two faces appear on one another’s screens. Spending those formative years of thirteen through twenty-four as strangers hasn’t erased their familiar closeness.
Song’s team shoots these scenes with tenderness. Our characters remain 11,000 physical miles apart—we never pair more than one of them with a machine—but the camera closes that chasm. Though always framed by a monitor or MacBook, every shot has intimacy and warmth. These two occupy the same shared space from venues half a world apart.
Judging by the sunlight, their first conversation since elementary school lasts at least eight hours. Song’s team invests incredible attention to detail into this scene, but it’s easy to miss if you’ve never done marathon sessions on FaceTime or Skype. Both characters’ hair becomes oily and limp in the front from the constant adjusting in front of that small camera, and their eyes strain slightly from all that screen time.
As their first conversation arrives at a cadence, Hae Sung gets serious. This, too, feels familiar: who doesn’t wax philosophically in the hazy warmth of a sprawling Skype session? What he says, though, says everything and nothing.
“I missed you.”
“Me too,” replies Nora. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
A languorous montage ensues from here as we watch the newly re-minted connection between Nora and Hae Sung grow. The two take one another everywhere, Skyping on public transport and from the library. Nora, who goes by Na Young again with Hae Sung, begins shaking off rust with her original language, and her posture shifts, too: instead of rigidly sitting in a chair, she lies in bed, tucked under the covers with Hae Sung’s digital likeness inches away.
Hae Sung, for his part, comes to life with Nora. The post-military service adult iteration we glimpsed before seemed morose, maybe even wounded; after just receiving Nora’s friend request, his mother already remarks upon a personality change. What follows only furthers that impression: Hae Sung laughs, he teases, he rushes off places, and he even celebrates the beautiful vistas within his home town.
From the inside, neither character would have labeled their connection as a relationship, but I recognize what’s happening from my spot in the audience. These two people have fallen in love through the screen, platonically for sure but also, I suspect, romantically. The intimacy between them feels fluid and natural; they installed the infrastructure for this convergence years before. Neither remarks on it, but soon, both are researching travel to the other’s home, laying tracks that invoke an inevitable togetherness.
As much as these scenes of digitally-fueled-affection thrill me, the love story playing out carries complications. Nora and Hae Sung have reconnected at fulcrum moments: Nora’s MFA has yielded a writing residency that will take her to Montauk for the summer, while Hae Sung heads to China for a language immersion program to aid his future engineering work. Both feel drawn together, their closeness reaching yet another relative maximum, but life conspires to intrude once again.
Moreover, the nature of their feelings for one another begs questions, with geography and history inextricably tied to their bond. For Nora in particular, Hae Sung offers companionship and a tether to the culture and world she left behind. Only with Hae Sung does she go by her given name; it is through his phone that she regards her old home. When Hae Sung shows her the city while riding in a cable car, Nora brushes her fingers against the screen and says “I miss you”, words heard by Hae Sung but intended not for him but for Seoul.
Soon, it’s that pull toward home that drives a wedge into their burgeoning relationship. Nora insists they need a break from one another; she calls it “a brief pause”, but she doesn’t mince words when she chastises herself for wasting time looking up flights to Korea. She has almost moved on from her former life, almost become Nora, but Hae Sung strikes a match to set her dormant longing ablaze. That multidirectional pull must stop. This is their end.
Rarely has Skype felt like a barrier to honest communication in this film, but for the first time, we see its limitations. Hae Sung’s voice quakes, tears moistening his eyes, but Nora sits stoically, numb but defiant, in New York. Hae Sung watches the woman he loves reject him with a practiced coldness; he ends the call feeling small and foolish for investing so much into something that meant so little on the other end.
We, though, know better: when the window closes, Nora weeps.
Once again, Song invites us to observe the aftermath of the two's separation. Hae Sung heads across the Yellow Sea and explores his new world; he even gets a meet-cute at a small restaurant, where a strained smile stretches across his face. These are tiny steps toward his healing.
