In the simplest of terms, Past Lives is about a love triangle.
Stories about a woman conflicted by a choice between two men have been around for centuries, but I've never seen one quite like Past Lives.
It's a story about an immigrant woman, her childhood sweetheart, and her husband. Two men who love her dearly, and in very different ways. The three of them are forced to co-exist for a time, but no one wants to hurt anyone else and no one is ever trying to get the upper hand.
The film's title comes from the Korean concept of in-yun, the idea of a connection between two people over the course of their lives and multiple previous lives.
Past Lives is a deeply moving, emotional story and my favourite film of the year so far. The exploration of paths not taken in life is something I've always been fascinated in as a subject and to be honest have spent far too long daydreaming about.
In a few months time this film is going to be vying for Academy Awards where I'm predicting it will be well represented. If you want to know what you're talking about this award season, I suggest you head along to see the film.
Celine Song has been working as a writer for several years now, mostly working on plays before joining Amazon Prime's Wheel of Time as a staff writer. Past Lives is her directorial debut and yet it's a worthy accomplishment for a director at any stage of their career.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Song when she was in New Zealand showcasing the film at the film festival recently.
I’ve heard you talk in other interviews about how the opening of the film is something that actually happened to you. Are you sitting there in that moment thinking “my life is like a movie?” Or when does the feeling that it could actually be a film come in?
When I was sitting there with my childhood sweetheart and my husband in this bar in New York the main feeling that you have is like, this feels like a pretty special thing but it might just be a special thing to me. Then you put it in a pile with your maybes, stuff that’s like “maybe that’s a thing” or “maybe that’s interesting and worth making a work about”. Over time it sort of sticks with you, some things in the maybe pile that disappear and there’s some that stick with you and this one was sticking around.
I remember telling the story to a few of my friends just like “this thing happened to me and I’m going to tell you about it” and I started to realise that no matter what walk of life my friend was from they also had a story they could tell me in return and also our friendship got deeper because of it. We would end up talking about time and space and the way we move places and move on from one moment in our life to another in such significant ways we don’t take time to note.
We ended up talking about it so deeply and I always ended up better friends with the person I was telling the story and that’s when I realised that maybe this story could mean something to people other than myself.
Since it is based at least somewhat on a true story, when you’re continuing to develop the script when does it stop being autobiographical and become that you’re writing a character?
I think to me it was right away. There is life that you cannot objectify. It’s a subjective experience and you’re going through it with your own subjectivity. The moment that you’re turning it into art the process of it itself is an objectifying process. So it had to be right away.
Of course there’s another layer of objectification which is what happens when you’re trying to make the movie with 100 people. The actors aren’t asking me - and I don’t want them to ask me - “so what was it actually like?” They’re asking “what does this character want?” That was the whole goal. What that results in is a movie you can watch in New Zealand or anywhere else in the world.
Then of course there’s the added layer of subjectivity of how each person in the audience interprets the film.
Exactly. That object then becomes subjective again. It becomes alive again too. It starts living in them for an hour and 45 minutes and maybe even beyond if the movie is lucky.
Do you find that different parts of the world respond to the film differently?
What I realised is I don’t actually know what the Korean audiences are going to feel but I know what the American audiences feel. I went to Berlinale where it’s a pretty global audience due to the film market there. It was a room full of people from truly every country imaginable and you could feel the entire theatre laugh at the same things, smile at the same things and cry at the same things. It is this amazing revelation that this thing that was maybe just special to me was a pretty universal experience and people could all connect to it and understand it.
One thing I loved is that you could easily have a lesser version of this film where one of the men is very clearly the bad guy, but it’s much more complex than that. How do you strike the balance between the two men in Nora’s life?
The balance is the goal. You want the thing you’re depicting to feel like it is in real life. In real life I find it really hard to imagine a villain in my life. Everyone has their own subjective experience and way that they have to move through their life. Maybe sometimes it clashes with yours but it’s not because they’re villains.
To me it was more about describing as accurately as I can what it’s like for three people to try to exist and make room for each other's existence. Really it’s about three people who are trying not to hurt each other in this movie. There’s also going to be a part which means it’s going to hurt all of them but also heal all of them.
There’s a way you can have movies being dramatic which is adults behaving like children and be mean to each other. But what I wanted for this movie is having people we know were children, we see two of them as children, but they’re going to do their very best to treat each other like adults.
