One film that has piqued my interest this year is Celine Song’s debut feature Past Lives, a story set in Seoul, South Korea and New York City, a tale of goodbyes, regrets, love, and the self that spans 24 years. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) organized a screening of Past Lives in mid-November and invited the director Celine Song and producer David Hinojosa to talk about their work after the film. I wanted to introduce the movie to you here.
The story unfolds over three farewells, each twelve years apart. Nora and Hae-Sung are childhood sweethearts in Seoul. At age 12, they lose touch when Nora’s family immigrates to Canada, and they experience their first goodbye in the movie. At the age of 24, Nora immigrates again from Canada to New York to pursue her career and literary dreams, and when she accidentally discovers that Hae-Sung is searching for her online, they reconnect and have a nostalgic fling. They spend their days chatting about their lives across intermittent video lines, one in a small apartment in New York, the other in Seoul, until one day Nora realizes that her liaison with Hae-Sung is making her miss the life she once had and getting in the way of what she really wants to pursue. She tells Hae-Sung, “I immigrated twice to be here in New York. I want to accomplish something here. I want to commit to my life here, but I’m sitting around looking up flights to Seoul instead.” They decide to stop contacting each other. This is their second goodbye.
According to Director Song, these first two goodbyes are immature, and so-called “bad” goodbyes. The childhood goodbye is puerile because they don’t know how to separate properly. The 24-year-old goodbye is painful and abrupt, and it hurts both of them. Then another 12 years passes, and both of their stories intersect again, and they are once again faced with the decision of whether or not to say goodbye.
Nora turns 36, and is married to a white man she met in a writing retreat. Hae-Sung comes to New York on a trip and they finally meet in-person for the first time since their separation at 12. Although the journey from Seoul to NYC seems to be from one metropolis to another, the two of them have become completely different people, with the imprint of completely different social systems. The climax of the film comes when Nora and her husband Arthur meet with Hae-Sung, with Nora sitting between the two men and acting as their interpreter, connecting the two languages and cultures. Hae-Sung continues to recall memories of their childhood, implicitly expressing his constant romantic feelings for Nora and Arthur feels insecure because of the presence of his wife’s childhood sweetheart. The two men seem to be in a hidden rivalry, and Nora’s choice will affect all viewers, but to me, Nora never thought of leaving her husband and accepting Hae-Sung’s advances.
At the end of the film, Nora accompanies Hae-Sung to wait for the Uber to the airport to go back to Seoul, and there is a scene of a long eye contact between them in silence, a long stare filled with reluctance to let go as well as mutual blessings for each of them their own lives. Hae-Sung gets into the car and leaves, and Nora turns around and walks back home to her husband, throwing herself on him and crying. This is the third goodbye between them, and the most mature. This time, both of them are ready to say goodbye to each other, soberly and seriously: Hae-Sung says goodbye to the 12-year-old Nora, whom he had never let go of, and Nora says goodbye to her Korean self in her farewell to Hae-Sung.
When Nora and Arthur first met, Nora told Arthur about a concept that is important in East Asian religion, or Buddhism: Yin-Yuan. It is believed that the meeting of two people comes from the accumulated acquaintance in their previous reincarnations, and that only if they have enough connections in previous reincarnations can they get married in this life. Yin-Yuan isn’t limited to marriage, as any relationship is predetermined and fated. Hae-Sung teases him and Nora for not being able to make it to the end with each other, saying that maybe they were just two birds on the same branch in their previous lives, and that their Yin-Yuan is not deep enough.
Although Director Song uses this concept to attribute Nora’s choices, I think what Nora really believes in is not Yin-Yuan, but her own determination about her future. In Seoul, a classmate asks Nora before she goes to Canada, why she wants to leave Korea, and Nora replies that she wants to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but no Koreans have ever done that. At 24, when Hae-Sung asks Nora through the video what her current dream is, Nora says she wants to win the Pulitzer Prize. At age 36, when the two finally met in NYC, Nora’s dream becomes to win a Tony Award. Nora has been an emulous person since she was very young — she won’t allow herself to lose Hae-Sung even once at school, and she never stops searching for a sense of personal worth as she grows.
As a closing note, I have a guess as to the origin of Nora’s name. Back in Korea, Nora’s real name was Na Yang, and her father gave her the name Nora to fit in with life in North America. It reminds me of Nora Helmer, the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s famous work A Doll’s House, a character who represents female freedom and breaking boundaries. Although it may be a coincidence, both Nora have shown the courage to stay true to their lives, both have spent their entire lives running away from what holds them back and to pursue their self-worth. Nora has given me a lot of strength to live for oneself.