Past Lives

I think seeing a movie twice in theaters in the same weekend is a first for me. Glad it was Past Lives. This plays SO well in theaters. Please don’t wait to see this at home.

After being pretty speechless after the first viewing, I think I finally have some words. My favorite thing about Past Lives is how grounded in reality the whole thing is. Everyone is adults and acts like adults throughout the whole thing. This isn’t a movie about anyone trying to “steal away a girl” or “a girl thinking about running away with a guy” - I feel sorry for those who’s read on this is so small. For so long Hollywood has trained us to think in those terms and not in the terms of real life. Destiny and how we end up where we are is so much bigger than I choose you, it’s bigger than any one of us. Nora herself thinks she has more control over her destiny than she actually does - she tells her class early on that she chose to go to America. In reality, her parents made that choice for her and she likely had no say. We like to think we have more control than we do because it doesn’t make us feel so small.

Even when we get where we are supposed to be, what ifs still pop into our head. Many will try to squash those what ifs or apply a false narrative to what we are having them. But what Past Lives whispers throughout its meditative and slow build is that those thoughts about what ifs don’t mean we are unhappy or a bad person, they simply mean we are human. Sometimes pondering them is the only way to move forward, even if that’s a hard thing to do.

I love this movie so much.