The moment where Hae Sung and Arthur meet each other for the first time and Arthur says, in Korean “Hi, I’m Arthur. Nice to meet you.” In the other guy’s language. Then of course Hae Sung responds in English, in Arthur’s language. To me it’s about the trying of that. Arthur is trying to learn Korean. My actor John Magaro asked me if he should get better at Korean, since he already kinda naturally knew how to speak a bit of Korean and I told him “No!”
This is not a movie about a guy who is fluent in Korean, it’s about a guy who’s trying. It’s not a competence thing, it’s are you willing to try in these little ways. Ultimately I think that makes all three of them heroic since they’re so good.
It’s a great portrayal of non-toxic masculinity. Somewhere in the multiverse exists a version of this film where Owen Wilson plays the sweetheart and Vince Vaughn plays the husband and they spend the whole movie fighting. But one of the year’s best portrayals of masculinity comes from a female writer.
What I respond to in masculinity, what I love about masculinity is what shows up in Hae Sung and Arthur. It’s the way they’re going to have the strength to put themselves aside. I think we would all forgive them if they weren’t able to put themselves aside but they really do. That’s what I really love.
My joke sometimes is that it’s two sex symbols. But sex symbols of everyday life. You could meet people like this. It’s not about abs or lifting weights or whatever, I don’t know what it is. I think that there’s something amazing about masculinity with caring about the person that they love and being there for them even though it’s very difficult. There’s something amazing about that type of masculinity which I do think is more commonplace than I think we are able to see. I don’t know a lot of people with six-packs but I know a lot of people who are capable of giving a shit about another person.
To pivot back to the development, this is your first feature film as a director. First of all… great job. Secondly you obviously had this amazing script, were you pitching it knowing you wanted to direct it?
I was hoping that I would be allowed to direct it but you can’t really guarantee anything. I do think that I set myself up for it in the right way since the script is written bilingually and I am bilingual. Also because it was so rooted in something so personal it was easy to sell the idea that I should be the person to direct it.
What’s been the most amazing thing about it is that it was this discovery for me as a filmmaker. It felt like a revelation to me that I am a filmmaker. It changed my life being able to make this movie. You can’t really tell until you’re in it. I remember after the first week really feeling like “this is where I’m supposed to be”. Now I know what I’m going to do when I’m 80.
When you decided you did want to direct who were the people you turned to and what kind of advice did you get?
I spoke to a lot of people who went from a different discipline to filmmaking. I spoke to Bo Burnham and Stephen Karam who was a New York playwright who made a film around the time I was trying to make a film. They talked about taking the things you know from the art you have already been doing for the last 10 years.
I was in theatre for 10 years, it’s not like the things you do in theatre just aren’t going to show up on set. It’s always going to show up on set because theatre is just character, story, scene work, blocking, all those things a director is expected to do. I realised “oh I actually know how to do this part”. On top of that you have this way of storytelling that’s more literal.
Theatre is figurative storytelling because time and space exist figuratively. Let’s say you want to set a story on Mars, you just need to have an actor sit there and say “well, today on Mars…” Then the whole audience is going to be there and they’re going to believe you. Maybe you have to put a little red lighting, but that’s it. That’s all you need.
In film if you want to shoot on Mars you have to build Mars! Or go to Mars! To me that was the part that needed to shift but I actually felt like because I came from a figurative storytelling space I felt like when I was telling the story literally it felt like an easier transition. I’m not sure if it would’ve been the same the other way around.
What, if any, lessons on filmmaking did you learn from directing Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull in The Sims 4?
(Laughs) You did your research. I love it!
That was just something that I was doing during Covid. Theatre was still being made but theatre has always been about the liveness of it. At the time I was watching a lot of streaming of video games. It was always happening but it was happening quite a lot then. I had the thought that maybe I could do a play there and I always felt like The Sims 4 was a really Chekhovian video game. Since what are you doing in it? You’re just living. Occasionally moods come to you and you go through relationships. What’s more Chekhovian than one of the sims having to go to the bathroom in the middle of an argument.
But the door’s been deleted.
(Laughs) Exactly!
I think I really thought of it as an exploration of how storytelling can happen in that way. It was like “how can I be a little bit irreverent with how we treat Chekhov?” Even in The Sims the story is going to be compelling. There’s a part of it where you just have to believe that a good story is going to be a good story.
