One night in 2018, at a bar in the East Village, Celine Song fell through a hole in the space-time continuum that altered her career.
Song, the Oscar-nominated director and screenwriter of the bittersweet romance “Past Lives,” was having drinks with her husband, playwright and novelist Justin Kuritzkes, and her childhood sweetheart, who had traveled from South Korea to New York to see it. As she sat between them, translating from English to Korean as best she could, she realized that she was actually doing much more than that.
“I was actually translating between two parts of myself,” Song said in a recent video interview from his home in Manhattan. “The surprising thing is that each party was a mystery to the other. At that moment I was encapsulating my past, present and future all at once, and it felt like my whole life was collapsing. “There was a new revelation about what it is like to live in such vast amounts of time and space and leave parts of ourselves behind as we move.”
Teo Yoo and Greta Lee play childhood friends reunited in “Past Lives.”
(Twenty years of rights)
This sensation is at the heart of Song's first film, which was also nominated for best picture after becoming a critical and word-of-mouth darling sensation at last year's Sundance Film Festival. “Past Lives” tells the story of Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), 12-year-olds in South Korea who were once in love with each other, and who are now trying to reconnect in their 30s. Like Song, Nora immigrated to Canada when she was a teenager and then to New York, where she became a playwright. Hae Sung stayed in Seoul and became an engineer. Moving forward in two 12-year intervals, the film raises questions about love, time and geographical barriers that strike a chord with all types of viewers. (It also includes a recreation of that amazing night at the bar.)
In conversation, Song presents himself as an open-hearted philosopher, happy to talk about issues of the heart and mind and grateful to have left the cinema with such enthusiasm. It was a daunting process, she says, one that her 10 years as a New York playwright helped her prepare for.
“The list of things I didn't know was incredibly long,” he says of film. “The list of things I did know was one thing, which was what was in the script: story, character, how I see things, what I think will work. Then, each day, the list of things I don't know gets smaller, and then the list of things I do know starts to grow. I had my script, which is really my model. That's my little book and I'm thinking, 'Okay, this will conquer everything.' This will kill the dragon.' That's what I felt.”
Song infuses “Past Lives” with a natural bilingualism, alternating between Korean and English throughout the film and eventually including both in the same scenes. She credits the success of “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho’s 2019 Korean social satire that took home the Oscar for best picture, to the fact that no one in the production process of “Past Lives” raised the alarm. about the use of subtitles in your film.
The language divide is a central element of the film, representing both Nora's assimilation into American culture (the adult Hae Sung chastises her for her rusty Korean) and the tension between Hae Sung and Nora's American husband (John Magaro). , who speak each other's language. tentatively but respectfully when they first meet. Magaro actually speaks some Korean (his wife is Korean American), but Song wanted him to downplay the character; Similarly, Yoo, who was born and raised in Germany and studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute in New York, speaks English much better than the man she plays.
But for Song, the idea goes far beyond verbal understanding.
Greta Lee and Teo Yoo star in “Past Lives.”
(Jon/A24 Package)
“In the final section of the film, Nora is very immersed in the culture of being a New York artist, and Hae Sung is very immersed in the culture of his own work life,” he says. “Even though they share Korean culture, there is a level where they really aren't even part of the same culture anymore. “That complexity is a fundamental part of this story, and it always was, because I wrote it, and every day I am dealing with this contradiction of being many things at the same time.”
Now Song has one more piece of identity to work with: the Oscar-nominated filmmaker. Coming relatively late to the game, she displays an instinctive touch for form and a sense of visual grammar that would be expected from someone who's been doing this for years.
Fortunately, she plans to stay.
“It was a complete revelation,” he says. “Every day you show up and learn something new. I had never experienced anything so exhilarating. “I'm going to continue making movies until I die.”
