Change Your Image
Happy_Little_Tree
Reviews
Past Lives (2023)
Touching tale of estrangement and immigration
Immigration is hard. Leaving your friends and relatives is hard. Learning languages is hard. However, most of the time, it is all worth it.
However, there are people who believe that life is by definition easier/better in an other country. They go through much pain and give up a lot in order to forge their life there. However, many years later, they might end up worse off than the family members that stayed in their country of origin. Usually, these are the people who try the hardest to justify their initial decision to immigrate.
When I saw the movie, it struck me as a heavy case of that.
In the beginning, a neighbor asks Nora's mother why they want to immigrate despite having good jobs. There are many valid reasons why a family would want to move from SK to North America. However, the answer that she gave felt very illusionary (USA has Nobel Prizes when Korea doesn't). They were moving there to chase a dream. Definitely not the right reason to uproot your whole family.
Then, the movie gives clues about the difficulties that Nora went through. We see her going from a friendly class in SK to being lonely in Canada. She says to Hae Sung that she used to cry a lot when she immigrated, but then she understood that nobody cared.
Nora breaks up with Hae Sung because she doesn't want to have gone through all that pain only to end up at her point of origin (Korea).
She doubles down on her investment in becoming extraordinary in her new country. She marries her husband in part to obtain a Green Card. It is established that they have a good relationship, but he does not feel that she loves him. In fact, he says that if she would've met someone else with his "credentials" at the right moment, she'd be married with him. In other words, Nora married her husband more out of convenience than out of love.
After Nora and Hae Sung meet, she says that he feels so Korean to her and that, when she is with him, she feels so American. Basically, the fact of growing up in America had an important impact on her values and character. She would've grown up a different individual had she stayed in SK. Nora even says that that girl (from SK) is gone.
However, that girl is not completely gone. Nora's husband mentions that there is a part of her (her Korean part) that he doesn't have access to.
We learn that Hae Sung has an average life with an average salary. There are some difficulties that he faces because he lives in Korea, such is unpaid overtime and military service. However, overall, he seems to be doing Ok for himself.
Nora, for her part, has not won a Nobel or a Pulitzer prize. She equally lives an average life in a small apartment in New York. She even jokes with her husband that it is not the "American dream" that her parents expected when they immigrated.
Nora broke up with Hae Sung because she was afraid to have gone through a lot of pain only to end up at her point of origin (Korea). However, at the end, she settled for an average life, not much different that she would've had in Korea. Arguably, she is even worse off, as she seems to be better suited with Hae Sung than she is with her husband. However, this is her life now. There is no way back.
The King of Pigs (2022)
Keeps you on the edge of you seat from start to finish!
Really strong, well written thriller that pulls you in from ep 1 and is entertaining from start to finish. It is dark and treats a heavy subject, but if you are ok with that, you will not be able to look away.
In my opinion, it is definitely the best k-drama thriller of 2022 and one of the best of all time.