Nora, on the other hand, demonstrates her shift absent ambiguity. In her residency bedroom, she signs her name defiantly as Nora Moon, relegating Na Young to a relic of the past, and she hits on Arthur (John Magaro), a fellow writer in the residency. While Hae Sung turns the page, Nora opens another book completely.
Neither speaks of the other on-screen—what would they even say?—but we cannot help but frame their decisions as responses to what has been lost. Whereas Hae Sung connects with an Asian woman who could well be a surrogate for Nora, Nora seduces Arthur, who is white and American. Old flames have blurred things, but each now looks to move forward.
While new possibilities surface alongside a mystical, atonal score, these in-person interactions never diminish what preceded them electronically. No character says they’re ready for a real connection or that it’s nice to finally make actual eye contact; they wouldn’t. What Nora and Hae Sung rekindled proved remarkable, and the film never deigns theirs to be less than any other relationships it depicts.
I feel more secure watching the middle section of Past Lives. Song understands the new intimacy the evolving internet offered, as she treats it not as a gag or a movie mechanic but as a valid Petri dish in which love might grow. Born in 1988, she, too, grew up in this ephemeral era when loneliness could be quelled without a hand to hold, and when the internet and social media truly connected rather than addicted and divided.
Past Lives captures a powerful immigrant story, and I know I’m underscoring the film’s reach by examining it predominantly without that lens. But I am not an immigrant, so I can never speak to the authenticity of that story segment. The film speaks eloquently about that story, but that lens will always be academic for me.
I can relate to this romantic one. I, too, have fallen in love online through typed conversations and digital closeness. I know this feeling, and Song renders that experience accurately and persuasively. Past Lives gets that feeling right.
Past Lives gets that feeling tragically right.
*****
PART THREE (Thirty-Six Years Old)
Finally arriving at stable junctures in their lives, Nora and Hae Sung arrange a meeting in New York as each’s fortieth birthday looms. These childhood sweethearts have been physically apart for twenty-four years, but at last, they can come together and develop that real estate each has owned in the other’s heart since elementary school. Finally, these two can—
No. They can’t. Of course they can’t.
Nora and Arthur are happily married, two wordsmiths carving out a cozy coexistence. Hae Sung‘s visit, then, provokes discomfort. Why is he flying thirteen hours to New York for his vacation? And how central is this arranged rendezvous with Nora to that trip’s purpose?
Because I teach predominantly seniors during their final quarter before graduation, I’m always adjacent to separation anxiety. Don’t get me wrong—these students are ready to be done and move forward—but that final school bell in May marks a firm ending. Never again will they be so close to so many childhood friends.
When this idea surfaces, which it does every week, I share a sobering but optimistic outlook. I don’t pretend they will remain present in one another’s daily lives because I know they won’t. Adult life features a demanding density of time-filling tasks; there aren’t hours for most of us to do meaningful daily check-ins. Some faces and voices will fade into memory; others will cede starring roles to irregular guest spots. This sobering thought precludes my warmer follow-up: the time they spend with the people they remain in touch with will be richer and more meaningful for that trade-off.
Moreover, I invoke magnetism, just as I did during a spring 2021 session of Therapy Thursday. Separate two clung-together magnets by mailing one to the other side of the world. If someday that far-flung piece returns to the proximity of its original partner, there’s no change in what happens: the two click together as if nothing has changed. Real friends, I offer optimistically, are like magnets.
Nora and Hae Sung embrace for the first time in decades, and my magnets metaphor renders in the flesh. These two have been apart for double the time they were (in any capacity) together, but they talk with the fluidity of cheerful chums. They walk around Brooklyn Bridge Park not unlike they once strolled home from school. It isn’t precisely the same because they are no longer innocent children nor college kids at crossroads but striking, attractive adults, yet there is a comfort, a familiar rhythm. Both tread lightly, even when Nora inquires about his visit’s motivation. Hae Sung invokes a quest for closure. This is a cordial conversation between old friends.
