Past Lives, a film by Celine Song

This 2023 Korean film concerns the long-term fascination of a pair of Koreans, initially 12-year-olds. Hae Sung has finally earned the highest grade on a test, usually Na Young’s spot. Her artist parents announce to Na Young and her sister that they are immigrating to Canada, and the girls should choose Anglicized names. She decides on Nora Moon. She grows up in Toronto, becomes a playwright, and we see her at a writing residency in New York.  Spoiler Alert – I'm going to discuss the whole film. If you don't want to know more before you see it, Stop Now!

Twelve years later, Hae Sung makes contact through her father’s FaceBook page, and for a couple of years the two have frequent video calls. She asks if he plans to visit, he says maybe in a couple of years, asks her about visiting Korea; she doesn’t see that on her horizon, and breaks off contact. Another dozen years pass. Hae Sung is an engineer. He still longs for her, and decides to travel to New York – and admits to friends that he hopes to see Nora. 

They are pleased to be together, but their lives have diverged: she’s been married 7 years to an American Jew she met during her writing fellowship; he recently broke up with his long-time girlfriend because, in his own estimation, he is too ordinary, and as an only child she deserves an extraordinary spouse. “Past lives” refers to reincarnation, and to the idea of Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths in which an infinity of options are reduced to our individual trajectories: “past” in the sense of “gone by.” 

Nora’s husband Arthur asks whether, if she’d become involved with a different man at the writing residency, she might now be married to someone else, and her life with Arthur would never have happened. But Nora quashes that – here they are, together, and this is the life they have chosen and created. There is no other. She does not see some could-have-been life in her memories of Hae Sung – she is who and where she is, wholeheartedly. 

But when she, Arthur, and Hae Sung sit in a bar and she and Hae Sung have a conversation in Korean Arthur can barely follow, they talk about the Korean concept of In-Yon, in which affinity is a result of thousands of years of reincarnations, and cannot be denied. He speculates: perhaps in a past life she was a queen and he was a henchman, and they had an illicit affair. Or she was a songbird and he was a branch she alit on, before she flew off. But affinity or not, she stands firm in her choices: she can only be who she is now, and to sink into regret is to abandon the present in favor of some past life she cannot live. 

The other layer explored here is the immigrant experience – she explains to Arthur that seeing Hae Sung reminds her how Americanized her Korean American friends are, and how the culture Hae Sung is part of is one she gladly shed. Arthur knows some Korean, and Hae Sung has learned a bit of English, but their limited knowledge is one more aspect of their discomfort with each other. Both are jealous: Hae Sung of the man Nora chose to build her life with, Arthur of the man his wife can so easily communicate with, who shared first love. 

And yet, there is no explosion, no fight – as adults they assess their positions and accept them. It’s good to see a grown-up film!

The Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali

In May 2015, partners involved in the extensive restoration/reconstruction of Satyajit Ray's masterworks The Apu Trilogy released meticulously restored versions in a digital format. I've just seen the first film, Pather Panchali, about the birth and childhood of Apu. The sound is Ravi Shankar's music which in many cases renders dialogue unnecessary, expressing the emotional layers of life in a variegated stream of notes and beats. Mischief, mystery, argument, discovery - the wedding of sitar and drums to the camera's keen eye creates a rapturous and all-encompassing experience.

The camera loves everything it sees: a large lidded basket of kittens; a girl hiding in an orchard, stealing a piece of fruit, then skipping home where she places her bounty in the bowl of ancient Auntie, the penniless woman who shares her family's house; water striders moving on the surface of a river; a distant shot of sister and brother hurrying along the right-angle paths flanking rice paddies, in search of the family's calf, an excuse to go see the railroad tracks.

Whether the image is of Auntie struggling by the light of her oil lamp to thread a needle, or of young Apu fascinated by the behavior of his teacher who is also a merchant, or the exaggerated costumes and dialogue of the traveling troupe who entertain the village, this black-and-white film is eloquent, shedding light on family, on village society, on the full tapestry of life.

Satyajit Ray was master of his medium, and we are the richer for his vision. If you have the opportunity to see these restored films on a big screen, go!