In Past Lives, when Nora’s mother tells Hae Sung’s that their family is immigrating to Canada, wresting apart the young pair on the precipice of romance, Hae Sung’s mother asks Nora’s how they could possibly leave their comfortable, familiar life in Seoul behind. Nora’s mother responds, “When you leave something behind, you gain something too.”
A story about stories (the ones that are real, the ones that almost were, the ones we spun in our head, and the ones deeply embedded in a life so lived-in and ordinary that we wonder if they’re special enough or “good” enough), this film is a delicate, poetic, dazzling reflection on the choices that make up the moments that make up the stories that make up who we are.
Every time I talk about my 20s, I talk about it as a past life. The sharp pang of ambition, writing into the crack of dawn like the world depended on it, a searing need to prove myself mostly to myself but also to other people. Living alone, the loneliness of it intertwined with the pride of understanding how resilient and capable I was. Getting my heart broken at a cafe or over the phone or in a foreign country. Not knowing if or when someone would come along to piece it back together. The feeling that there was always a threshold I was about to cross. In a couple of years I know my 30s will be a past life too, and I wonder what I will look back on by then. What will I remember the most? What will I long for?
I’ve been thinking about all my past lives—my past past lives, this present life which will also be a past life, and my future past lives. I’ve been thinking about all the versions of me who lived, are living, and will live these lives. And all the other versions of me that exist as well, floating around in some alternate reality, if you believe in that kind of thing. The me who became a teacher straight out of college instead of an editorial assistant at a magazine. The me who never had the courage to put anything I’d written out there. The me who turned down my dream job to stay at an artist residency in Vermont. The me who didn’t have to leave that dream job years later. The me who went back to school or started my own company or stumbled into an inordinate amount of fame or fortune. The me who found where I belonged earlier on. Or the me who never did. The me who made a mistake I couldn’t crawl out of. The me who moved away, somewhere far from home, and never returned.
I’ve also been thinking about people as markers of our past lives, about how who we are at any given period is inevitably shaped by the people around whom we orbit. Who am I in relation to my parents when I was a teenager who slammed doors and went on secret dates and sat down to dinner surly and distracted? Who am I in relation to all the ex-professors and ex-bosses who saw some glimmer of potential in me? Who am I in relation to my first workmates, a tight-knit circle of girls chasing their dreams together? Who am I in relation to the friends I lost touch with, to the ones I left things unsaid to, to the ones that got away? (And who am I to the friends I’ve kept, the ones who watched me change and didn’t flinch?) Who am I in relation to my husband when we first met 12 years ago, neither of us certain that it was going to last but giving it our best shot anyway, navigating falling in love and first kisses and first fights and meeting each other’s families; who am I when we got married in a small town by the sea surrounded by the ones dearest to us; who am I now as we drift through the years together, both of us now certain but still giving it our best shot, navigating chores and schedules and travels and finances and moving houses and wanting kids and maybe not wanting kids and being sad and being angry—sometimes for no sensible reason—and snapping out of it and switching careers and making connections and waiting for good news and getting good news and getting sick and getting bored and getting to know each other all over again?
So much of what endeared me to Past Lives was how it portrayed forgiveness, not just in relationships (although it does that so tenderly, so gut-wrenchingly) but for ourselves too. How we need to forgive ourselves for all our past lives, both the ones we actually lived and the ones that merely could have been. How we need to forgive ourselves, because there’s just no other way, for choosing what we chose. For missing the chances we missed and taking the ones we took. For loving who we love. And for leaving behind something that means something to us, sometimes with the most uneventful, unceremonious goodbye, propelled by the reckless human hope that we would gain something in return: a new version of ourselves, perhaps, or a new spring in our step, or even just a new, good story to tell.
“How we need to forgive ourselves for all our past lives, both the ones we actually lived and the ones that merely could have been. How we need to forgive ourselves, because there’s just no other way, for choosing what we chose. For missing the chances we missed and taking the ones we took.” - No better words were written. 🤍