Two men, who are neither friends nor strangers, and a woman sit together at a bar on one “extraordinary” night in New York City. So goes the real-life story of Celine Song that inspired Past Lives, her breakout directorial debut film about two childhood sweethearts who reconnect decades later.
The film’s enigmatic finale leaves much unsaid between Nora (played by Greta Lee), her childhood sweetheart Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and her husband Arthur (John Magaro). But as heartbreaking as their tale may be, in the end they each get what they had been longing for, Song told Newsweek ahead of the film’s upcoming international releases.
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Past Lives sees Nora and Hae Sung have an epic reunion in New York City 24 years after they’re torn apart as kids when she moves from South Korea to Canada. Song came to Canada as a child before heading to the Big Apple as an adult.
The South Korean-born Canadian filmmaker said the inspiration for the movie came down to a moment when she found herself sitting at a bar “between my childhood sweetheart, who came to visit me from Korea and only really speaks Korean, and my husband, who I live with in New York City and only speaks English.”
The movie’s intriguing opening scene in the bar mirrors the night that occurred in Song’s life. The film later returns to the bar, where Nora, Hae Sung and Arthur come to terms with their inyeon, a Korean word referring to a deep connection between those destined to meet, possibly over several lifetimes.
While Song was sitting at that bar in New York City years earlier, translating between her childhood sweetheart and husband, “at one point I realized I was translating beyond language and culture, that I was actually translating between two parts of my own self,” she said.
She went on: “It was such an extraordinary feeling to feel like you’re two things at once but also a different thing to a different person. But both of those people are me. I felt like I was watching my past, present and future sort of collide in that room.”
The Heart-Wrenching Ending Explained
The intimate bar setting is followed by the film’s mysterious final scene, where Nora and Hae Sung as well as Arthur “get what they want” in the end, Song said.
Hae Sung flew 14 hours from Seoul, the South Korean capital, “because he wants to close the door…to meet the girl that he remembers as a 12-year-old,” Song explained.
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The last scene shows Nora and Hae Sung transfixed in a trance, staring at each other in silence while standing on a sidewalk, awaiting his taxi ride to the airport. The couple later share a silent emotional embrace, with Hae Sung’s final words to Nora being “let’s meet then [in the next life].”
As Hae Sung drives away in the taxi, Nora slowly walks back to her apartment, where Arthur is waiting outside. She later cries in her husband’s arms.
“I don’t think Nora knew that she needed to say goodbye [to her 12-year-old self],” Song said, adding that “when she goes home crying, she gets to say goodbye in the way that she didn’t get to do as a 12-year-old.”
Arthur also “gets his happy ending” in the final scene, the writer/director said.
Earlier in the film, Arthur questions whether Nora was really meant to be with Hae Sung in this lifetime, saying that he “can’t compete” with their grand childhood love story spanning decades.
Song said: “We know that he [Arthur] really wants to know his wife. He wants to get to know her better. He’s even learning a new language for that.”
In one scene, Arthur reveals that Nora speaks only in Korean in her sleep, telling her, “You dream in a language I can’t understand. It’s like there’s this whole place inside you I can’t go.”
But Nora’s emotional outpouring in the final scene allows Arthur to also meet his wife, who was known to cry often in her childhood, “as a 12-year-old crybaby coming home.”
Loneliness and Self-Realization
Past Lives was ultimately born from a place of loneliness, Song recalled. She believed that the feeling she had sitting at that bar, watching her past talk to her present, was something no one else felt.
She said the film “was inspired by this moment where I was just feeling like I’m probably the only one who feels this way in this room.”
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But making Past Lives allowed her to feel less lonely and come to her own self-realization, along with Nora’s in the film.
“I realized that this feeling I thought that was only happening to me was actually happening to everyone. So many people feel connected to that feeling that somebody from their past or somebody from their present can make who you are so vivid and contrary but true.”
She continued: “Years after that night [at the bar] happened, now I know I’m not the only person who feels that way. It’s a universally understandable feeling to sit there and to watch your past try to talk to your present and your future. In that way, it just makes me feel less lonely.
“What an amazing thing that through a movie about a woman’s self-revelation, I get to have my own self-realization,” she said.
The Movie’s Oscar Buzz
After the film received critical acclaim since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the pressure is certainly on for Past Lives, which has been touted for Oscars in various categories.
If Song wins an Academy Award, she will be the first Korean female director to get the honor. Asked how she feels about that possibility, she said: “I don’t have a complicated feeling about it…. The whole thing is nothing but a wonderful thing.”
What’s been most exciting but equally daunting is that “you’re working with hundreds of people who put their lives into making this movie, and I really feel like I have their lives and their time on my shoulders,” Song said.
“So to me, any kind of a thing to make them feel very proud, to make my cast proud…would be such an amazing thing, and [winning an Oscar] would, of course, mean the world,” she said.
Past Lives is now available on digital platforms, including Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes and Virgin Media, as well as on Blu-ray and DVD.
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