Two days ago, I finally got around to watching Past Lives, a movie I had been eagerly anticipating for the past year and a half. Contrary to my first post, this will not be a review. Past Lives is a movie that is so intimately connected to me that any attempt to qualify it under the metric of analysis might be a disservice to my experience of it.
The movie breathed tenderness and vividness of authenticity within the realm of my experiences; it was as though the story was being woven within the tapestry of my life as I was watching it unfold, and all the efforts to be resistant to it were met with a reassuring look, like an invitation to continue watching fearlessly and trustfully.
But it was never forceful. This is a movie that speaks its truth unassumingly, almost in a self-effacing manner. It is no Before Trilogy or Eternal Sunshine (which I love). Past Lives lets its characters breathe and contemplate hard topics like fate, destiny, happenstance, cultural and linguistic differences, in a place of such delicacy and quietude that you can’t help but wanting to inhabit that space and find comfort in there too. Personally, I found myself fully immersed in this tranquil realm, allowing my thoughts to roam freely.
I have decided to share some of them here.
Most of my adult life, I was sure there were two Marcos coexisting within me. Upon my old therapist’s suggestion, we’ll call them Marco and Mark. Marco was born and raised in Naples, Italy while Mark spent most of his adult life in other countries, away from home. Because of the different environments where they respectively existed and grew, they both had a distinctive personality, spoke a different language, behaved differently socially, at times thought differently, and even had different ambitions.
I began ruminating on these often contradicting aspects of my personality when the relationship I was in started to lose its groove, very quickly became stagnant and eventually ended for no apparent reason. I had been telling myself that I was in love and there was no clear sight of why we were breaking up so why did I start doubting how much of me was in the relationship, which parts of me really felt that love I was professing, and which Marco was really exerting it?
Then, Covid happened. I was forced to come back home and grapple with feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and loss, just like the rest of the world. However, unlike most people who felt forlorn and longing to connect with friends and their external world, I found solace in looking inward and attempting to reconcile the parts of me I had thought were separate. My inquisitive nature was at its fullest here, and I was adamant to get to the bottom of this matter. In an effort to ascertain which salient life experience belonged to which Marco, I started visualizing Marco and Mark as two big puzzles, each having their own qualities. Soon hundreds of puzzle pieces were picked out and assigned to one of the two me’s. Which one was angry at that kid for throwing the ball in his face? Which one was mad at his dad? Which one got a degree? Which one got a teaching qualification? Which one fell in love for the first time? Which one moved to Spain? And so on..
Nevertheless, despite my concerted efforts to make sense of it all, I soon realized that I was wrongfully applying an unhelpful lens to this investigation, which not only did not reunify the separation, but it also exacerbated it. In other words, I was still seeing the two me’s as two separate people, and that was not my goal.
So, where was I now? In addition to the newfound glee of living in post-isolation community, sharing experiences with my loved ones outdoors, dating again, I started feeling this sense of long-lost belonging to my roots which provided me with a salve for my existential doubts: a new, yet unfamiliar peace of mind. The world was opening up, and so was I.
Shortly after, I left for USA.
Leaving again was not approached without a great deal of disconcertment. I thought I had found my peace, my place and my reason to be where I was… at home. I was not ready to follow Mark’s ambition. But I did because the opportunity to experience something so big was too enticing to pass on. Much like my other experiences abroad, I knew adapting to a new country and customs was going to be a relatively easeful endeavor. Luckily, the number of lives abroad had made me acutely aware of social customs and how to behave in foreign settings, so oftentimes my life in USA was like following a script. A charming, exhilarating, fun, wild script. And I loved it. After almost two years, I was exceptionally comfortable in my new life, so much so that I was able to convince both Mark, Marco and everyone around them that I was living my most truthful self, in my most comfortable space, my new home away from home.
But was I?
For Your Inconsideration 