Past Lives

Past lives are sort of a thing for me. I have vivid memories of reading Remembrance by Jude Deveraux back when I was 14 years old. I gave the book to several of my friends. My standout memory was sitting with Lindsay in an RV park where we were spending a few nights at the beach when we were 16 or 17. We were reading together, and I had given her Remembrance to read. I can’t remember what book I was reading at the time. I happened to look over, and tears were streaming down her face, and I knew exactly where she was, and at what part of the book.

Of course there is a curse that is intertwined throughout many of their lives.

“I would rather die then try to live without you”,
“May you always love me and want me but never have me”,
“May you never love anyone but me”.

But the ending of one of the lives is heartbreaking.

“How was he to live without Callie? What meaning would life have if he didn’t live it with her? He thought of years without her laughter, years without her there to tell him he was wonderful, that he could do anything, be anything.”

“I am nothing without you,” he whispered… Half of him, he thought. She was the other half of him and now one half of him was dying.”

BTW, I technically don’t recommend the book. The actual story is crazy-pants and the ending totally sucked. Really, I was just obsessed by Talis and Callie, which took up most of the story thankfully. Specifically, there are two pages that I can re-read and immediately be impacted from.

I would also like to point out that the characters were later memorialized in my cats.

Jude Deveraux definitely had a thing for past lives and reincarnation. A Knight in Shining Armor was one of her more popular books that had a similar theme. I can’t help myself so here is one more…

“Were I to die tomorrow, my soul would remember you.” – Nicholas Stafford

I don’t have strong spiritual beliefs, but I do believe that it would be very sad that this is the only life we live. Reincarnation ticks that box for me. The connections we make in life are beautiful things. Some stay with us for just a heartbeat and others make a deeper cut. Time will tell on how they play out in our personal lives but it is fascinating how there are certain people that you click with.

Some clicks are instantaneous. Some grow on you slowly.

I have been to a few psychics over the years and talked some of that through. I don’t have vivid memories of what they said actually… but I do know that my mother had an impactful session with one many years ago when I was young, who told her that we have always been connected and have switched back and forth many times on who is the parent vs child.

Where do those connections show up in other lives? If it’s your mother in one life, and your child in another… where do your lovers show up? Where do your best friends? Your most intimate connections?

I was having a discussion about friendship a few days ago. The friends we make in our younger years… is it proximity? Is it shared experiences? Some of those are the strongest bonds that we make happen from a variety of factors. Much of it is the time spent, which created memories, and then impacted us by those events that then shaped who we became. Some of us went through Kindergarten through High School with much of the same group of kids. Many created those long-lasting friendships. If you moved schools as a kid, how did that shape you? If you didn’t have extended time to be forced together and create those bonds, were you doomed? I don’t think so. There are also a bunch of people who stayed with that same group of friends and didn’t retain any of those bonds. It’s all different.

Proximity is such a strong force in friendship. The physical accessibility to that person results in so many shared experiences. But it’s not just the physical proximity. The emotional proximity or the intimacy side of things plays such a key role. There are some friendships that I have created over the computer that have been incredibly strong. But the emotional link that you form to dive in deep really creates those intense bonds. Do you need both emotional and physical proximity? Maybe. Maybe not.

All of that to say I watched Past Lives on Saturday. Starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro. The link goes to the NPR review which is a bit spoilery so watch out.

Actually don’t bother watching out, I’m going to spoil the heck out of it so if you want to watch it, don’t read this.

“Most affecting love story in ages” – NPR
“A gorgeous romance” – San Diego Tribune

What really kicked me to want to go watch it was this mention in the New York Times morning daily that I read…

As Manohla Dargis writes in her review, “Past Lives” is “a tale of friendship, love, regret and what it means to truly live here and now. In a sense it is a time-travel movie, because even as the two characters keeping moving forward, they remain inexorably tethered to the past.”