Superficially, that is. Although the film never privies us to either character’s thoughts, Song offers the viewer signals suggesting that a more profound bond—at the very least—orbits the two characters. They gaze into one another’s eyes while riding the subway; they lean toward each other and dress to impress. Most striking: while they chat on the pier, backdropped by a beautiful shot of the city, every extra behind them is paired up, every couple exchanging gestures of affection with their beloveds. Whether the characters admit it or not, love lingers in the air.
Chasing this scene is one of Nora at home with Arthur. They discuss Hae Sung, his attractiveness, and Arthur’s awkward place in the purported love story he worries might already be in motion.
“What a good story this is. I just can’t compete,” he laments. “Childhood sweethearts who reconnect 20 years later, only to realize they were meant for each other. In the story, I would be the evil white American husband standing in the way of destiny. I’m the guy in the story you leave when your ex-lover comes to take you away.”
Nora objects, insisting that what he and she share is good and unique but also noting that the banality of their life together does not bother her. When Arthur runs through hypotheticals, intimating their precious life could have been outclassed by so many potential others, Nora waves him off with a quixotic look in her eye.
“That’s not how life works. This is my life, and I’m living it with you,” she notes. “This is where I ended up. This is where I’m supposed to be.”
When watching Past Lives, this domestic scene tends to provoke nervous chuckles and eyebrow-raising. Arthur functions as an audience surrogate here, prodding at the vertices of the love triangle he has inadvertently assembled. There’s an audacity in calling out so explicitly the movie’s themes, a wildness in asking one character to interrogate another over the inner workings of their two hearts, but this is our chance to understand the perspective of the man Nora married: he knows some part of his partner forever excludes him. This isn’t resentment, not really—it’s resignation to the fact that Seoul, Korean culture, and yes, Hae Sung have walled off a section of her heart.
“Do you know you only speak in Korean when you talk in your sleep?” he asks her.
“I do?” she replies, wholly unaware.
No matter what Nora and Arthur build together, these nail houses will always be immune to the development around them. Arthur needs reassurance but understands that he’ll never fully get into those spaces of her heart. Such is Hae Sung’s terrifying magnetism: he, not her husband, has keys to those secluded chambers.
The next day, Nora joins Hae Sung as he explores the touristy parts of New York. Although there’s nothing explicitly noted to this effect, I like to imagine these scenes as a sort of play. To on-lookers not knowing any better, these two, speaking with each other exclusively in Korean, are an international couple visiting the city. They take selfies; they pass phones back and forth. Their chemistry is fluid and effortless. This is the itinerary Mr. and Mrs. Jung would follow if they existed and visited New York. Although placed in a different dramatic place, this glimpses an alternate future like the final scene of La La Land. Nora plays along, but no doubt in part from her conversation with Arthur, she strains at times to maintain appropriate distance. It’s as though she feels the very magnetic tug she knows she must resist.
That evening, all three come together for dinner. When Arthur and Hae Sung first meet, each attempts to speak the other’s language as a gesture of respect. At the dinner they share, Nora serves as their interpreter, as neither man is fluent enough to converse organically. I love the absence of hate here, the insistence by Arthur and Hae Sung alike to engage with his respective romantic foil; it speaks to the maturity Past Lives maintains that runs so counter to the romantic comedies and dramas I grew up on.
Still, the dynamic shifts when the three grab drinks at a bar to while away Hae Sung’s final hours in America. All three imbibe, loosening some of their guardedness, but the effects of that drinking vary. Eventually, Arthur slips into his drink as the other two, in unbroken Korean, address the elephant in the room.
Tempting though it is to source translated quotes from this tender but frank conversation, I’ll simply note why I love it. There’s a magical line the two straddle here. If you’ve ever stayed up so late with friends that your morning alarm goes off, you know it: you’re so tired that your filter falters, leaving you an immense, intoxicating freedom. Crazy ideas feel feasible; you become unencumbered by convention. The world sleeps, but you are vividly alive. This drips from the dialogue between these two with impregnable chemistry finally gifted—by the running clock, by the lubricant of liquor, by the generous deference of a supportive and self-aware husband—the chance to speak openly. It’s a beautiful conversation, shot adoringly amid the gorgeous glow of amber-orange candlelight. This melancholic moment in limbo is a treat: these two people finally talk to each other.
