In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for Past Lives, we will explain the film’s ending.
Cast
- Nora – Greta Lee
- young Nora – Seung Ah Moon
- Hae Sung – Teo Yoo
- young Hae Sung – Seung Min Yim
- Arthur – John Magaro
- Nora’s mom – Ji Hye Yoon
- Written by – Celine Song
- Directed by – Celine Song
The end of Past Lives explained
Recap
Past Lives ends with Nora walking Hae Sung down the block to wait for his ride to the airport. They have a final conversation that brings closure to the potential of them ending up together. Both accept that even if they had been together in past lives, this life isn’t their time. It’s for her and Arthur. Hae Sung offers up the hope that maybe they’ll find each other again in the next life.
With that, the two part. Hae Sung heads back to Korea while Nora cries her way home, arriving at the stoop and a waiting Arthur. Arthur holds Nora.
Meaning
The main thing to keep in mind with Past Lives is that the love triangle between Nora, Hae Sung, and Arthur is a means to an end. Celine Song wanted to capture the idea of having only one life to live and the opportunity cost that comes with such limitation. You can’t be everything to everyone. You can’t be everything. Part of getting older is coming to terms with who we are rather than who we could have been.
That’s what Hae Sung and Arthur represent. Nora’s past and present. Her choice isn’t between them as romantic partners so much as it is her finding closure and acceptance with who she is. We saw this earlier in Past Lives, during the college portion, when Nora tells Hae Sung she can’t talk to him anymore because she’s in New York City and has to focus on that life and not be thinking about him and going to Korea. By trying to split her time, she wasn’t able to invest meaningfully in her college experience. Something had to give.
That choice in college is the same choice Nora makes 12 years later. The only difference is the existential weight behind it. In college, you’re still in your early twenties and nothing feels so set in stone. Even if Nora concentrates on NYC for a few years, there’s plenty of time to see what happens next. But 12 years later? She’s deep into her life with Arthur. And happy with it. It’s not some placeholder relationship. Or toxic. Or anything negative. Sure, it’s not perfect, but, overall, they’re in love and happy.
You could replace Hae Sung with any other aspect of a past life or “other” life. For instance, if Nora had initially studied physics and wrote some impressive paper in college but decided to switch to creative writing. 12 years later, a prominent researcher in Korea reaches out to her and offers her a position in his lab to work on the very thing that was the focus of her paper. She has to decide if she wants to live that other life as a physicist and be back in the country where she was born or continue as a writer in New York. Different stories but similar in that in both Nora can only walk one path in a way that’s fair to others and herself.
Speaking of walking. There’s this nice detail at the end that Celine Song called out in the press notes for Past Lives. She purposefully had Nora and Hae Sung walk right to left across the screen. Song: “When you draw a timeline, it always works left to right. By walking from right to left, you are walking quite literally into the past. You walk them there, the wind sort of blows her to- wards the past, and then he gets in the car, and then the Uber of course has to drive into the past. She will stand there for a moment, and then she’s gonna go back home, and every step is going to be a walk towards the future from the past.”
So Past Lives is less about Nora’s romance with Hae Sung and Arthur than her relationship with time and mortality. And it leaves us with that rueful hope that, maybe, there’s a next life where, once again, anything is possible.
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