Sobbing. I was sobbing. Home alone, a rare occurrence as my husband and kids had travelled ahead of me to visit family, but I’d stayed back until I could join them after the workweek was over. Control of the TV was entirely up to me. It seemed like fate that, after about 15 minutes of unsuccessfully picking something to watch, I opened a less popular streaming app and a movie I’d read about on a list of 2023’s best movies was on $.99 special rental. 

Past Lives.

I didn’t even really register the title. In fact, once I’d started the movie, I forgot what it was called until I checked again after it was over. 

While I was sobbing. 

Past Lives follows a woman, Nora, who immigrates from Korea to North America as a child, leaving behind her first love. They then reconnect after many years apart. I don’t want to say too much and spoil the movie, as really, there’s not a lot to it in some ways. Not a lot of action, not many characters, no huge plot twists or complex details. It’s quiet, as much about what isn’t said as what is said to the point that when there is dialogue, each line carries more than its weight in meaning. It’s a beautiful film. 

The movie explores the idea of past lives in two ways. First, the characters talk about actual past lives—reincarnation, although they don’t use that term—and the resulting possibility of connecting with people over multiple lifetimes.

I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of reincarnation. Apparently, when I was a child, my siblings were reading a book to me about the Statue of Liberty. They tell me I pointed at a picture of the Statue and said simply that I helped build it. I don’t remember that incident, and I certainly don’t remember building the Statue of Liberty, but I like to wonder about it. In researching an essay in university about reincarnation, I read about a doctor who worked with children who have spontaneous memories of past lives. He would collect the details of these memories and then connect their story to people who had died shortly before the children were born. I haven’t challenged myself to decide one way or another what I believe about reincarnation, but I love exploring the idea.

In the movie, a recurring theme is the Korean-Buddhist concept of in-yun, very simply a term that describes connection between people (please look it up: it’s a beautiful concept that I do not wish to misrepresent or co-opt). When we sometimes come across someone and have that instant sense of deeper connection, that is about our in-yun. I have certainly felt this before—a connection with someone that feels so deep it must be more than the fleeting time we may have with them—maybe even beyond this lifetime. 

The other meaning of past lives explored in the movie is about the many lives we can live in one lifetime. And while I always love a good reincarnation conversation, this is what really spoke to me.

My immigration story isn’t as dramatic as moving from Korea to North America, but I can still relate to the idea of leaving a home and how that means a lifetime of severed connections. I’ve lived in many places. I have built little lives, and then left them. Started over again. Relationships blossomed and then faded. They float in my memory like so many little loose ends. I mourn the loss of them. I miss places I’ve loved. I carry all of these fragments with me, a collection of broken bits of things that were always beautiful, but fragile from the start.

In Past Lives, Nora grapples with these undeniable parts of her identity that will forever means she is, in some ways, not ever completely of the life she is living. She knows (and mostly accepts) that she will always be from somewhere else. Sometimes that is exciting, but it’s always a source of tension. For me, part of this ever-present feeling of disconnection, I think, comes from the fact that in every past life, I have left a little piece of my self behind. The discomfort is, in some way, a lack of wholeness.

Nora is described by her childhood love as “a person who leaves.” I think that’s when I started sobbing. I don’t want to be a person who leaves. I’m a homebody. I develop deep connections with place. I love in storytelling when the setting becomes a character. And I love people. I don’t want to hurt people. I always want to be a good person, a good friend. I want to be important to the people I love. I’m sentimental. But it’s true that I have also been a person who leaves. 

I guess the thing, though—the comfort—is that every departure is the step before a new thing is gained. “It’s true that if you leave you lose things, but you also gain things, too,” Nora’s mother says of their imminent immigration. It’s because of all those leavings that I have my collection of places, people, experiences, feelings, foods, memories that I carry with me. It’s sad, but also lovely. And when I talk about a lack of wholeness, I guess maybe that’s not entirely accurate, because while we leave pieces behind, maybe the things we gain and keep with us fill those gaps. And wow, isn’t that a beautiful image? 

“It’s true that if you leave you lose things, but you also gain things, too,”

Nora’s Mom in Past Lives

So anyway, I guess this is my review-essay of Past Lives. Go watch it. In Canada, it was available to me on AppleTV. It’s gotta be a 10/10 on the Bittersweet scale (a thing I’ve just made up). Let me know if it makes you sob, too. Thanks for reading.