Past Lives is one of the best movies of the year. But you knew that already. And if you didn’t: the A24 film has a 97 percent “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and even though we’re months away from so-called “awards season,” it’s already being considered for Oscars. But that’s not what this blog is about. It’s about social media. Before you boo me off the stage, please let me explain.
Growing up in South Korea, Nora (played by Greta Lee — who is having 2023 to remember with Past Lives and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — as an adult and Seung Ah Moon as a child) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo and Seung Min Yim) are childhood friends and burgeoning sweethearts until Nora’s family moves to Canada. Twelve years later, seemingly sometime in the mid-2000s, she’s living in New York City and he’s still in South Korea, and they haven’t spoken since their nearly wordless goodbye when they were kids. But they still occasionally think about each other, especially Hae Sung, who tries to get in touch with Nora on her dad’s Facebook page. It works: Nora messages him on Facebook, they reconnect on Skype, and the movie takes off from there.
Two things kept going through my mind while I was watching Past Lives. The first: when am I going to cry? (The final 10 minutes, it turns out.) The second: remember when social media wasn’t a necessary evil? Facebook is a safe space (but don’t use those words) these days for racist memes, pivoting to video, and election interference, but around the time this section of the movie takes place, it was a wholesome way to chat with friends, poke your crushes, and post AIM-ass song lyrics. I’m trying to not be nostalgic for a social media platform that began as a way to choose which of two girls was hotter, but watching Past Lives, I did fondly recall signing up for Facebook.
It was the summer of 2005, after I graduated high school and before I started college. I was visiting SUNY Purchase for a freshman orientation, and someone in the dorm that I would eventually live in told me about this website called Face-something? -nook, maybe? The moment I got home from the orientation, I fired up my mom’s desktop computer (shout out to the hours I spent playing Snood on that thing) and signed up. Before long, I was befriending the people I just met, and anyone with the same last name as me.
Past Lives took me back there like a cinematic Facebook Memory, before one of the world’s richest people bought Twitter and made “cis” a slur to own the libs, or something. Through Nora and Hae Sung, the movie shows the promise of what social media could be — a way for people to connect — and mercifully leaves out what it’s become. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to publish this, put it on Facebook, and stare dead-eyed at the screen until someone likes it.
‘Past Lives,’ which was written and directed by Celine Song, is in theaters now