If you could go back to the past, what would you want to change?
The Korean film Will You Be There follows Han Soo-hyun, a doctor diagnosed with cancer whose greatest wish is to see his former lover one more time. After taking part in a volunteer medical mission, he unexpectedly receives a bottle of pills that can transport him through time. But if he could return to the past, could he really make up for the regrets of the past?
The Strange Wonder of Meeting Yourself
In Will You Be There, time travel is remarkably simple—all it takes is one pill. After falling asleep, Soo-hyun can physically travel thirty years into the past. Each pill allows him to make one trip, making the number of pills a crucial device in the film's dual-timeline narrative and the progression of its plot, while also laying a plausible foundation for the twist at the end.
If traveling back in time can alter history, it will also alter the present that follows from it. That means deciding what to change in the past becomes a choice, while the consequences of that choice can only be seen from the perspective of the present. This raises a series of questions: Which outcomes are worth pursuing, and which consequences can be borne? This dilemma over the price of changing the past allows the film to transcend a simple love story about making up for lost time and instead reflect on family, friendship, and the choices and sacrifices we make in life.
The film's greatest charm lies in the older Soo-hyun meeting his younger self. Although they are the same person, their different life experiences and mindsets often put them at odds. To the younger Soo-hyun, this strange middle-aged man who has appeared out of nowhere, claims to be his future self, and wants to see his beloved Yeon-ah, is clearly someone who is physically and mentally unwell—and yet he comes and goes without a trace.
The mixture of shock, suspicion, nervousness, and concern gives the younger Soo-hyun's journey from first encountering the older man to eventually accepting him plenty of dramatic tension, while also providing moments of humor. Once he accepts the older Soo-hyun, their relationship gradually develops the openness and sincerity of friendship, along with the earnestness of a father-and-son bond. Watching one person coexist with his future self in the present—or, in a sense, watching someone converse and work alongside his past self—is a remarkably strange and fascinating experience.
Family and Causality Beyond a Love Story
As a doctor, the younger Soo-hyun believes in seeing is believing and identifies as an atheist. Yet repeatedly encountering himself shakes his worldview, especially when the older Soo-hyun tells him about Yeon-ah's fate, something the younger man finds almost impossible to accept. No matter how unwilling he is, after repeatedly trying—and repeatedly failing—to change what is to come, he finally realizes that beyond his own desires, life contains many chains of cause and effect that cannot be predicted or controlled.
At first, I thought Will You Be There was a typical romance, with a man traveling through time because he has spent thirty years longing for the woman he once loved. But the emotional impact of the older Soo-hyun's interactions with his daughter goes far beyond the lovers' separation and loss. It also makes clear why he refuses to save Yeon-ah at the cost of losing his daughter. Especially moving is the father-daughter conversation by the water at sunset. They apologize to each other for their shortcomings and express gratitude for having had each other's companionship. Especially the daughter's poignant words, “Wanting to see, yet unable to” struck a chord with me and brought a lump to my throat, as they did for many viewers. We rarely get to have someone accompany us from beginning to end of our lives. Precisely for that reason, the moments in which we meet and accompany one another are all the more precious, and all the more worth cherishing.
Just as Soo-hyun is about to board the last flight before the flood, the sight of the abandoned baby in the old man's arms makes him hesitate. His subsequent choice reveals his kindness and sense of responsibility, while also making the mysterious gift of the time-travel pills feel like the inevitable result of a good deed leading to a good consequence.
There is also another thread of cause and effect running throughout the film: the older Soo-hyun develops lung cancer because of his heavy smoking, while the younger Soo-hyun heeds his friend Kang Tae-ho's warning to smoke less, allowing him to live long enough to fulfill their promise to meet again thirty years later. At one point, I couldn't help thinking that the whole movie was turning into an anti-smoking commercial, which brought a wry smile to my face.
A Masterclass in Elliptical Editing
The editing that depicts time travel is remarkably seamless, especially in the transitions from the past back to the present. One particularly smooth technique is the use of match cuts to connect the final location where the older Soo-hyun was in the past with a similar location when he awakens in the present. At other times, the film employs elliptical editing, allowing the audience to realize, along with Soo-hyun, that he has returned home to the present—while time slips by as water flows.
The sequence depicting Soo-hyun raising his daughter, Soo-ah, is a particularly impressive example of elliptical editing. The director uses a fixed camera position to keep the space unchanged, relying entirely on characters entering and leaving the frame, changes in their appearance, the passing of seasons, and alterations in decorations to convey the passage of time through the contrast between what remains constant and what changes. The baby in his arms gradually grows into a graceful young woman; the young father's dark hair turns gray; the dog that has been his companion for years quietly disappears... In less than two and a half minutes, one calm transition after another makes eighteen years pass in the blink of an eye.
Through their everyday life together, the bond between father and daughter grows ever deeper. One particularly poignant moment comes when the older Soo-hyun stands at the doorway, rising onto his toes to watch his daughter pull her suitcase away as she leaves home to pursue her studies. The scene is completely free of melodrama, yet that tiny gesture conveys the father's reluctance to let go and his deep concern for his daughter.
At the end of the film Will You Be There, Soo-hyun and Yeon-ah reunite in 2015 at the very same place where they had their date in 1985. He is holding a bunch of helium balloons, strikingly similar to the ones he held when he made his promise thirty years earlier. The same location, similar props, and the same line of dialogue make it feel as though time has come full circle, returning precisely to where it began, while the sunset adds a golden glow to their lives.Two scenes separated by thirty years overlap within the same physical space, bringing both the spatial and emotional arcs to a satisfying close.
Conclusion
Having traveled back in time and finally seen Yeon-ah, the woman he has missed for thirty years, the older Soo-hyun seems, in the end, content. He cherishes the family he has in the present, while also cherishing the love he once had. It is his younger self who cannot bear to let go, still determined to change what fate has in store.
Life does not always turn out the way we wish, but the consequences of loss do not necessarily amount to regret. Perhaps only after we have lived through a period of pain can we understand that what once seemed like a regret may have been another kind of arrangement made by fate.
Returning to the question raised at the beginning, perhaps the answer does not lie in changing the past to make up for our regrets, but in allowing our present selves to step outside the perspective we had while we were living through those experiences. Because of our psychological inertia, the regrets of the past can remain with us, carrying the feelings we had then into the present. Only by looking back at the past from a different perspective can we discover new meanings, and in doing so, come to see our present selves differently.
Perhaps the answer is to cherish the present, for the present, too, will one day become the past.
Rating
Director: Hong Ji-young
Rating: Unrated (roughly equivalent to PG-13)
Runtime: 1 hour 51 minutes
Release Date: December 11, 2016
Rating: 7/10
Where to Watch: Ganjing World
(Translated by Chat GPT. Chinese Version: 《你會在那裏嗎》影評：回到過去，就能彌補遺憾？
