Past Lives is one of the movies you can watch on repeat. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a great one. The movie begins with three people sitting on a table and having a conversion. Korean man and woman, and an American man. It would be hard to predict the relationship at first. A Korean man (Hae Sung), who lives with his parents, is an only son, and has a reserved personality, enjoys a drink with a set of friends.
Nora, who is Korean but is migrating to Canada at a very young age, is ambitious and has a clear set of goals. She has goals of getting Nobel price or Pulitzer or Tony awards. She never gets lied back. Arthur is American and lives in New York. The story just revolves around the three.
Hae and Nora are good friends and neighbours. They do have good bonding. The scenes clearly show at the very beginning that Nora is competitive, as when she cries about getting lower marks than Hae. She didn’t say farewell before leaving for Canada.
After 12 years, Hae ends up posting a comment on her father’s post about Nora. Then they patch up again. During that, he attends class, and she is a playwright. There was a beautiful dialogue that was said by her colleague.
The long journey of rotting
I felt that it was too connected to the movie. Then they get along, but the time zones keep them away. She struggles to communicate with him in Korea. She wants to go back to Seoul to meet him. Asks him whether he can come to NYC. As the days pass, Nora feels diverted. They ended up taking a break. There are no signs of proposing with each other or asking for anything, yet you can sense the tension.
Again, a goodbye is missed here. It is left hanging.
She moves to the writing academy. There, she meets Arthur, a fellow writer in the Academy, and gets married. Moves back to New York. Meanwhile, he moves to China and finds love. Fast forward to the next twenty years, when Hae comes to New York for a vacation.
The plot is intense here. They spend time together. They bring out all the what if questions. They did end up having some deep conversation, forgetting her husband, who was beside her. Those what if questions. What if you didn’t leave Seoul? What if I came to NYC? What if we were married? Is this our In Yan? Those questions were really touching. At last, he leaves NYC in a hope that they would be something in the next life, and she bids farewell to him.
What if this is a past life as well, and we are already something else to each other in our next life? What do you think we'll be?
I would I like share some of my observations and interpretations.
The most interesting part of the movie was Arthur. His character was commendable. Oh my god, I do not know how the writer came up with this role. And I can be very sure that this can be seen only in really good movies. I do not know if this kind of man exists in the real world. I really doubt the way he handled it so maturely.
The conversations that they had, right the way he asked her whether he was enough for him, but he feels sometimes the kind of insecurity where he finds all the negatives, and he forgets the good part that she did love him at some point in time. And that was nice when he said, ” I have trouble believing it sometimes.” At the end, when she went to drop him off at the Uber, he was waiting for her at the gate. He knew that she would come back, and the way he hugged her at the end, he never expected that. He handled it very well.
There’s this beautiful line where Arthur says to Nora. It really captures the complexity of their relationship.
You dream in a language that I can't understand. It's like there's this whole place inside of you where I can't go
Even when the three of them were together, Arthur said to Hae that he did the right thing. Maybe both of them wanted closure or some kind of realization. Hae just wanted to say goodbye, and Nora wants to run away from it. In childhood, then, as young adults, they never closed it, but as adults, I am not sure what I should call it. A realization that they had love for each other or a closure that the inner child in them wants. Only the writer knows!
Maybe the ending is all up to open interpretation. You can conclude that she is regretting it, or you can conclude that she has finally come to terms with him and said goodbye, or she regrets this life, or she is hoping for the next one. She said sorry to her husband, realizing that some parts of her wanted him. I don’t know. It was all up to your own interpretation. Hae didn’t cry at the end. Maybe he wanted the closure that he was looking for right from his young age, or he is hoping that they would get long in the next generation, as per In Yan.
The whole thing gets picture-perfect when Nora’s mother says that when one loses something, they gain something else. Just like the tree of life, the Buddhist philosophical concept brings into the picture that you realize that every decision that you take grows into a new branch, right? It’s hard to go back. But we take decisions with all the information that we have at that moment. Maybe that is what this life is all about.
Also, this movie made me think about something kind of out there. What if we never built this society where we’re always chasing success, money, fame, or ambition? What if we were just like animals with basic needs? Would Nora and Hae Sung have stayed together then? Lol.
It’s an interesting question because it makes you wonder how much our choices are shaped by the world we live in. The film really shows how every decision we make comes with a cost, whether it’s big or small. Both Nora and Hae Sung made choices that cost them their love.
Past Lives is a wonderful film. It leaves us contemplating our own life choices, cultural identities, and the nature of love and connection. By presenting complex characters and situations without easy answers, the film encourages introspection. It also challenges us to appreciate the paths we’ve chosen while acknowledging the poignancy of roads not taken
Cheers!
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