Film Review; Past Lives

The two Koreans are Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo). Childhood friends, they are separated when Nora’s family departs from Korea to Canada. Through Facebook, Nora and Hae Sung connect as young adults. The distance between the two countries creates romantic tension and deepening insight into the distances created through migration.

Director Celine Song offers a masterclass in visual communication. As the childhood friends prepare to depart in Korea, the street forks. Hae Sung trudges sadly to the left, while up the stairs to the right springs Nora, climbing toward her future. This childhood farewell scene is referenced by an adult moment of farewell.

As the movie ends, Nora strides away from Hae Sung, her boots echoing off a New York pavement, resolute in the choices she has made. The interplay between the street scenes shows how images, rather than dialogue, can drive a plot.

Another outstanding example begins with an opening bar scene. Curiosity is created through a master shot on an animated Nora and Hae Sung, and a watching Arthur (John Magaro). But we do not hear their voices. Instead, we hear two voices from another part of the bar, where people are playing a guessing game.

As the movie ends, the bar scene is repeated. This time we hear the voices of Hae Sung and Nora, as they reflect on what might have happened if their lives had not forked. The master shot occurs from another location and this time, in the background is a couple, guessing about what is now being revealed to us. This attention to visual detail announces Celine Song as a director of major talent.

Celine Song is a South Korean-Canadian director, playwright and screenwriter. This suggests that Past Lives is about more than a possible love triangle distorted by distance. Past Lives is equally about the ways in which departures create hybridity. Nora confides to her husband, Arthur, “I realise I’m not Korean when I’m with Hae Sung. Yet I’m more Korean with him.”

Past Lives offers a profound meditation on hybridity and how it shifts over time. The places we live and the relationships we inhabit shape identity, for Nora, Hae Sung and all who migrate to new places.

To meet the Touchstone deadline, I needed to watch Past Lives in Durham, England and walked past Durham Cathedral on the way from the cinema. Inside the Cathedral are multiple past lives, notably the tomb of the Venerable Bede and shrine to Saint Cuthbert. Places like cathedrals and tombs point to how important past lives are to Christianity.

When I return to Aotearoa, I will glimpse respect for past lives, shared not through English cathedrals but through te reo, whakapapa and ancestors. Such is the gift of past lives, allowing us to embrace departures and distance by looking backwards. “Ka mua, ka muri.”

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is the author of "First Expressions" (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.