Everyone knows a couple who are so perfect for each other that you can’t imagine them apart.  We think of them as soulmates, two people who were destined to be together.  The notion that there is someone out there who is only meant for you is an incredibly romantic one.  You hope that you’ll find that special someone one day, and consider yourself fortunate when you do.  Sometimes, finding your soulmate is incredibly easy.  Past Lives tells the story of Na Young (Moon Seung-ah, Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min, Teo Yoo) who, beginning when they were twelve-years old, are obviously meant for each other.  They’re inseparable at school, laughing at their private jokes.  Na’s outgoing and friendly personality and Hae’s quiet and sensitive nature compliment each other perfectly.  When their mothers arrange a playdate, they are immediately convinced that Na and Mae will be married one day.  Unfortunately, fate intervenes when Na’s parents decide to emigrate to Toronto.  This is devastating news for Hae, who is the hopeless romantic between the two of them.  Na is also sad at leaving Hae behind, but she embraces this big change in her life.  She wants to become a writer and tells her classmates that Korea has never produced a writer who won the Nobel prize for literature.

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Children notice everything that their parents do, especially when their parents are misbehaving.  Parents tell their children not to swear, only to do it themselves.  They smoke, drink and do drugs even after warning their kids of the dangers of those things.  Every instance where a parent exhibits bad judgment or is hypocritical, a child is there to bear witness.  Children don’t understand everything they see, and certain behaviors are mysterious without the life experience to process them.  Sometimes their underlying meaning becomes clear later in life.  Until that time arrives, however, all we are left with is puzzling memories that we know are significant but don’t know why.

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In retrospect, Christopher Nolan was always the obvious choice to make a movie about Robert Oppenheimer.  As a director, Nolan has spent most of his career making movies with puzzle narratives.  I can think of no other director who could better relate to the man who solved the biggest puzzle of physics: how to harness atomic energy, the underlying power of the universe?  Given how simpatico Nolan is with his subject, it seems that it was only a matter of time when Nolan would make a movie about the father of the atomic bomb.

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