Fascinating and incredibly impressive. An excellent start. Delicious. Miraculous. The first big movie of 2023. These are just some of the accolades that ‘Past Lives’ has received from international critics, having made its world premiere at the Sundance Festival last January, and neither its good reputation nor the expectations arising from it have begun to wane since then. Growing.
Those who think about themselves at this time experts Oscar They ensure their next presence among the statuette candidates in the main categories. Commenting on this reception, the director says: “Any advertising that encourages more viewers to go to the cinema makes me extremely happy.” Celine Song. “And I guess “It makes me feel less alone and more connected to the world.”
The story ‘Past Lives’ tells is largely autobiographical. He plays a writer born in Korea and living in New York, communicating years after leaving Seoul. Skype The person with whom he had a platonic love in his childhood. Several years later, the young man travels to Manhattan to visit her, and the reunion provokes her complicated feelings about the decisions she has made throughout her life, including marrying her kind and understanding husband.
The resulting film can be described as follows: A compressed rereading of Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogyor as a version of ‘Brief Encounter’ (1945), which paradoxically takes place over twenty-five years. In other words, it doesn’t resemble the kind of cinematic debut one would expect from someone like Song, who has so far devoted himself solely to narration from the field of dramaturgy. “It seemed to me that this story had to be told through film, and that the theater stage was too small for that,” the director explains. “Characters travel for 24 years and on two continents, it seemed important to me to be able to accurately reflect The effect of the passage of time on them and the contrasts between Seoul and New York.”
The song’s original title was Ha Young; He changed his name after moving to Ontario (Canada) with his family when he was 12 years old. About ten years later, he moved to Manhattan to study writing. There, much later, he starred in the episode that inspired ‘Past Lives’ and which actually appears to have been recreated in his first scene. “I was sitting at a bar in the East Village between my husband and the guy who was my childhood best friend and came to see me from Korea. I was responsible for translating what they were both saying, making the conversation possible, and suddenly I felt incredibly strong, like a superhero. At that moment, it was as if two periods, two different places were intertwined thanks to me.”
What happens in ‘Past Lives’ in this prologue is not a simple melodrama about love and heartbreak, but speaks of something much more transcendent. “I’m interested in reflecting how Time changes people completely But there is also something within us that does not change over the years. The girl I once was still lives inside me”.
In fact, the subject of the movie is based on a concept that Koreans know. “Inyeon”Accordingly, every interaction we have with other people, whether a chance and brief encounter with a stranger or a long and intimate relationship, is predetermined by our previous experiences and existences. “Maybe in 20 years you and I will meet again and maybe talk about what my twentieth film will be, and then we will remember this precise moment and We will travel through space and time to reconnect with the people we are now. “This seems magical to me.”
If its entry is confirmed during the upcoming film awards season, ‘Past Lives’ is likely to be repeatedly compared to the film that won the last Best Picture Oscar. ‘Everything is everywhere at the same time’ (2022), although at first glance they might not be two different fictions – one a subtle romantic drama, the other a martial arts spectacle set in the multiverse; After all, behind two lies fashion producer A24, and both look at the experiences of Asian women living between two cultures and two identities in the United States to reflect on the paths we take in life and the paths we choose not to take.
“If I hadn’t moved from Seoul to Canada or from Canada to New York, if I hadn’t married my husband or the risk of writing a movie “Instead of a play,” Song admits, admitting that he’s exactly where he wants to be. “I fell in love with cinema, and I want to keep doing it forever, no matter what.”