Even More Persistence of Memory
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
Salvador Dalí’s most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory (1931), is a small part of the plot in Dalíland, reviewed far below, but we never get to see it in the film so I wanted to share it here in my extrapolation of its name to this current blog title because it’s a specific reference to a key flashback scene in that film as well as being conceptually connected to the main thrusts of both of these intriguing cinematic works which I couldn’t write concisely enough about to put either in my Short Takes section. However, I did have to struggle with myself over the ratings to give each film reviewed this week because not unlike Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan [review in our August 17, 2023]) where I just couldn’t go higher than 4 stars because I honestly believe it’s too long (not that I’m opposed to 3-hour-films, with The Godfather [Francis Ford Coppola, 1972] one of my 5-stars-standards [of what I've reviewed; there are many more over the decades), I just couldn’t take Dalíland up to 4 stars because I feel we need to see some of this master’s paintings in the film (maybe there was a copyright problem, but given the arc of the story I still insist on incorporating some of his grand output), just as I think Past Lives could be considered for 5 stars but upon reflection I don’t see it as quite a tent pole of cinematic achievement over the years in the same vein as those of The Godfather trilogy, Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), or any of the few others I’ve noted with that distinction. Of course, 4½ stars for Past Lives may end up making it my top choice for 2023 (no problem), but we’ll have to see how it all works out over the rest of this year's releases.
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
Past Lives (Celine Song) rated PG-13 106 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: We're in a bar where Korean Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), Korean-American Nora (Greta Lee), and American Arthur (John Magaro) are talking with each other as unseen patrons try to guess their relationships. We find out the long way as the action shifts back 24 years to Seoul where 9-year-old Na Young (Seung Ah Moon as Nora, then going by her birth name) and young Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) are classmates/friends who spend a lot of time together, even encouraged in that by their parents, but it comes to a quick end when Na Young moves with her family to Toronto, losing all contact with Hae Sung. 12 years later, Hae Sung’s still in Seoul having just finished military service, hanging out and drinking with his friends. Na Young, now going by Nora, has moved to NYC, is pursuing a career as a writer, discovers a Facebook post from Hae Sung who’s trying to find her. They connect via Skype, have many conversations, discuss visiting but neither can get away at present, then she puts their talks on hold to better focus on her emerging career even as he’s headed to China to see what he can find there. What she finds at a writers’ retreat in the countryside is a quick connection with Arthur which leads to marriage (she tells him of the Korean concept of in-yeon, which says if strangers meet they’ve had many past lives together, though she believes it’s just a façade for immediate seduction). In the present she’s a playwright, Arthur’s an author when Hae Sung contacts her again, comes to NYC to visit. They tour the city, chat a lot, then she finds out he’s no longer with his girlfriend because the woman finds him ordinary: he's not making enough money.
Arthur can sense there’s still an attraction between his wife and her long-ago-friend, but she assures him their marriage is all she wants, even as he raises the possibility of how their lives might have been different if she’s met someone else first at the retreat. The 3 of them go to dinner, then to the bar where the film began, as the conversation shifts to just Korean between Nora and Hae Sung, Arthur patiently watching them, no idea what they're saying but it gets more intense. ⇒Hae Sung also offers missed possibilities of how he and Nora might have more-fully-connected years ago. Back at Nora and Arthur’s apartment Hae Sung talks of possible past lives between him and Nora, wonders what the next one might be, they don’t know; after she walks him to his Uber ride she collapses, sobbing in Arthur’s arms.⇐ (Side note: When my wife, Nina, and I met, 36 years ago, a psychic told us we’d been together 63 previous lives, so, despite neither of us fully believing in that sort of thing, I understand Hae Sung’s sense of long connection with Nora, even if it’s just a myth.)