What a beautiful story about discovering love. When do you know if a relationship is real or not? This story explores that over 22 years in a quiet but impactful way. There is no wild drama here. This is all framed up with maturity, grace, and feeling.

A running theme was talking about “in-yun”, the concept of providence or fate. How you can’t really control who drops into your life or who stays in it. It’s that 8,000 layers of in-yun over 8,000 lifetimes that reverberate and allow people to come together in life.

There are so many nuances in this movie. The relationship between these two individuals that started when they were 12 and were wrenched apart due to immigration. The relationship between Nora (Greta Lee) and her husband, whom she met when she severed ties to Hae Sung when she wanted to realize her ambitions, was quiet but still intimate. This is a love story between multiple people where it’s just not that simple.

There is this scene toward the end where Arthur (the husband/John Magaro) says something like, “You’ve made my life bigger and I wonder if I have had the same impact on you.” She just looks at him. This long look that says so much but nothing at all. And they have this serious talk on how this is the life they are in. This is what happened. Arther presses her that what if another guy was at the artist residency and she met him instead. Maybe it wasn’t what Nora’s parents dreamed for her when they left Korea and immigrated to Canada but this is what is. And Nora told Arthur, “I love you“. And he says, “Yes, but I just don’t know if I believe it.”

As that plays out, seeing the connection between Nora and Hae Sung at 12 years old at school, then 24 years old over the computer/video calls, and them finally connecting back in person at 36 years old for a few short days as Hae Sung flew out specifically to see her on his vacation.

Nora has this really intimate conversation with her husband Arther, telling him that she was such a different person when she was 12 and loved Hae Sung. And when she was 24, it was all conversations with him over video. Nothing in person. Just a face on a screen so she doesn’t know if she’s attracted to him or not because she just remembers the wonderful friendship at 12 and she misses that.

The meeting at 36 was beautiful. The quiet yearning. The shared smiles. The uncertainly in hugging. The connection of falling back into past memories.

Watching this beautiful love that wasn’t quite meant to be was sad. It was mature. It was graceful. Their conversation at this bar, with Arther sitting next to them but not understanding a word of Korean they are speaking, was so epic. The acknowledgement that Nora has always been one thing to Hae Sung, the one thing being that she has always left him. Their love was started at 12 and the ‘what-ifs’ never played out. The life they could have had, is unknown. Yet to Arthur, Hae Sung points out, Nora has always been someone who stayed.

There were one or two epic lines that I don’t remember. I will clearly have to go back and obsessively watch a few scenes again once it’s out on-demand. But the ending scene is Nora walking Hae Sung out to his Uber. They stand there, calling back similar memories to when Nora left him when she was 12. They don’t talk. They stare at each other. They turn to each other… the yearning, the sadness, acceptance, it’s all on their faces. They finally hug.

The Uber arrives and Hae Sung puts his suitcase in the car and turns to her. He brings up in-yun and they toss a few hilarious scenarios back and forth of potential connections, or past lives, over the centuries.

He says something like, “What if this right now is a past life? What do you think we are to each other in a future life?”

And Nora quietly says, “I don’t know.”

Hae Sung says something like, “I don’t know either… but I’ll see you then.”

And Nora walks back to find Arther on the front steps waiting for her, and she bursts into tears. He hugs her and walks her back inside.

I didn’t have enough Kleenex for this movie. I actually didn’t bring any so that was a problem. But the mental fortitude and grace of how these roles were played was impactful. There was no victim here. There is no evil person keeping them apart (although the husband jokes he was the evil white male doing so in this potential story). There was just… watching a quiet sadness of something that could have been but was never meant to happen now and accepting of that fate. And all three individuals were so very understanding of what was happening.

Roger Ebert said in his review, “mourn the love that was never meant to be, the life that was never theirs, and a childhood that grows more distant with the years.”

It was a beautiful movie. Brava to Celine Song, as this was her directorial debut and apparently this was also somewhat autobiographical. I will have to watch it again sometime to appreciate it more but I’m looking forward to seeing this one nominated for multiple awards!