“The Na Young you remember doesn’t exist here,” says Nora after all cards turn face up. “But that little girl did exist. She’s not sitting in front of you, but it doesn’t mean she’s not real. Twenty years ago, I left her behind with you.”
“I know,” Hae Sung replies. “And even though I was only twelve, I loved her.”
With somber music playing behind them, Nora and Hae Sung then imagine the past lives they might have lived together. These are playful scenarios, but there’s a sense of negotiation here: they are setting aside their romantic friction, sketching out an alternate history that primes them to part. In every shot of this conversation, we see only Nora and Hae Sung; our next glimpse of Arthur is as he signs the check for their drinks.
My favorite scene in any movie ever follows this exchange. Its set-up screams mundanity: Nora and Hae Sung wait for his Uber outside a small garage one block from her apartment. It’s just them: Arthur has stayed home, once again gifting them space. They have two minutes.
I remember watching this scene for the first time at the Tower Theatre. Despite having no clue where things would go, emotion gripped me. The parting of these two fictional characters felt as visceral as any I’d experienced myself, and that’s because I was waiting for guidance. What would Hae Sung do? This will surely be his final moment with Nora. They’ve exchanged pleasantries, but they have already achieved their absolute maximum closeness. How does a person honor an ending like that? What does a person do when they say farewell to not just a person they love but also the possibility of that love ever being fulfilled? A goodbye like this portends grief!
I have always walked away, pretending feelings are finished while fully aware that my reshaped heart remains occupied. I can relinquish genuine relationships with natural endings, but those that never had a chance cling to my heart. Was that wrong? Was I wrong? Hae Sung is me at this moment, and Nora is each person I have loved—romantically, platonically, intellectually, and authentically. Without thinking the thoughts, I knew I was moments away from understanding what one does with love unfulfilled. Hae Sung—which is to say Past Lives—would tell me.
Nora and Hae Sung slowly rotate to face one another. The electricity crackles; I could hear my theater squirming, yearning for someone to make a move. The breeze and booze conspire to rock Nora gently—their faces are so close that a strong gust could push their lips together! A lifetime of affection is about to
The car arrives. They hug, chastely, and Hae Sung loads his rolling suitcase into the backseat.
But then he hesitates. He calls out to her and turns around.
Song, heretofore resisting intervention, cuts: we are back in Seoul. Twelve-year-old Na Young stands on the staircase to her childhood home while heartbroken twelve-year-old Hae Sung looks up at her. It’s an identical scene to their original parting, blocked identically to the moment before Hae Sung said only “Bye”, but now the lighting has changed. The two children stand in their future selves’ 4:00 am darkness. This, Song nudges us, is Hae Sung’s do-over.
“Na Young,” he addresses her, in Korean, by her former name. He steps forward. “What if this is a past life as well, and we are already something else to each other in our next life? Who do you think we are then?”
“I don’t know,” Nora replies with a soft smile.
“Me neither,” he concedes.
I didn’t know what this meant the first time I heard him say “Me neither”. This felt like an anticlimax to that version of me; it felt like Song subverting expectations by not only giving the audience no romantic overture but also, once again, no closure. Has Hae Sung moved on? Was this what he’d waited 24 years to say?
But then, a little laugh escapes his chest. Hae Sung speaks.
“See you then.”
Three one-syllable words shouldn’t have this much power, but they unleashed a floodgate of emotion that carried me through the parking lot and into my car. In every screening, I heard intense emotion from audience members, but many times there were whispers of frustration as well. These two never kiss. They never run away together. They, in this lifetime at least, will never be together.
