I felt captured by the way Celine Song explores the foreigner dilemma and complexities in her delicate semi-autobiographical Past Lives (2023). The movie explores the layered relationship between Na Young and Hae Sung through two decades after her immigration. The opening scene invites the viewer into considering the relationship between Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur as they sit in a bar, a scene inspired by Song’s experience of sitting in a bar with a childhood Korean friend and translating the conversation to her husband – both the words and also the culture.
Na Young becomes Nora after immigrating. On her plane ride, she introduces herself repeatedly to her sister, the new language and the new name echoing as they prepare to land. Before leaving Korea, Na Young’s mother reassures Hae Sung’s mother that one loses things when one leaves, but one also gains. Nora, we learn, loses her name, her childhood friend, and parts of herself in her journey. Na Young and Hae Sung’s story told through Song’s eyes invites us into a quiet undoing and a powerful opening.
In the movie, we follow Na Young and Hae Sun through three (periods, 12 years apart?) intervals of 12 years – the two twelve-year olds finding in each other their first love; the two twenty-four year olds reconnecting virtually during their transition into adulthood, and the two thirty-six year olds finally meeting in person for the first time in 24 years, both in a foreign land, to find themselves connected and yet separated by a sea of cultural differences, impossibilities and the deep impact of dislocation evoked by immigration.
Nora/Na Young’s journey is held by the Korean word in-yun. Nora explains: “It means providence or fate. But it’s specifically about relationships between people. I think it comes from Buddhism and reincarnation. It’s an in-yun if two strangers even walk by each other on the street and their clothes accidentally brush. It means there must be something between them in their past lives.” The movie gains its title from the ways two people are connected beyond this life, and we are immediately transported into Nora/Na Young’s deep experience of a life that is past, with relationships that endure and are transformed by distance and cultural difference. We learn that Na Young does not exist in New York; this is where Nora plays and explores her life with her husband Arthur and her ambitious dreams. She tells Hae Sung she left Na Young behind with him. We wonder about that though, as we also hear her telling Arthur that Hae Sung “ is so Korean, I feel so not Korean with him, but also more Korean.” Through Hae Sung’s loving gaze, Nora recovers Na Young, her Korean self, ambitious, a cry baby, the young girl full of dreams who left Seoul to land in Toronto, standing-still alone during recess at her new school. Nora tells us she used to be a cry baby, and stopped crying after she immigrated because she realized nobody cared (Hae Sung used to care).
When they reconnect at 24, Nora eventually breaks off the long distance relationship, telling Hae Sung that she immigrated twice to be in New York and that talking to him makes her think about buying plane tickets to Seoul. She wants to move on, to leave her Korean life behind. The life that calls her back, the in-yun that brings them back together, her not- korean and more-korean selves conversing through her finding Hae Sung’s Na Young still so alive.
Through meeting her old friend, Nora/Na Young is transformed or at least gets back in touch with the girl she left behind but was still so alive inside of her. Isn’t that the ongoing dilemma of any foreigner? How to bring shattered pieces into one self that can engage with life, the many lives not-lived, left behind?
In watching Song’s description of her casting the actors, I understood why her plot is so deeply and intimately powerful. Song tells us that she casted the child actors by a chemistry test – the boy actor needed to ask the girl actor not to leave. During the test, the girl started to cry. Song knew she had the right dyad when the girl asked her: but do I really need to leave? This is one of the questions that Song deeply explores in her movie. Do I really need to leave? What do I leave behind? How do I find myself back after I leave? How to come back in touch?
Chemistry among the actors was a priority for Song as she directed them into exploring the delicate aspects of loss, connection, surprise, change, and the deep impact of immigration. She tells us how she held the actors Teo Yoo (Hae Sung) and John Magaro (Arthur) from meeting each other until they filmed the scene where they meet each other for the first time in the movie. Both of them filmed with Greta Lee (Nora/Na Young) before, and learned about each other from and through her. In her directing style, Song conducts the actors into the layered experience of being completely undone by the intense levels of connection they hold with each other, and different parts of themselves that manifest in those relationships. The subtle ways in which she orchestrates their emotional reactions leads us into the intricate world of the immigrant experience. The dialogues are so powerful:
Arthur to Nora: “You dream in a language I can’t understand. It is like there’s this whole place inside you I can’t go.”
Hae Sung to Nora: “I liked you for who you are; and who you are is a person who leaves. But for him (Arthur), you’re the person who stays.”
Hae Sung to Nora: “If you have never left Seoul, would I still have looked for you? Would we have dated? Broken up? Gotten married? Would we have had kids together?”
Song invites us into the impossibilities: what could have been if Na Young had never left; who she would have become; what could have happened with their relationship; how Korean she would still be. “Past Lives” reminds us that one’s sense of self only exists intertwined with one’s surroundings and context. The film also highlights the rich inner life of foreigners that, at times, cannot be shared with natives. Both Arthur (American) and Hae Sung (Korean) only have access to parts of Nora/Na Young (Korean/American-Korean), who experience those sides of herself through her shattered contact with them, much like Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro through Celine Song’s gentle guidance and outstanding direction. The opening scene involves us, the audience, in questioning who they are for each other as we find through Greta Lee’s gaze the opening into the movie and the dilemmas explored by the plot.
Song holds us by the hands while we traverse Nora’s attempt to leave behind parts of herself that she can’t reconcile with the life she wants to have, the life she actually has. Na Young is still so alive in Hae Sung’s imagination. For Nora, Na Young shows up at night, when she dreams in Korean while she shares a bed with Arthur. In Nora’s dream-land, Na Young calls her into the sea of her more-korean existence as she navigates her not-korean American life and comes to terms with her relationship with her Korean sweetheart. Hae Sung also leaves transformed as he asks her “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?” He then concludes: “I will see you then”. He leaves and we are left with the shattered peace that they will eventually have to contend with, the ways in which one’s peace is always shattered in face of immigration. With that, she makes us cry with Nora/Na Young as she walks back home with Arthur. And turns her story into a masterpiece.
References
Song, C. (2023). Past Lives [Motion Picture]. United States: A24.
BAFTA. (Sep 19, 2023). How director Celine Song hopes you’ll feel about Past Lives . YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAy9WVR5BUg
