One of the most anticipated films of the year alongside one of the most condemned films of the year, along with yet another Oppie shout-out, which deserves it.
You and I value "Past Lives" equally, but you have concerns that I don't. Doesn't a failure of open-endedness to "fully deliver" mean, merely, that the conclusion is open-ended? We don't know what Nora and Hae Sung will do or feel in the future, and neither do they. They're in the hands of a larger force that they can't quite fathom, which is what the movie wants us to grasp. It's sad yet at the same time enormous, universal, unanswerable. We struggle with that vast mystery and so do they. Also, if the signifiers are "artificial", why are we moved by this story at all? My review is here: https://moviestruck.substack.com/p/past-lives-2023
You and I value "Past Lives" equally, but you have concerns that I don't. Doesn't a failure of open-endedness to "fully deliver" mean, merely, that the conclusion is open-ended? We don't know what Nora and Hae Sung will do or feel in the future, and neither do they. They're in the hands of a larger force that they can't quite fathom, which is what the movie wants us to grasp. It's sad yet at the same time enormous, universal, unanswerable. We struggle with that vast mystery and so do they. Also, if the signifiers are "artificial", why are we moved by this story at all? My review is here: https://moviestruck.substack.com/p/past-lives-2023