So What? You’d think for a film that could end up as my top pick of 2023 I’d have more to say about it—not that something I like can’t conjure up a wealth of words for me, as with my lengthy explorations of Barbie (Greta Gerwig) and Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)—it’s just that some artistic experiences (in film or other media) just seem so direct in impact to me I feel someone should experience them as they're presented rather than me trying to find ways of putting those famous thousands of words to stand in for notable pictures on screen. (Which doesn’t mean other critics can’t find a lot to say about something that leaves me semi-speechless, so if you want more detail than I’ve provided I’d suggest you explore Manohla Dargis in The New York Times, David Fear in Rolling Stone, Adrian Horton in The Guardian—or if you prefer concise and would like an addition to Two Guys in the Dark [don’t plan on me being restrained on a regular basis, though] you could read this review from Anthony Lane in The New Yorker.) Once you’ve begun indulging in the wide, wide world of critical responses to this film you might even want to connect with the Rotten Tomatoes link I cite in the next section here just below, as it offers a couple of hundred options to choose from.
So, while much could be said about Past Lives, the plot’s straightforward: 2 meet as children, 1—a girl—moves halfway around the world so they lose contact, she grows into a woman who wants to establish a career as a writer then by pure chance meets the man who’ll become her husband, years later the childhood friend tracks her down, comes to visit. That’s essentially all there is to this film regarding events, thus—unlike the plot complexities of Barbie and Oppenheimer—the impact here is in the subtle interactions of the 3 main characters focused on dialogue, facial expressions, body language. Past Lives is the diametrical-opposite of such fare as the Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, and The Fast and Furious series, so if you’re looking for something in those directions you probably should stay away from this sort-of-love-story that begins in Korea long ago, ultimately migrates to NYC where a potential triangle emerges among the main characters, although nothing short of repressed desire comes of it. (OK, I gave a bit of a Spoiler; sorry, but see the film anyway.)
Bottom Line Final Comments: Past Lives opened domestically on June 2, 2023 (may still be in a very few theaters), has made to date $10.7 million in box-office-returns (a little bit more worldwide for a $10.9 million total) so, if you accept my hearty encouragement to see it (don't ignore me where this one's concerned), you’ll most likely need to turn to streaming where you can choose from Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and other platforms with the only limitation being you need to spend $19.99 to buy, rather than rent, this film (I’ll say emphatically it’s worth it, even if you don’t normally build up a personal streaming library). The CCAL couldn’t be much more supportive as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are at an astounding 98% (not a fluke, as this represents 201 responses) while the Metacritic average score is an almost-unheard-of (for them) 94% (far and away the highest result of anything both they and I have reviewed this year). As noted way back up at the beginning of this posting, my rating of 4½ stars is a rare decision for me, the only 4½ I’ve given all year out of only 12 ever since this blog began in December 2011 (with only 12 5-stars ratings as well, none since a couple in early 2022); however, I was quite touched by the simplicity of honest emotions in Past Lives where both men in Nora’s life legitimately wonder what their situations with her might have been had just a few things been different in the flow of events in their past years.
I can fully relate to this—maybe it’s why I find this film so marvelous—because I unexpectedly met Nina at a 1987 Paul Simon Graceland concert in Berkeley, CA with likely no possibility we’d ever have run into each other again except as events unfolded that particular night; you can speculate forever, as the characters in Past Lives do, on “what might have been,” but unlikely connections provide a short window of opportunity that usually must be seized when it’s available as no second chances are likely to occur. The sorrow that comes for 2 of the main characters in Past Lives is a quiet manifestation of such a missed connection, with 1 of them weighing the “what might have been” against the reality of “what is,” as a one-time-potential-lover comes into, then goes from her life while the husband (with whom she has no qualms) is still there for her, even as he’s aware of the sorrow in his wife over her “might have been” flights of fantasy. Relationships sometimes come easy to some of us although it may be rare when they work out over the long haul, for others it seems to take forever—if at all—for a decent connection to occur, but even then there are no guarantees. Past Lives gently hints at all of this without getting melodramatic or harsh, allowing us to make tasteful observations that may ring true or remind us how fragile a seemingly-solid-interpersonal-commitment may be, depending on how we nurture it or how it may be assaulted by outside forces.
