Past Lives is an oddball movie. And perhaps that’s why I really liked it.
It doesn’t follow any formulas, it doesn’t get melodramatic, it doesn’t try to resolve everything, but it just feels right after you spent 106 minutes with it.
The premise was simple: Childhood friends got separated by objective situations, re-connected, then separated again, and then reconnected again. It charted their lives from childhood to young adulthood and then adulthood.
It’s a ‘What if’ scenario without the whole ‘Sliding Doors’ drama. The story was presented to you as an appetiser, main course, and then coffee and tea. As you watched the story unfold on the screen, you felt like you were living the lives of these people with them, despite being objectively watching the recount of the pomp and circumstances surrounding them in a quiet and crystal clear manner.
I think apart from an outstanding script that didn’t try to over-dramatise everything, the natural and plain performance of the two and a half leads put the movie into the perspective that it should have, and it clicked and worked perfectly.
Greta Lee as Nora is one of our protagonists. Moved to North America at a young age, she continued to strive to be the best. This crybaby of losing the one and only time at school to her best friend Hae Song, eventually grew into an established writer with the Pulitzer Prize in her sight. During her young adulthood, she rekindled her friendship with Hae Song, which eventually blossomed to some mysterious mutual feelings that died on the vine. She met Arthur, the current husband and the rest is history. However, she always has this thought at the back of her mind - What if?
Hae Song, played by Teo Yoo, was a willing participant who got sent off the field unwillingly. He moved on, or tried to move on, became one of the people in the society who worked for a living, and, well, just buried his feelings to work for a feeling. This is until he found himself single again and feeling a hole inside him. So he bought a ticket to New York, and decided to meet up with his childhood friend, and find the answers.
The audience was presented with this undercurrent kind of tension throughout the current day New York scenes, up to the point where Nora, Teo and Arthur all met. But what I liked about it was that there was no yelling, no jealousy, no hatred, but just feelings that all three of them were trying to explore. For Arthur, it was this Teo whom he had heard so much became someone in reality. His understanding, though unsettling feelings, were portrayed perfectly by John Magaro.
Some people might find Past Lives just like a glass of pure mineral water, though tastes pure and refreshing, nothing much happened. But for me, I think that is exactly what we need in our cinemas these days - telling a story as it should be. For me Past Lives would have fallen into cliche if it had included all those standard Hollywood movie elements, then that would have completely discredited its premise and story telling.
We may see the same people and events in different lights at different ages. Our past lives do not necessarily need to turn ourselves into drama queens of unnecessary soap operas of our current lives.
I think that’s exactly what I got and what I needed from Past Lives.
