Originally posted on LinkedIn on March 5, 2024
I’m not a big follower of awards shows. However, I do not live under a rock, and I know Oppenheimer, Chris Nolan and Cillian Murphy are doing more than ok in the pre-Oscar runup, and some pink feathers have been ruffled. Not having watched Barbie, I have no view on that controversy, but I think it would be a particularly satisfying celebration of International Women’s Day (this coming Friday) for Korean-Canadian director Celine Song to take home an award on Sunday for A24's Past Lives.
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Florence and I watched it together a few weeks ago and we both agreed it’s one of the best movies we’ve watched in a while. The semi-autobiographical film explores the complicated human emotions that immigrants feel in leaving their “home” culture behind and adopting new norms. The protagonist, Na Young leaves a childhood crush behind when her family moves from Korea to Canada when she is 12. After losing touch for many years, they find each other on social media but their relationship is not to be as Na Young is not prepared to give up a blossoming career for love. She marries an American, Arthur, but Hae Sung’s visit years later stirs up memories of the past, nostalgia for formative experience, and introspection about unrealized dreams and what could have been.
I enjoyed Celine Song’s patient pacing, tender treatment of complex emotions, and lack of contrivance in invoking the tensions that allow these ideas to play out. Past Lives is noteworthy for trusting its audience to unpeel its many layers without resorting to manipulation. That approach made a particularly strong impression on both Florence and myself; between us we moved countries half a dozen times in early childhood before re-settling from Asia to the US as newlyweds:
- What does it mean to be far away from family? Is the resulting experience freedom or restraint?
- How does one survive immersion in a completely different culture – how people talk, dress, eat, celebrate, socialize, achieve, fail, propagate? Does your legacy culture retain practical worth or only sentimental value?
- Should one seek conformity and homogeneity? How different is too different? How similar is too similar? What is the reference point for homogeneity? In conforming are you adopting a new value system? And in so doing are you unconsciously repudiating another?
- What does one teach the children? If they learn from hybrids, are they hybrids? Can hybrids succeed or be accepted? If children reject aspects of one culture or the other, are they also rejecting you, or either home country?
And the award goes to...the woman I admire most this IWD, my wife Florence, my better half throughout this 20 year journey.
J