As noted, Past Lives may be my favorite 2023 film; if not, I truly look forward to whatever might be better. For now, though, I’ll just close these comments with my usual device of a Musical Metaphor, which in this case may be a more optimistic plea than any of our 3 protagonists are able to muster: the great Canadian singer-songwriter’s non-blaming-approach in “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” (on the 1967 Songs of Leonard Cohen album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-bJPmasXKs where he implores a former lover to ”Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme / You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me / It’s just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea / But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie”; as Hae Sung leaves, Nora’s “eyes are soft with sorrow” because, even with an invitation to visit him in Seoul, she’s clearly not ready yet to “say goodbye.” If I’m accurate in how you might receive this film, you may not be ready either to say “goodbye” when it’s over as it makes its impact efficiently, then ends.
Dalíland (Mary Harron) rated 16+ 98 min.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.
As a former art major myself, Salvador Dalí’s always been one of my favorite painters (given the complexity of his subjects, his exquisite command of representational technique even of the most fantastic elements on his canvases) so I was glad to find Dalíland available on streaming after its theatrical debut a couple of months ago (I’ll designate a bit of it in Spoiler mode as I’m not sure which of the events depicted are fictional). What we encounter in this film is at least rooted in fact as the famous Surrealist and his controlling wife, Gala (born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, 1894, in the Russian Empire; in 1917 she became married for a time to Surrealist poet Paul Éluard until they divorced, her later marrying Dalí in 1934; you’ll find considerably more about her than you’ll learn in the film by reading this article), as you can learn here, were in fact in one of their frequent residencies at NYC’s St. Regis Hotel in 1973 (flowing into 1974 for that portion of the film) as depicted, although her affair with Jeff Fenholt (Zachary Nachbar-Seckel) apparently came a bit later, but back in ’73 he was truly starring on Broadway in the title role of Jesus Christ Superstar (Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice).* In Dalíland the great artist is played by Ben Kingsley (Ezra Miller as the much younger Dalí in flashbacks), Gala by Barbara Sukowa (Avital Lvova as her younger self) with other actual folks including Amanda Lear (Andreja Pejić), a French model/actress/singer/media personality, etc. who served as Dalí’s muse for years (although not technically his lover as he seemed repulsed by female genitalia so seemingly the only woman he ever had sex with was Gala; he did like to clandestinely watch others in the act, though), hanger-on at Dalí’s lavish parties rock star Alice Cooper (Mark McKenna), and Dalí secretary/life-organizer (working within the constraints imposed by domineering Gala) Captain Peter Moore (Rupert Graves); possibly others in the cast also represent real people, but I couldn’t say who, even if you held a loaded paint brush to my head.
*When I lived in NYC (borough of Queens, community of Flushing) from August 1972-December ’73 I never went to the St. Regis—or anywhere else the Manhattan swells were likely to congregate—never saw Dalí anywhere, but I did see … Superstar on the Great White Way somewhere in that time-frame so I witnessed Fenholt doing a marvelous job in a spectacular production (along with Carl Anderson as Judas, Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene, both of whom continued those roles in the 1973 film adaptation [Norman Jewison] which opened on August 15 of that year, just after the play finished its original run at the end of June; Ted Neeley got the Jesus role in the film, after playing a smaller part in the Broadway production, so I must have seen him on stage as well but don't recall).
One clearly fictional character, though, is actually the film’s lead, James Linton (Christopher Briney), a young man who once studied art in college but turned to more business-oriented-topics, beginning in this film as an employee of Dalí’s Manhattan gallery where the master is scheduled to open a new exhibition in just 3 weeks even though he’s notably short on enough work for a reasonable show, so he’s under constant pressure from Gala and gallery manager Christoffe (Alexander Beyer). Dalí decides he wants James as his personal assistant during this pressure-cooker-time (though Gala’s consistently rude to him), when the artist gets an inspiration to put paint on the butts and beasts of naked models, then press those body parts to canvas or paper as the foundation for his new imagery (we never see much of the final results, so this whole scenario may be fictional too). Sadly, even though the show gets a positive review in one major paper, Dalí (along with angry Gala) is heartbroken he’s now being dismissed by the art establishment as none of the prominent critics even were assigned to cover the opening. In frustration he heads back to Europe while James is fired at the gallery, only to be taken on again by Captain Moore who sees potential in the youngster. (James also sees Dalí’s routine of signing stacks of blank papers onto which supposed-original-lithographs will be put, yet the likelihood is those will simply be cheap reproductions sold for much more than they’re worth, to feed Gala’s insatiable need for additional income to support her luxurious-lifestyle.)
