Where to Watch:
8.8/10
FilmFascination Rating
What is love exactly? Is it locking eyes with someone for a long time? Is it letting her sleep on your shoulder? Is it caring for a person more than anything? Or is it destiny that brings two lovers together?
“Past lives” is a movie about two friends, Na Young and Hae Sung, who really liked each other in their childhood. “I will probably marry him.”, tells Na Young to her mother. However, Na Young immigrates to Toronto with her family, a fact Hae Sung isn’t even told personally despite being so close. He overhears when Na Young is telling about it to her classmates. Leaving a friend isn’t easy. But it takes place as fast as the movie shows us. They grow to have different lives perhaps leaving their innocent love incomplete.
Some years later they reconnect through skype but circumstances or rather choices they make somehow keep them apart even though they want to be close to each other. Many years later, without being much in contact with each other they finally reconnect when Hae Sung decides to visit her in New York. Things have changed now. Nora is married and Hae Sung recently broke up with his girlfriend.
The movie could have easily gone to be that cliched movies we have all seen where the well settled girl finds out that her soulmate isn’t actually her husband. But ‘Past Lives’ is just nowhere near that. In many senses, the movie stays really grounded. It isn’t your typical Hollywood love story where perhaps no matter what happens, the woman is going to end up with the man. It is delicate, modest, complex and emotionally well balanced.
As anyone who first reads the title of the movie would assume that the movie is about having some kind of connection with people in your past life. But perhaps it isn’t to be interpreted in that sense but more of the past lives we have lived in this life. Each one of us has different phases in our life with varied people who had influenced us. The innocent childhood, confused teenage years and the passionate years of becoming something.
Parts of us are carried on with our current life and most of it is lost as we go through life. The title itself needs a perspective change, so does the movie, for us to really understand it. The movie changes the perspective of the viewers multiple times in the movie. Perhaps spoiled by typical romantic movies, our first instinct has always turned out to get the lovers together. But many times, we forget that love is complex and so is life.
The beauty of past lives is how it lets every character express itself. We do not overlook anything. The reality is kept in front of us so transparently that we are never allowed to jump to any conclusions, because it just isn’t that easy. The questions of ‘what ifs’ are raised by the movie itself. It lets you ponder upon what could have happened if it would have gone the other way around. The roads not taken and the lives not led by choices we take and the opportunities we lost.
Perhaps it is the scenes where nothing is spoken that are much more emotional than the ones with the dialogues. The quiet glances, restrained emotions under that polite smile and the body language of the actors are just all so well played. Past Lives has scenes where viewers are allowed to think about what is going on. And that perhaps was genius. It makes you analyze and think much more deeply about the situation.
“Past Lives” is masterfully organised. Especially the way it starts with the first scene where we open in a New York bar, where an unseen patron asks: “Who do you think they are to each other?” while the camera gazes in a long shot at a trio of customers- Hae Sung, Nora and Jewish American Arthur- and the faceless voice has no idea how they might be related, whether as siblings, lovers, tourists or colleagues. 12 years later, when we are brought back to this opening scene, we have a completely different perspective. And that was really beautiful to see how the movie evolve so much. Even the skype scenes where Nora and Hae Sung try to reconnect with each other are simple but are made unusually exciting. And this is pretty difficult to achieve when the two of them are in different frames.
The authenticity and the realness of life that it shows is where the film’s beauty lies. It is very confident in what it wants to show, and that is something I really liked about it. May it be the characters or the way the story is spanned over more than a decade. The dialogues between different character are delicate and passionate, not because they are dramatic but because they reveal real vulnerable emotions.
When Nora and Hae Sung meet, the camera creates a sense of their connection, a feeling that nothing else around them matters. Even Greta Lee (Nora) and Teo Yoo (Hae Sung) show so much about their relationship by the varied connections they portray over the time without so much as uttering a word. The awkwardness and the excitement of meeting a person you were so close to at some point of your life is perfectly portrayed by the both of them.
In the end, it was weirdly overwhelming. It was not sad or empty nor was it melodramatic. It was so gentle and throughout the film I never knew I got so connected to it until the end. It was a rush of emotions. Even while writing the review I had to calm myself down in order to be clear on what to write because thinking about the film itself brings so many feelings.
Past Lives is going to be perceived in different ways depending upon the details you pick upon. There is going to be something to relate with for each viewer differently because each one of us has a different past. It is a movie to be discussed not because it has a plot twist or some unsaid mystery, but because how inherently complex it is in emotionally handling everything. Imagine “Past Lives” being your first film! Yes, this is Celine Song’s first film. There’s tremendous talent and I just can’t wait to see what she brings next.
Join the FilmFascination Club!
All the updates right in your Inbox! (We will never spam you with junk mails)
You will get a message on the top of the form once your subscription is successful.