You worked with A24 for this film. They’re kind of one of the only studios that has their own dedicated fans, but what are they like to work with as a studio?
What I think is their amazing strength which I experienced as a first time filmmaker is that they are really able to trust their filmmakers so completely. I really felt like working on this movie, my first movie, that I had complete authority and control in the same way that eighth time filmmakers have. Part of it is my having to earn it with the work and the process but I felt like I could make exactly the movie I wanted to make. It’s what’s been the best but also the most exciting part. I never felt like I wasn’t trusted as a first time filmmaker, I really felt like everyone trusted me and I was the auteur.
I’ve never actually been to New York but I’ve heard a lot of people talking online about the way you shoot New York being unique and how you’re able to capture the scale of it. How did you arrive at how to shoot New York in such a way?
Part of it is you yourself being someone who is in love with that city. I think that love really is in the eyes of the beholder. As someone who loves the city it’s not just going to be the big spectacular locations that you love. Of course there are some which I chose for story reasons or character reasons. I don’t think the Statue of Liberty belongs in every movie but it belongs in this movie because the two people who go to see it in this film are an immigrant and a tourist. For an immigrant and a tourist the Statue of Liberty is a romantic place.
Then in DUMBO there’s the carousel which the thing I really love about it is that it’s encased in glass. It’s protected from the water in a way under a pavilion. To me that spoke to me as a visual way to express their story. There are parts of it like that but then I also think it’s important to show the mundaneness of your city. How New York actually feels for someone who might be walking by that street all the time. My director of photography, Shabier Kirchner and I were talking about this the whole time.
For instance the Statue of Liberty shouldn’t be shot with a drone, it should be shot from the boat. It should be moving a little bit like you’re on the boat. So much of it had to be at eye level. It has to feel true to how someone who lives there sees the city.
You mentioned your DP there and of course the film was shot on 35mm film, what sort of benefits does that afford?
I’ve told this joke before but I had two divas on set. One was New York City, the other was the 35mm film camera. Of course it’s difficult and expensive. It’s a lot of headache but what I love about it is the process more than anything. Coming from theatre there’s a way in which it sort of fit the process that I already had.
I felt really connected to it. Honestly the reason why my DP and I wanted to shoot it on film was the philosophy of it more than anything. It’s a movie about time made tangible. There’s the material of the thing and burning it into that thing, now it’s been marked in time. Something about it just spoke to the story we wanted to tell.
The process is amazing, it really makes you sit in the room rather than hiding away somewhere looking at a video feel.
There’s the concept of in-yun which plays a big part in the film. For myself and many others this film will be our first introduction to that term. Just out of curiosity how ubiquitous of a term is it in Korea?
In Korea you’re going to hear it once a day. It’s not just a Korean thing. In-yun is a Korean word but that concept exists in most eastern philosophy. There’s a word for it in China, a word for it in India, I think there’s a word for it in Thailand. It’s all tied into the idea of fate. Western philosophy talks about the idea of destiny as something that you pursue.
In Eastern philosophy destiny is something that just comes to you. There’s nothing you can really do about it. That’s connected to how in-yun works. It’s not something you can seek or is going to be epic all the time. Some in-yuns are epic but some in-yuns can be as small as somebody who says hi to you in the street. A stranger that you bump into and apologise, that can be enough of an in-yun as well.
Of course you and I are in-yun because we’re having this conversation. I’m sure with my next movie if I come back and we talk again we’ll be like “look at this in-yun! It’s even deeper than we thought.” It doesn’t necessarily have to be something that is huge. The fact that there are this many people on earth and you’re going to end up with a partner, that’s this amazing, wild kind of in-yun. I hope that this word is something that anyone who has seen the movie is able to use in an everyday way. It is that simple of a thing.
You and I are talking in this professional setting and we’re getting to know each other over this movie but maybe 200 lifetimes ago we were mortal enemies. Maybe 100 lifetimes before that we were married. Another 100 before we just bumped into each other on the street and had a little scuffle. When you look at it like that there’s no interaction you’re going to have in this life that you’re going to treat as meaningless.
You mentioned your maybe pile at the start, might you be dipping into that again soon?
What I know now is that I’m going to keep making movies. I’m going to keep making movies until I die.
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