As our story progresses we get a 1929 flashback of Dalí meeting Gala where his immediate attraction led to dependence on her for almost everything, but you can tell she does respect his talent (may truly love him) when she’s stunned by seeing his Persistence of Memory (Dalí has previously admitted to James he hates contemporary abstraction, feels he’s superior to other current artists but still lacks the abilities of titans such as Vermeer and Velázquez). James is easily seduced into Dalí’s swirl of sex and debauchery (actively with Amanda) but wants to protect his mentor when he finds Gala gave a prized-portrait of her by Dalí to her ongoing-infatuation with Fenholt, who intends to sell it to help finance the music studio he needs to further his ambitions as a rock star; yet, when James tell Dalí about this the old man turns on him but eventually confronts Gala, as he seems to finally be tired of her constant affairs. ⇒This film begins with actual footage of Dalí on the CBS game show, What’s My Line? (1950-’67) where masked panelist Arlene Francis guesses his identity, then we shift to 1985 to see him as old, frail. At the end we’re back to that year as James now has a small gallery in NYC’s East Village, Gala’s dead (1982), Dalí seems to be withering away in dementia (will die in 1989) but does see James who returns to the old man a book James compiled long ago of the artist’s intentionally-differing-signatures used to illustrate his ongoing-complexity.⇐
Despite my interest in/support of this film (with appreciation for another marvelous performance by Kingsley) the OCCU wouldn’t give you much encouragement with the RT positive reviews at a paltry 46%, the MC average score at a surprisingly-higher 59%. Its record during the theatrical release run (seems to be done now) isn’t so encouraging either with only $82.8 thousand domestic sales, a worldwide total of $477 thousand; still, I found it to be quite enjoyable so if you’d like to catch it on streaming you’ll find a $6.99 rental available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, etc. Or, if you just want to know more about Dalí you could explore this extensive site, but you also need to view some of his painting and learn a bit about them so go here for that experience (scroll down past the Dalís to also find some famous works from another Spanish master, Pablo Picasso). For my Musical Metaphor, I’m moving away from James back to Dalí in his insatiable devotion to Gala with a somewhat-Surrealistic-song from Bob Dylan, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” (on his 1965 Bringing It All Back Home album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZzyRcySgK8 where some lyrics seem to speak to the reverence this famous man had for his wife: “She knows there’s no success like failure / And that failure’s no success at all” […] “My love winks, she does not bother / She knows too much to argue or to judge,” but we privately get the sense he knows she’s not as fabulous as he’d like to believe: “My love she’s like some raven / At my window with a broken wing.”
Now, if you've got another hour to kill, here's a rambling aside: By putting Dalí with Dylan here I’m revisiting how I’d done that for one of my film history classes where I showed the nightmarish Dalí-Luis Buñuel collaboration, Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929 [21:26; this version has soothing music added]) but found watching it as a silent film (yet apparently at its premiere Buñuel played records for accompaniment) was just too quiet so I turned to Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde (1966) for "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," "Visions of Johanna," and an instrumental portion of "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." For me, these magnificent artists (Leonard Cohen too) easily harmonize in whatever strange explorations they choose to investigate.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options for consideration: (1) Barbie set to be WB's highest-grosser ever, Oppenheimer also making big bucks; (2) Negotiations between WGA and studios going nowhere; and (3) Nelson ratings service might partner with Amazon to determine streaming ratings.
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list). Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us! Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post. You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us at that site in order to do it (most FB procedures are still a perplexing mystery to us old farts).
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please
use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.
OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.
Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 16,069 (as always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers); below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (with appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):
