A Few Thoughts On Past Lives

 

As we approach tonight's Oscar ceremony, we should congratulate the writer director Celine Song for the success of her film Past Lives. You can stream it if you want to see it via Prime and probably others. I have not been following the Academy Awards and don't know more than a couple of films in contention, but we know it's competitive, and Song may not be the winner. I decided to write out a few thoughts of Past Lives in the context of the many Kdrama series I've watched over the last nine months. If you've watched Korean drama, you'll recognize the themes of fate and romance, the love triangle, and formative childhood experience. This felt rather familiar, and I began to wonder how those who have not watched Korean TV programs would see this film versus those who have.

I became aware of this film via a public radio interview with Celine Song, heard while driving, and decided to stream the rental. With anticipation built up by that interviewer, who described a scene with such great emotion -he was choking up as he described it. Wow. So I waited for the scene where Hae Sung, played by Teo Yoo, first meets Arthur, Nora's American husband, played by John Magaro. But, the scene came, and went and I could not ascertain what it was in Arthur's expression that caused the interviewer to experience such emotion. I paused it, rewound, played again, paused on Arthur's look, but for me, nothing. 

To heighten the tension, we are told, the actors playing the male leads had not ever met before acting that scene. I think Teo Yoo's Hae showed more discomfort, more visibly anxious, than Magaro's Arthur. Surely it would be an awkward moment and thankfully it wasn't charged with testosterone. Haven't we all met a former love of a partner at some point in our lives? Inevitably it leaves a question about what it is they still hold onto. I think a more difficult scene was where Nora and Arthur lay in bed and he expresses that question, why she married him, and whether she would rather be with her old school friend, Hae. She answers to the effect of "This is where I ended up." Not exactly a love poem to her husband, but on some level, entirely understandable to think of it this way. 

The film is largely quiet, with times of little dialogue, and so there is room to breathe. But that room also seems to come from the distance between Nora in her new world, and the old world represented by Hae (He is very Korean, she says). She is free of that old world and as much as it wants to pull her back, there isn't the strength to do it. At first I was disappointed in the lack of overt emotion -after all, this is something Kdrama does so well, but now that I think about it, the director may have been working to push away from the emotive strain so common to Korean TV.

Hae, the former boyfriend, is a rather melancholic figure I couldn't help but compare him to stoic male lead counterparts in Kdrama. Is he this way because he cannot bring the past he desires into the present or is it because there is a blues about the old Korea he represents? Probably both. Nora seems empowered by her escape, even if it's at the expense of feeling detached from her Korean identity. In a globalized society, especially among the people in the arts, the rewards of living and working outside of one's cultural heritage are a mixed blessing. 

Celine Song addresses this in her movie, but also in the interview when she states this film is the first non-white, fully Korean script she has written/directed. Always wondering what themes and moments in Kdrama are truly representative of Korean culture, I have inched a little closer to an answer with Song's words.