That never matters to me. I’ve watched Past Lives going on thirteen times, excluding a dozen other viewings of specific sections in preparation for this piece, and I’ve never once felt sad for these two people. This ending is, to echo Grierson once more, pragmatic, acknowledging that the sweeping, unbridled pull of love can blossom but lack any capacity to override reality. I genuinely believe both Hae Sung and Nora accept this reality. They embrace it. It doesn’t invalidate any other relationship, either. In a different life, maybe things would go differently; in this one, they do not have that sort of connection. And that’s okay.
Because I am not Buddhist and believe in reincarnation rather concretely via the conservation of matter and energy, I don’t interpret Hae Sung’s final parting words to mean “I look forward to that future life when we can finally be together”. Instead, I hear his message distilled as follows:
“You will remain in my heart forever.”
Hae Sung’s last line grants me self-acceptance. Several loves have remained in my heart, impervious to every force and feeling. No matter what I intellectually believe, no matter how psychologically debunked an emotion can be, there remain women with devoted plots in the neighborhood of my heart. Their parcels on Aorta Avenue and Ventricle Circle resist the changes governing the rest of my heart. It never matters that it will never happen; it doesn’t even matter that I long ago ceased yearning for it to happen. Each defiantly remains open, available, forever waiting for its rightful landholder to claim her space, even though she never will.
On those daily reflective walks through my memory, I pass these plots and feel their intense pull. I used to rush off, ripping myself away from their malignant magnetism, afraid to even acknowledge these hypothetical homes and worlds that could have been, these what-ifs that timing, fate, and destiny deemed ill-suited for fruition. I resented that lingering affection; I drew shame from these unruly spaces spoiling otherwise pristine neighborhoods. But Hae Sung and Nora, which is to say Celine Song, tell me I can stop fighting those cul-de-sacked emotions. Even though its trajectory has concluded tragically short of the target I once sought, I can accept the presence of these plots. I can admire the flowering weeds and cherish the swirls of burnt red dirt. They are splendors.
What Na Young and Hae Sung have, too, is beautiful, but its exercise will forever remain hypothetical, confined to little-used chambers in their healthy hearts. They will forever feel it exerting echos of illogical longing, always taste its bittersweet allure on the edge of their sweetest meals. Their love—and I accept no arguments that theirs is anything but that—was not meant to be more than a faint murmur.
This, too, is beautiful.
*****
Had Celine Song rolled the credits right here, right when Hae Sung’s Uber leaves the frame, Past Lives would still be my pick for Best Picture. I’d still have seen it multiple times. I’d still own the Blu-Ray and wear out the digital copy. I’d probably still have purchased the original two-sided poster and spent months debating where to hang it.
But she didn’t.
Nora stands immobilized as his car exits. She’s stunned; the lingering alcohol surely plays a role, but this is emotional paralysis. You can feel her thoughts swelling; you can hear her emotional gears cranking beyond their capacity as she tries to process what she heard and how it makes her feel.
At last, she regains sufficient bearings to walk. The camera follows her, step for step, but this is no commanding walk by a confident playwright. Nora’s gait betrays her inner turbulence. Her stride is uneven, rarely linear, and her booted feet land heavy. In profile, her face floats between a pensive blinking gaze, a crestfallen grimace, and a giddy, childish grin. She clomps over a grate she’d artfully avoided walking with Hae Sung earlier, but she doesn’t notice. I see her traverse the entirety of human experience in the one, single-take trek. This is the walking equivalent of Timothée Chalamet’s transcendent fire-gazing at the end of Call Me By Your Name (an excellent companion piece to this film, I might add).
And then she arrives home. Arthur sits smoking on the stoop, waiting for her. He stands up, heads down the steps to receive her, and she buckles. That’s the word: buckles. The closed captions capture it perfectly as “(SOBBING)”. Undeterred, Arthur wraps his arms around her, kisses her head, and steadily guides her up their stairs and into the building. Like us and (I suspect) Nora, he now knows their love was mutual.
