For those we’ve left behind and for those who have words left unspoken, this movie speaks to these missed moments in our past. Connecting us to the what-if of the fork in the road. Past Lives by Celine Song is a story of two past lovers who haven’t been in each other’s presence for 24 years in Korea and are finally reunited in NYC. The actor Greta Lee plays Nora who immigrated with her parents to Canada, then by herself to America to become a playwright, and now has a Jewish Husband Arthur, played by John Magaro, who’s a novelist.
For our past lover, the actor Teo Yoo plays Hae Sung. A dutiful son and a hard-working individual who is to become an engineer. As a particular relationship ends for him, he visits NYC for what he calls vacation, but primarily to meet up with Nora for either closure or maybe something more.
While meeting in NYC, some semblance of closure is found, by talking through the past with Nora and Hae Sung and meeting with Nora’s husband Arthur on an awkward but important triple date between the three characters.
Past Lives has been nominated for Golden Globes and was named the best picture of 2023 by the National Society of Film Critics. This movie has taken a huge leap ahead of romance movies everywhere, solidifying a much higher bar in its non-flashy, quiet, and human portrayal of love and yearning for more to be said.
What heightened the work of this film was the intelligent and insightful director Celine Song leading the effort and creating a set that helped to create honesty on camera.
NOTE: There are spoilers of the movie 'Past Lives' involved in this article, I highly recommend watching the movie and then coming back here. Otherwise, proceed at your own risk.
To Play on The Set of Past Lives
While on set many things are shot out of order, and there are many takes to get the shot desired. For Celine Song to create a fantastic representation of her characters, specifically, Nora, she started off the shooting in Korean.
Greta Lee appeared on NPR’s podcast Fresh Air and describes how the director Celine Song spent the first half of the shooting speaking to Teo Yoo’s character over Skype in Korean. This gave Lee practice toward where Celine Song wanted her to sit as the character Nora in her Korean dialect. Though Lee is proficient in Korean, as an American with immigrated parents from Korea, she understood there would still be some dialectic differences between herself and her character. “To be honest, I don’t think that I was entirely confident that I had the capacity to do that. Acting is already hard, and to do it in a different language I was really challenged by the idea of whether or not I would be able to pull it off and do it in service of everything we wanted to accomplish with this movie. It required such a tremendous amount of restraint and stillness and silence and supreme specificity.” (Greta Lee NPR’s Fresh Air).
Because the character of Nora immigrates at a young age from Seoul and eventually to America she becomes proficient in English. Which will inherently create a minutely different dialect than Greta Lee’s. The genius of Celine Song was then to transfer back into English later in the filming process. This allowed Greta Lee the time to sit in Korean and its dialect, creating an intimacy once again with the language while still keeping some of her genuine distance of it. Our actor and director collaboration finds the perfect spot for Nora to sit in as these scenes continue in English. Now these weighted moments of Nora speaking to Hae Sung in Korean, when he visits NYC, create a contrast between the one who moved away to the one who stayed. Both living in different realms and meeting only for a moment.
The first few scenes shot in English were a few sequences in the apartment between actor John Magaro as Arthur and Greta Lee as Nora. The most poignant scene features the two actors in bed on their way to sleep when Arthur, a writer by trade, realizes how ironically fantastic the story is of Nora and Hae Sung’s reunion. Arthur makes a point that in this particular story, he would be the white Jewish villain holding her back from their romantic companionship that any reader would want to see come to fruition. Nora affirms him but to make his point clear, he makes a grand remark. “You make my world so much bigger and I'm wondering if I do the same for you?” This being one of the first scenes shot in English and with the actor John Magaro, there’s deep honesty in his words, “You dream in a language I can't understand. It's like there's this whole place inside you I can't go.” which in fact, he couldn’t. These are our first few scenes with this couple, and thus a tangible distance has already been set by our director simply by measuring the order in which these scenes are meant to be shot.
Celine Song’s directing fades into the shadows and is only realized through the research of this outstanding movie. On set, she leads like a master tactician making every moment count, and like a true playwright for on-stage performances, she allows these moments between our actors to play out, to breathe, granting space for our actors to discover the specificity of these people.
The Creation of Distance, Silence, Space, Breath
Both Greta Lee and Teo Yoo played into the quiet allowance of letting space speak, masterfully. There were so many moments between the two of them that created wonderful naturalism. Moments like on Skype together their characters would go back and forth about different subjects. Digs and sarcastic threats would color our characters and their humor, further creating a painful realization and justification of how distant they are boxed up on a screen. Moving forward, calls become less frequent, filled with more beats of silence, without their natural fluidity. Connections are lost, and we’re left wondering what the other is thinking not being able to be there with them.
