Review Written By Jesus Unzueta
Some crossings you pay for with your whole life
Throughout my life I have felt the pull of others on my path, both good and bad, as I’m sure everyone has. Sometimes people enter our lives and the reason is as clear as day, while other times the true meaning one has in your life isn’t quite clear until enough time passes. Despite this, everyone’s life is theirs and theirs alone, perhaps because of fate, or destiny, or providence.
Celine Song’s debut film is a beautiful, heartfelt, and pensive examination of this divination. That the push and pull, ebb and flow, of all our lives, simply is what it is. We make our decisions, we meet others, by circumstance or by decision, and the rest follows. When it comes to love, Song understands that the most powerful emotion of all blurs that line beyond obscurity, filling one with doubts, obsessions, wonders, regrets, and a need for closure. Having felt the pull of love in contradictory directions, I understand it now more than I ever have.
If two people get married there are 8000 layers of inyeon between them
The story of Na Young (later known as Nora) and Hae Sung is understood through the concept of inyeon. That providence that necessitates their meeting, their love, and their place in each others’ lives. They talk of past lives, as that is how inyeon is manifest, and see it as the only explanation of the love they feel for each other and their conjoined paths in each others lives and hearts. Nora states it’s just something said to seduce people when she meets her husband-to-be, yet her and Hae Sung’s repeated mentions of it maintain its significance.
But this is real life, not a fairy tale. Despite the charming luster and dream of a fairy tale love or an unchangeable connection, circumstances, divergent paths, and ultimately inyeon all push Hae Sung and Na Young apart. The former an idealistic romantic who cannot break free from tradition and expectations, and the latter a pragmatic and ambitious free spirit. Their differences lead them down divergent streams, settling them in two unique lakebeds for their seedlings to sprout, or as Na Young puts it, “their roots to find their place”. This is reinforced through the film’s equal adoration and presentation of Seoul and New York, the bustling and gorgeous lakebeds our star-crossed lovers find themselves in for the duration of their separation and lives.
Nora and Hae Sung move on, their communication dwindles, they meet New romantic partners, to differing levels of success, and eventually the stars align for their fated reunion. Nora’s writing dreams have not faded, but have tempered in the face of the reality of living in a new country, breaking free from her homeland’s traditions, and meeting a partner she never foresaw. Where she once wanted a Nobel Prize and then a Pulitzer, she now wants a Tony, and rather than lament the changing of ambition, she embraces her fate, her inyeon as she puts it: “this is where I ended up. This is where I’m supposed to be”. Conversely, Hae Sung has become more entrenched in Korea as they fulfill their military service, begin to date another Korean woman, and work an “ordinary” job that overworks and leaves him feeling insufficient in the face of his larger than life romantic dreams.
For me, you are one who leaves. For your husband you are one who stays
I have felt the pull of love for those around me, romantic, familial, and platonic. I have acknowledged how the tiniest of details and changes resulted in my life being the way it is. I have been in Nora’s shoes, to feel as though my dreams must be tempered and brought down to reality, just as I have felt Hae Sung’s willingness to cling to idealistic dreams of what I felt must be or perhaps how I wanted them to be. There are no do-overs, no pause buttons, and I’m not a baby anymore that can remain in a dream of the world and life I wish to inhabit. My life is mine own, and those I choose to love will be in my life as long as they are meant to. The way in which a love seemingly not meant to be, but still ever present is shown through Hae Sung and Nora’s lives resonates with me so strongly I can’t put it into words, as I have questioned whether the love I have for some will ever change from what I want it to always be into what I know may one day only be a memory. Nora tells Hae Sung that just because the little girl he loved is no longer in front of him does not mean she wasn’t real, and it makes me cry. Hae Sung realizes that inyeon is not just the past lives one has lived, but perhaps the life one lives now, as he ponders what they are to each other in the next life.
She doesn’t know. Neither does he. But they will see each other then. Perhaps in my youthfulness, I haven’t completely locked away my hopeless romantic idealism, and perhaps one day I won’t be a completely rational and objective thinker. In the face of my closest friends and family I wish to follow them wherever they go or to see them prosper should our paths diverge. In the face of those I love deepest, I accept that for some I may be one who stays or one who leaves. Perhaps I’ll be the lover that was never seen coming or the lover who was left behind, regardless, I’ll see them then.
A Fistful of Film 