‘Past Lives’ uses silence to speak loudly
Spoilers Ahead….
Photo Credit: A24
Past Lives seemed unlikely to win Best Picture at the Oscars but held its own against the commercial blockbusters and deserved the nomination. It came from A24 studios, the one that brought us Everything, Everywhere All At Once and LadyBird, among others. I hadn’t heard a lot of buzz around this film, though Barbenheimer was all anyone could talk about all summer. This quiet film released in January 2023 at the Sundance Film Festival. The film went directly to streaming services and was available on several platforms. I, myself, saw this movie for the first time on a microscreen on a flight.
Much like the release and distribution, the movie itself is quiet and understated. In many ways, the entire movie feels like a memory, shifting between scenes the way the mind may; wandering. The dialog is mostly minimal, alternating between Korean, English, and silence. The latter takes up most of the airspace. We see the quiet moments as Na Young says that she is leaving Korea and Hae Sung and they walk their separate ways, Na Young walking up the stairs and Hae Sung continuing down the straight path. How beautiful and symbolic is this as we see young Nora (Na Young) walking up the stairs as she and her family head west.
Their paths cross again when Nora discovers on Facebook that he is looking for her. They meet over long-distance video calls. Between the distance and unable to visit each other, Nora breaks things off as she wants to focus on her writing and her life in New York. We see their paths diverge once more.
At the writer’s retreat, Nora meets Arthur and they spent nights among the stars and the crickets, talking about past lives, the Korean concept, in-yun and they fall in love. Twelve more years pass, and Nora and Arthur are now married. Hae Sung, now single, visits New York City to see Nora in person. They meet for the first time in 24 years, not sure about how to interact. Nora’s Korean is shaky and accented, Hae Sung not fully confident with English.
In the weekend they spend together, Arthur wonders if he was a roadblock to the fairytale ending between the two. He thinks himself to be just the white American standing in the way of two people who were meant to be together. Nora, dismisses this notion. She looks him in the eye and says that she is in this life, (not the past life). A powerful moment that seems so matter of fact, because it is.
As a viewer, I felt torn, perhaps the same way that Nora and Hae Sung are. Who am I rooting for? What outcome am I hoping for? How do I want this to end? The final scene, with Nora and Hae Sung waiting for the Uber, it is the moments between the words, the things left unsaid, that felt so real and so relatable. Ultimately, he leaves, Nora returning back to the stoop, maintaining stoic until she ultimately collapses in tears, to be comforted by Arthur. This moment is beautiful and so important. Nora is crying for the thousands of layers of past lives, for the young girl who left Korea at the age of twelve to never return.
This is one of those movies, a cinematic contrast to Everything, Everywhere and yet, still captures the same essence of the immigrant story; the human story. There are entire parts of ourselves that are lost over thousands of past lives or alternate lives. It may seem enough to simply accept the current life and path we have, we actually do have choices in this one life we do have.