I’ve heard some viewers express second-hand heartache for the husband here. They view this scene as knives to Arthur’s heart, as one more collateral tragedy in this triangle, but I can’t disagree more. I see this scene as one of further acceptance. This is Arthur’s turn to accept the endurance of the love between Nora and Hae Sung. The man understands every beat of her unraveling related to a man he’ll never be and a culture and place he’ll never evoke, and he embraces her with unqualified affection and love nonetheless. This is why Nora and Hae Sung will never be together; this connection with Arthur is real, concrete, powerful love. They are there for one another. Their love is not so insecure to lack room for a few lingering feels. This freshly moves me on every watch.
The film ultimately ends with a shot of Hae Sung in the back of his Uber, regarding the city with newfound closure as he heads out toward the airport, but I can’t help but see that scene in conversation with two others. This again depicts Hae Sung and Na Young going their separate ways, just as they did in Seoul 24 years earlier. That day, Hae Sung pulled off to the left, glum over his ineloquence, while Na Young began climbing the steep staircase up to her home.
In the end, the two still part because they have to. But this time, Na Young is Nora, and she doesn’t have to climb the steps alone. She has no more future with her first love than she did in Korea, but this time, she has Arthur at her side, guiding her forward.
I can’t imagine a more fitting end for any party.
*****
To call Past Lives my favorite movie diminishes how deeply I have internalized it. I feel like a baseball scout who stumbles across the next Shohei Ohtani: I’ve been watching movies my entire life, hoping to find one that justifies all the others. Past Lives is that movie for me.
Ultimately, writing about Past Lives feels futile. The film is visual and aural, and Song shot this thing beautifully old school on actual film. I lack the vocabulary to convey the gorgeous lighting or the intense humanity visible on the faces of Lee, Yoo, and Magaro. I can’t put words to why I hum its languorous, non-melodic score or even effectively describe Teo Yoo’s crinkling smile or Greta Lee’s ability to unify Nora’s broad range of emotion. This piece belongs in a more suitable form. I should have made a video essay. I wish I could show you.
Had I done so, my reach surely would be more prominent. Far fewer people receive this newsletter than subscribe to my YouTube channel, after all. But this piece, filled with outright synopsis and film criticism, remains about me. Yes, I admire the craft behind Past Lives, but the vibrations that quiver within my heart won me over. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the immigrant story it tells—and that’s almost certainly the heart of what Song’s script speaks to!—but that’s not my lane.
I feel connected to this movie. Its message echoes in what I’ve written since watching it. My heart is less of a mystery to me than before it screened. Nora has Arthur to embrace her in the wake of what will be an eternal twinge of heartache, but I have this movie. I have Past Lives to embrace me and help me feel understood and seen. Every word of this sprawling piece is sincere, yet my every written line reads like hyperbole.
Writing about Past Lives is like writing about being in love.
*****
Yesterday, I played the reverse card for our second-to-last Question of the Day in class. As I have every quarter since returning to school, I let my students ask me questions. I tell them I’ll answer anything they ask, assuming all will be within reason.
Usually, the questions are pretty tame. Every class asks about my favorite movie; a few inquiries about my hats or colorful attire inevitably arise. Yesterday, though, I got this one:
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to but have you ever fallen in love?”
I, of course, answered.
“Yes,” I said. “I have. It hasn’t ever gone where I hoped it would, but that’s okay. It’s always a special thing.”
As I spoke, I pictured Hae Sung and Nora.
Thanks to everyone who even peeked at my Oscars rundown. I know you don’t have to, but I appreciate that you have.
I want to type more, but I have fallen asleep standing here multiple times. Sorry.
The offer still stands: if you’d like to watch Past Lives free on me, shoot me a text. I will send the first batch a small Amazon gift card right back.
I think this was much more than a synopsis of a movie. This was great. The way you weaved in your own thoughts and the questions your students asked you etc., it’s wonderful.
I think I saw his film advertised a while back, but I’ve never seen it. But after this piece, I’m looking forward to watching it.
Thank you, Michael. There’s no greater outcome I could want from this than for people to watch and reflect on this movie.