Past Lives | Themes and Meaning

In this section of our Colossus Movie Guide for Past Lives, we talk about themes that help us understand the film. 

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 themes and meaning of Past Lives

Acceptance and closure

Past Lives isn’t a romance about Nora trying to decide between Hae Sung and Arthur. It’s not a melodramatic love triangle story. Rather, Past Lives is about Nora coming to terms with the life she has rather than continuously entertaining notions about what might have been.

We grow up full of potential. About who we’ll be, what we’ll be, the things we’ll see and do. Everything ahead of us is a question mark looking for an answer. By the time we’re in our thirties, much of that potential has been formed by twenties into a specific, discernable thing. This is who we are. This is what we are. And that can be, at minimum, overwhelming. It can often bring up feelings of grief, frustration, anger, desperation, yearning, and depressive nostalgia. It’s a process to reach the point where we can let go of what was and what could have been. 

Past Lives boils this huge existential concept down to Nora’s relationships with Arthur and Hae Sung. Hae Sung embodies so much from her past. Not only her childhood but those early days in New York City when she was still a bit split between feeling like a girl from Korea and someone who lives and works in the Big Apple. She tells Hae Sung exactly this when she explains why she wants them to stop talking. It’s because she can’t fully invest in her life there while thinking about Hae Sung and what a future with him would entail. 

Nora’s relationship with Arthur is, then, an extension of that concept. Arthur represents New York and writing and all these other parts of Nora that she has decided to make primary. When Hae Sung comes to visit, what’s really being asked isn’t who Nora will be with but who Nora will be. Even though her life with Arthur isn’t everything she might want, it’s who she is. It’s what she’s chosen. And she is okay with that. It’s still sad to let the past lives and other lives go. To know you’ll never be any of those other versions of you. But you get to be this one. And that’s pretty amazing. All you can do is make the most of it. 

Being on the outside vs being on the inside

When Past Lives starts, the camera is from the perspective of people observing Nora, Hae Sung, and Arthur. We hear these people wonder and observe. They point out how happy Nora and Hae Sung seem and how sad Arthur is. The viewer is like the observers. We know nothing about the three characters across the bar. They’re a complete mystery. 

After that, we jump back in time, 24 years earlier, and the story begins. We meet Nora and Hae Sung. See their connection. The disappointment when Nora moves. Then the reconnection 12 years later. The opening dynamic makes far more sense—these are two people who genuinely love each other. Except it never works out and Arthur comes along. Uh oh. Knowing what we know, we wonder how Arthur could even hope to compete with Hae Sung. Except it turns out that he and Nora also have a wonderful connection and genuinely love one another. 

Over the course of Past Lives, we gain a tremendous amount of context about those three people across the bar. We go from being on the outside of the situation to being part of the group. Literally, we can’t hear anything they’re saying, then, by the end, hear everything they’re saying. Distance becomes intimacy. Strangeness becomes familiarity.

Past Lives puts into perspective what it means to understand what seems like a casual, innocuous conversation. Anytime you’re out in public, look around you, and every single person is in the middle of some epic journey that’s the culmination of their life to that point. The simple fact that they’re where they are and not somewhere else represents a choice to live one life and not another. An awareness of this would hopefully be eye-opening in the sense that it allows us to feel a deeper appreciation for the random people who surround us every day. The person who doesn’t immediately cross the street when the light changes because they’re staring at the sky. What caused that momentary distraction is the consequence of their entire life. And if you knew the context, it might change how you’d think of that whole situation. 

In some ways, this encapsulates Nora’s own journey. With the arrival of Hae Sung in New York City, it causes her to reflect on what was and what could have been. And even what could be. There’s still the potential she decides to run off with him and live a completely different life. These are feelings she hadn’t really thought about for over a decade. But with Hae Sung right there, Nora has to confront these feelings that she had merely been observing from a distance. Feelings that get at the very core of her being and her life in New York. 

Past Lives can stir up a similar self-reflection in those who watch it. You might not be in Nora’s exact situation. But maybe it’s when you fly from wherever you live back to your hometown to visit family and you see old friends and you really think about what would have been and could have been if you had stayed rather than gone. Or vice versa, if you had gone rather than stayed. In having that conversation with yourself, in having that confrontation, you too can move from the outside of what’s going on to being part of it. 

The duality of the immigrant experience

While it’s universal to reflect on the different lives we could have had, Past Lives is specifically about an immigrant experience. An autobiographical one. Celine Song, at age 12, moved from Korea to Canada. In her early 20s, she attended college in New York City. And in her early 30s, her childhood sweetheart came to visit her and her husband. With Song exploring the heart and truth of her own relationship with Korea, Canada, and America, her story resonates with the countless multitudes who have experienced something similar. And can even help first and second generation children of immigrants have a better appreciation/understanding of what their parents, grandparents, etc. experienced. 

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