‘Past Lives’
Director: Celine Song
Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Moon Seung-ah
Year: 2023
Premiere: November 1, 2023
Punctuation: ★★★★★
When we choose to choose one path in life, we also choose not to choose a different path, and as we get older, the number of people we can and cannot be and the number of people we are with increases. We could have been there but we weren’t there AND the accumulation of decisions made by us and on our behalf, the reproaches each produces, and the degree of acceptance and submission that all these entail. These are the main plot of the extraordinary film, the first film he directed. Celine Song but given the artistic confidence he displays, this may well be the tenth.
No one who sees this will be surprised to learn that Song wrote this based on his own biography. It exudes too much originality to be a purely fictional story. This is a film whose premise could have been the basis for a wild Hollywood melodrama, but instead opts for restraint. It tells about a man who had a platonic love affair with a Korean woman in Seoul during his childhood. and when they meet again in New York more than twenty years later, we talk about the complex emotions the situation aroused in them and the kindness and understanding her husband, with whom she lived in Manhattan, showed in the face of an incredibly disturbing situation. Meanwhile, it also subtly reflects the alienation experienced by people who emigrate when they are old enough to create unforgettable memories in their homeland, but are young enough to be transformed by a new environment.
Song had hitherto only told stories in the field of dramaturgy, and yet here demonstrates absolute control of visual languagewhich allows its characters to remain incapable of expressing their emotions and to allow them to emerge from silence and emptiness; What we cannot see or hear is as important as the other; What matters is between the lines, between the two languages. ‘Past Lives’ as a result It’s a film that’s both sober and full of enthusiasm.It is modest yet epic, given the transformations we are experiencing and the constant dialogue of the past with the present, and has a serenity that somehow transforms pain into something dazzling.