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'Past Lives' is a beautiful story of lost love and childhood crushes. The two final scenes are touching because of the unfulfilled love between two people.The merit of the film Past Lives, written and directed by Korean Canadian Celine Song, is not its grandiose scale or beautiful scenery, but in its astutely controlled plot and action.The movie, now nominated for 2024 Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, portrays two people whose lives intertwine between the past and the present by using the theme of inyeon.
Inyeon is popularly understood to mean something like fate or destiny, referring to the ties between people over the course of their lives. As Korean studies professor Sarah Son explains, inyeon “in Korean Buddhism, in ‘direct cause’ and yeon to ‘indirect cause,’ or the conditions that make an outcome possible.”
As a scholar who has examined digital technologies and transnational Korean culture and Korean film, and a person who immigrated twice with two daughters as Song’s family did (the US first and later to Canada), I was immersed in the movie.
I found myself reflecting on how the film stands in comparison to other films by Korean or Korean American directors depicting Korean immigrants to the Americas – and sympathising with the personal decisions portrayed in the film.Korean immigrant stories
A variety of previous movies, either directed by Korean directors or Korean American directors, such as The Deep Blue Night (1985), Never Forever (2007), and Minari (2020), touched on Korean immigrants who came to the U.S.
These movies represented transnational struggles of Koreans who immigrated to the U.S. to fulfill American dreams.Unlike these films, Past Lives shows a middle-class family in South Korea who decides to pursue a different life in Canada.
The protagonist, Na Young/Nora (acted by Greta Lee), has a father who is a filmmaker, while her mother is an artist. This movie shows a modern-day diaspora family story: the family leaves South Korea not for survival, but for the achievement of their ambitions.
The film depicts lesser-seen stories of Koreans in the late 20th and early 21st centuries who have pursued immigration to be successful as professionals in various fields, including in cultural areas.
Na Young, who takes the western name Nora, later moves to the U.S. to major in literature, as she wants to be a writer.Twelve years later, she reconnects with her childhood friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) on Facebook, symbolising the kind of modern-day communication possible for people living diaspora lives.
The advent of social media, including the now-defunct South Korean platform Cyworld, Facebook and Instagram, have facilitated inter-continental communications, and therefore, the formation of inter-continental communities.
Past Lives is a beautiful story of lost love and childhood crushes. The two final scenes are touching because of the unfulfilled love between two people.When people’s destiny together (their inyeon) ends, one party sends another party away with sorrow and agony, while the leaving party moves to another stage of his or her life.Nora’s crying to her husband Arthur after saying goodbye to Hae Sung, and Hae Sung’s departure to the airport via Uber, dexterously portrays the end of Na Young and Hae Sung’s connection.
This is a must-see, heart-wrenching movie that leaves viewers with a tranquil mind about the sadness of endings — because these exist alongside the beautiful possibility of multiple loves.