cloudydreamy

[cloudydreamy]

The last ray of light faded in to darkness and last night I saw the edge of universe

#edge

[cloudydreamy]

Past Lives (2023) - Celine Song

Past Lives is a 2023 Korean movie written and directed by Celine Song. A movie that reaches for all the subtle and inexpressible feelings in a modern relationship, in the intertwined lives of Hae Sung, Nora and Arthur.

The idea of cycle is what I can connect in the movie most. Its the repetition, every 12 years, Hae Sung and Nora meet, linger and break. I have felt this with my life, there is some magic to “12 years”, same people and same things and same places comes back to me every 12 years - Its strange if you are in it!

The movie travels in to metaphysics with “In-Yan” and 8000 layers of attachment from past lives. Nora suggests some intriguing past-life possibilities that they might be say, “birds sitting on the same branch on a particular morning”, “a married couple constantly fighting” etc.. This really elevates the movie and the audience out of mundane.

The subtle and stirring musical bits placed all over the movie is pretty warm. One of the striking staging is of the scene, where childhood Sung and childhod Nora, say good bye to each other and takes different paths. Nora takes a steep slope, depicting her hunger to achieve in literature, while Sung takes a pretty flat path and he remains flat throughout the rest of his life.

There is a common belief that 21st century world is flat and world is just a huge cosmopolitan city. These are the movies which reminds us that it is not. Nora says to Arthur that she feels “more Korean than Korean” when she is with Sung.

Arthur is also trying to learn Korean. Then comes the greatest despair scene of the movie, and Arthur goes,

“You dream in a language which I can’t understand.. Its like there is this whole place inside of you, where I can’t go..”

How many times in our lives we have felt that despair, even with our dearest ones? that there are depths and dreams in the other person which cannot be scooped ever? This movie takes a scoop of that and gives it for a taste.

Arthur was my favorite, the way he subtly expressed his helplessness, the way he asks the genuine questions about fate and chance. At a point, towards the end of movie, he kind of switches to a third person perspective of the situation and he feels happy for being a part of the love story - “I never imagined that I will be part of something like this in my life” .. of course we can interpret this dialogue in both ways.

The final shot of the movie, where Sung leaves in a car to airport, he goes out of the frame and we see rapidly receding background, we feel the time passing moment by moment with all its complications in space. The time, the cycles of time, the time on which our lives are staged!

This movie will linger with me for a while…

Thanks to my friend Surendhar for recommending this movie!

#pastlives #koreanmovie