andy-buddy

[andy-buddy]

Why does living feel like a heavier choice today?

Every breath weighs more, every heartbeat feels more labored, and yet, there's nothing wrong.

Nothing meaningful, nothing meaningless. There's just a pit pulling me down, with the careful threat to collapse me at every step I take.

Her? I don't miss her. This isn't denial, I've honestly pushed past the spite and the pain into apathy.

Loneliness? Perhaps, but I have the loving friend group I've always wanted, patiently built up, and nurtured for such a long time..

Maybe I'm stagnating. Maybe I haven't grown in too long and my body responds in this way. Maybe I haven't opened up enough..?

I can only speculate, and really I just wonder what's wrong with me. If this is normal, I don't know how anyone could survive for long like this. I feel like this has been years in the making and the waves broke through. And they could overwhelm me any second I'm not paying attention.

[andy-buddy]

So, I watched Past Lives (2023) a few nights ago. I watched it at 5 am, alone, and going through a breakup. I don't think that changed how I interpreted the movie, but it definitely colored how I felt about it

I wanted to dislike its take on closure, remain pessimistic and cold, but it was so true to life, so honest to my own lived experiences, that I couldn't dislike it. I can't even decide if I like it, it just feels like a fact.

The take on closure that I walked away with was a pretty obvious one, almost a cliche one, where the closure never comes from any person or place, but from within. It seems like it's been oversaid and overplayed, but the way that Past Lives plays its hand with this theme is refreshing, as it just lets you sit in it and feel it for yourself, more than talk about how it is. You sit there in this awkwardness with these characters who are processing their closure in real time. And it works.

There are two parallels I would compare Past Lives to, when it comes to other works and media. The first is 5 Centimeters Per Second by Makoto Shinkai and the other is a lot of the short films by Wong Fu.

I think the first parallel to 5 Centimeters Per Second is fairly straightforward. A love in 3 parts, innocent and torn apart, strained but hopeful, and love lost but not forgotten. There's a difference in the kind of attitude towards the love in each work though, where PL manages to keep some of the optimism and joy in everyone's interactions, 5CMPS ends up just feeling nihilistic and negative, broken by the love that they lost and almost childishly gives up on a happy future with anyone else. PL's Teo, if compared to 5CMPS's MC ends up feeling much more relatable but also more sorrowful due to his optimism. Not knowing his intentions, because I don't think he knew his intentions when seeing Nora again, made it feel all the more miserable when he came back to see her.

... I think I'll come back to this post later and try to share more thoughts.