Past Lives and the Dark Heart of Marriage
There’s no such thing as a soul mate. Let’s start there.
It’s a nice idea. When I’m at my best it certainly feels like my wife is a one-of-a-kind component designed by God to enrich my life forever and anon. But it doesn’t stand much scrutiny. Why would God only make one person for me out of eight billion? Does God think it’s fun to treat people like rats in a near-infinite maze, searching for a morsel of happiness they may never find? That’s real middle-part-of-the-Book-of-Job shit right there, real “Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook” shit. Implacably cruel.
No, I think it’s more likely that soul mates are a comforting fiction, like the afterlife or American meritocracy. True love is real and important and rare, but not one-in-eight-billion rare. Would you be happier with another person, in a different set of circumstances, in a life you never lived? It’s tough to say. Maybe. Weather permitting. You can never really know. That’s the rub.
Such is the main theme of Past Lives, the best movie (so far) of 2023 and the best contemporary romantic drama I’ve seen in years. In it, Hae Sung and Na Young are two adolescents living in Seoul, their childhood friendship maturing into young love. But before they can have anything approaching a real relationship, Na Young’s family permanently emigrates to Canada. 12 years later, Na Young goes by “Nora.” She studies in New York (and is played by Greta Lee), while Hae Sung (played by Yoo Teo) serves in the Korean military. Hae Sung seeks out his childhood crush on Facebook, and after hours of Skype talks they discover they still have feelings for each other. They each consider uprooting everything and moving across the globe, but their ambitions and level heads make them reconsider. 12 years after that, Nora/Na Young is married to a White man named Arthur (played by John Magaro), living contentedly in Manhattan. But Hae Sung is still single. He travels to New York, ostensibly for vacation, but really to see Nora. It becomes clear that Nora was the only woman Hae Sung ever loved. Nora can’t say the same. But her connection to Hae Sung is undoubtedly there, and undoubtedly strong.
The movie was written and directed by playwright Celine Song, in her feature debut. It’s got all the delicacy and humanity of great theater, conversations presented simply and acted impeccably. Song admitted that the story is based on her own experience; she was born in Korea, raised in Canada and lives in New York with her White husband, writer Justin Kuritzkes. Song prefers not to name the real Hae Sung, but he exists, and he really did travel to New York City, and the three of them really did share an odd, awkward drink together.
An easier, dumber story than this would make Hae Sung and Nora destiny’s pawns, soul mates separated by circumstance. Arthur even says as much, fully aware that his green card marriage with Nora has all the outlines of a loveless prison. But it’s not. Arthur is a great guy and Nora loves him a lot. Nora’s life, career and ambitions are all rooted in New York, and a return to Korea would feel like giving up. There’s also the fact that Hae Sung and Nora might not have worked as a real couple. Hae Sung is dashing and handsome, but he’s conservative and traditional in a way that might make headstrong, ambitious Na Young feel stifled. Hae Sung’s attraction might be based in mystery, the allure of the unfulfilled. Nora’s attraction might not be for Hae Sung, but for a home she loved and abandoned. If their relationship was permitted to run its course back in Korea, they might have broken up before they turned 18. If they got together as adults it would probably feel exhilarating for a few months, but over the long term it would yield years of pain and disaster.
These characters are very aware of these facts. They’re smart and level-headed, sometimes remarkably so. (If my wife openly flirted with an old boyfriend in front of me, I would be way less chill about it than John Magaro. Sorry hun.) But their emotions persist in spite of all their rationality. Hae Sung and Nora love each other, and it takes all their good judgment and self-control to keep themselves from ripping their lives to shreds and hurtling at one another. But passion unfulfilled still makes for great drama. And Past Lives is certainly that.
Long-term monogamy gets a bad rap these days. I like it, personally. I’m closing in on ten years with my wife, and we have a degree of trust, comfort and intimacy that I’ve never experienced with anyone else. I probably can’t experience it with anyone else, not at this point, not this deep into my life. If I can get virtue-signal-y for a second, it seems dumb to me to sacrifice that intimacy for the thrill of finding a new partner. But I still idly wonder what my life would have looked like if I never met Michelle. Would I have married someone else? Probably. Would I have been as happy? Happier? I don’t know. I can never know.
That’s the dark sacrifice of every marriage, of making a major commitment to anything, really; you open yourself up to intimacy and growth, but you cut yourself off from new possibilities. Even hip, monogam-ish open marriages have to deal with this, because you still have a primary partner. I’m reminded of another film that dealt with the dark realities of monogamy, but from a very different angle; High Fidelity. In that movie, John Cusack allows the promise of new relationships and “better” romance to destroy what he currently has, over and over. In one of Cusack’s signature rain-soaked monologues, he says “I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future. I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.” He’s right, of course. But Nora is the flip side of that coin. She has a happy life with Arthur, but the mystery of life with Hae Sung will be a splinter in her mind for the rest of her life. Nora gets the better deal, I think, but it’s not perfect. Nothing is.
The film ends with Hae Sung returning to Korea and Nora returning to the arms of her incredibly understanding husband, weeping into his shoulder, over what specifically we’re not sure. It’s elegant and beautiful, understated and pure. It also made me think “If Celine Song divorces Justin Kuritzkes in real life, I’m gonna hate this thing.” The whole point of the story is that the past should be left in the past, that good people can leave it there. But I don’t know, if you love your ex so much you make a whole God damn fucking movie about it maybe your marriage isn’t built on the stablest foundation. We’ll have to see. Praying for you, Justin.