The honesty lies in what isn’t said. Rarely is someone able to carry a properly fluid conversation, and when you can, which we see with our characters, you want so much more. You’ll await the call, you’ll skip class, you’ll arrive late to your meetings, and check your phone, hoping the conversation to come will be as intellectually stimulating as the last. So the boundary of the Skype call disconnecting, or playing Skype phone call tag, creates tension and informs how Nora reacts. Sitting in thought, wondering if she should be spending this much energy trying to connect with someone so far away. Someone who might not ever come to NYC to even see her. Finally, Nora breaks it off, sensing that she can’t show up on a screen any longer, missing real intimate human connection.
12 years pass and our characters have both moved on. One, maybe more than the other. It’s the first meeting that brings out both of these characters’ feelings for each other. Shot at Madison Square Garden, our character Hae Sung waits to meet Nora for the first time in person after 24 years. Our cinematographer (Shabier Kirchner) shoots him from across the pond, looking small and like a child in an older body. We're held on him for awhile. You watch him shift his weight from one foot to another, he tries to force himself to be still, but not after checking his hair in the reflection of the water. Finally a shout “Hae Sung!” We cut to a shot of Nora, also distant now, “The way that I wrote this in the script is that, it’s as though he is seeing a ghost. And she’s also seeing a ghost.” (Celine Song). Nora approaches, and a hug initiated by her breaks this ghostlike tension opening each other up to take each other in, realizing that they are both, in fact, real. Through the frame of the camera, we swing back and forth between them as they speak, leaving us wanting more of the other, but happy to have the person we’re on.
Finally meeting again after 24 years, these characters are now faced with thoughts of the past, what could have been, and now, alongside the audience, are wondering what will happen, and what if.
The Acceptance of A Choice
When it comes to Past Lives, we're answering the question of how to move on. Moving forward after wanting so much for something, that might have originated in the past before a fork in the road, to have happened. Now, as we're stuck living in that past how do we move forward? In our movie, there’s the concept of inyeon, which stems from Buddhist philosophy, in which 8,000 layers of past lives have been lived to get to a romantic partnership with someone. In the very beginning, it could be a brush on the shoulder or a shared glance across a body of water. Eventually, many lives will pass until one can finally meet that person and maybe an intimacy will be shared.
So there's a sense that these characters find some affirming understanding that it's not meant to be. It's not their lives. Hae Sung wishes to be an engineer and wishes to have a great social standing, but he wants to live in Korea. He's Korean with Korean ideals and still lives in Korea with his parents. Nora, whose name was Na Young when she lived in Korea, has moved on and changed her name to Nora, a name that solidifies her place in America and her desire to develop there.
She wishes to be a Korean American and she strives to be a Tony Award-winning playwright or potentially a Pulitzer-winning writer. Both of these characters have ambitions but have ambitions in different locations and apart from each other. The question that something could happen is clear, leaving Arthur uncomfortable, but Nora chooses her husband, whom she loves very much. I believe Hae Sung chose to leave. In the scene waiting for Hae Sung’s Uber, both of our characters just stand there, looking at each other seemingly hoping that somebody other than them will make the move. When that doesn't happen, I believe an answer could be found that then it wasn't meant to be and their lives in this life were not meant to be together in this way.
Hae Sung then, just before leaving, asks Nora in Korean, “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?” Nora simply responds, “I don't know.” And Hae Sung, dejected, realizes that Nora has chosen. Hae Sung considers for a moment, then leaves, tucking himself away into the Uber and driving off.
And even though this moment is so final, there's still so much that feels left to be said, wants to be stated, asked about, and talked about. Yet, we have to be left with just not knowing. We have to, in some cases, just move on, accepting we may never get an answer. Even though we may not be able to move on, as difficult as it may be, we must.
We have to accept where we've arrived and rather than living in regret, make the most of what we've chosen. but to be clear, it's not a movie about settling. I don't believe that's the case. To be perfectly honest, Nora and Hae Sung are not settling by choosing a life either with or apart from each other. They still strive in their career and they still strive toward their goals and what they want and even their relationships. To me, it's a movie of acceptance, of what to do with the what-ifs in your mind's eye. And a movie about moving forward from the past that was lived, from the person that you were to the person you are now and who you wish to become.
If you have not seen this movie, please do. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Comment below, what questions in this film popped up for you.
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Sources
Photos from a membership through https://shotdeck.com/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0DbY5dBp3R2pVjM1IsNe5H?si=1ae28d12e0fd4ed9
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/movies/past-lives-clip.html?searchResultPosition=1
(Read post write up, but a great read nonetheless) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/movies/past-lives-john-magaro-teo-yoo.html?searchResultPosition=4