'Past Lives' isn't as complex as it wants to be
A24
An element of romanticism is practically inevitable once you throw a “What if?” into the passage of time. At some point or another, our circumstances become our choices and vice-versa, and the mind might periodically dance with the idea of the path not taken. Depending on where you are in your life, a drama hinging on this decades-long flirtation with maybe could seem heartbreaking or naive and thin. I’m going with the latter.
“Past Lives” contains three sections worth capturing, so I guess a spoiler alert is warranted: Twenty-four years ago, 12-year-old Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) and Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) are close pals and have one date that ends with them holding hands. Then Na Young’s family moves to Canada and the two don’t speak for 12 years, when Na Young is a writer in New York going by Nora (and played by Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) is serving in the military and enjoying getting drunk with his buddies. Their video chats rekindle enough affection that they have to cut things off and don’t speak again for another 12 years, when recently single Hae Sung comes to visit and Nora’s been married for a while to kind, agreeable Arthur (John Magaro of “Not Fade Away” and “The Big Short”).
In other words, “Past Lives” is structured a bit like “Moonlight,” spending a little time with its characters at one age, jumping ahead a while, and then jumping ahead again. But the movie overlooks most of the moments it needs to examine. If the point of the story is the ache of feeling unable to determine the course of your own life and the internal fork in the road caused by endless longing and wondering, Song should have been curious about how these lingering feelings affected Nora and Hae Sung over the years. Yet “Past Lives” provides very little about how their choices were shaped by this brief childhood connection, and the characterization as adults in both their 20s and 30s seems deliberately narrow so as to ensure maximum chemistry. These two, in fact, don’t know a ton about each other but continue to live in the twinkly memories of what they once had.
This, of course, is understandable; our memories can be inclined to mislead us and romanticize any number of situations, and the emotional volcano of adolescence can crystallize any pounding of the heart. But “Past Lives” isn’t really so different from the horrible “One True Loves” or even the “Saved by the Bell” episode in which Slater’s old girlfriend comes to Bayside and they have to see if A.C. and Jennifer work as well as Albert Clifford and Jen did. It’s hard to believe you aren’t actually the same person you used to be, no matter how much your heart might argue otherwise. “Past Lives” comes with extra depth as far as Nora’s progressively split identity over time, culture, and geography (she bluntly states the need to be a Westerner to achieve the artistic acclaim she seeks), plus multiple references to the somewhat spiritual notions reflected in the title. One late moment between Nora and Hae Sung is almost enough to escalate the proceedings from basic to a gasp.
But the “Sliding Doors”-esque “Look Both Ways” didn’t work, and it’s hard to understand why the highly acclaimed “Past Lives” has been seen as anguishing rather than obscured. Aside from Arthur recognizing that the cliched version of this story would cast him as the evil white American husband, and Nora and Hae Sung acknowledging how much time has gone by, the movie doesn’t actually consider the potential gap that exists between reality and our imagination, or the possible danger of nostalgia. And for a story about a relationship revived through technology, “Past Lives,” which feels like a short film overextended to feature length, doesn’t do nearly enough to address all that does or doesn’t happen in the years in between.
If you really want to ask “What if?” I’d vastly suggest watching the canceled NBC series “Ordinary Joe.” Or just the underrated rom-com “What If.”
C
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