‘Eternity’ Review: A High-Concept Rom-Com with Minimal Results
While ‘Eternity’ boasts a compelling concept, the movie’s repetitive structure leaves much to be desired as it trudges through a predictable conclusion with little to no emotional impact.
Visualizations of the afterlife in film and television are always intriguing to this critic, because it’s the one thing that unites all of humanity: we live and die without knowing if there’s anything in store for us after we move on from this Earth. Yet, what if there was? This is the question at the center of David Freyne’s ‘Eternity’, which visualizes a limbo world where a recently deceased human can choose where they’d like to spend “Eternity”. The worlds are varied, and often humorous, and it seems like a complicated decision for many, because once you choose your Eternity, you can’t change it, or else you will be stuck in “The Void.”
Hmmm…does that remind you of a recent television title that treated, in some way, the same subjects – a limbo-like world introducing various alternate realities where the ones that stray from their pre-conceived path are sent into a void? Never mind the film’s impeccable craftsmanship of its world, recalling the vintage look and feel of Loki. Where did you get that idea from? In all seriousness, the movie’s hook is interesting enough for even someone not fascinated by death to be curious about entertaining the idea that this imaginative scenario could perhaps be real. An “Afterlife Coordinator” tends to your needs and is with you every step of the way, before you make the irreversible decision to become an eternal being in a world you’d like to be in forever.
That sounds like a scenario worth developing, especially when focusing on the love triangle between recently deceased Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) and the two men she married over the course of her life. The first, Luke (Callum Turner), tragically died in the Korean War and never lived to grow a family with Joan, while her second husband, Larry (Miles Teller), has been by her side for 65 years, and sadly passed away after humorously choking on pretzels. Larry is the first to wake up in the afterlife, where he’s greeted by Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), his afterlife coordinator, and meets Luke at a bar without knowing who he is.
Things get more awkward when Joan shows up, and it’s revealed that Luke has been patiently waiting -- and working in the afterlife -- for the past sixty-seven years, in the hopes that she would join him and they would choose their Eternity together. The problem is that Larry also wants to do the same, and Joan is now stuck between choosing who she wants to spend an eternity with or choosing neither and joining her friend Karen (Olga Merediz), who also recently died, to her Eternity.
It's easy to see where the movie is going, and that’s where Eternity began to lose me. While Freyne wraps his picture in a neat retro bow, filled with as many vintage details as one can insert in a film, from its title card to the use of miniatures, and even Ruairí O'Brien’s photography imitating the emulsion of 35mm film, the moral conflict at the heart of the picture is obvious and telegraphed from the start. As soon as all the pieces are introduced, the emotional attachment becomes minimal, since it’s easy to guess the picture's narrative and thematic beats, no matter whether more dramatic elements are added to complicate the relationship Joan has with both Luke and Larry.
To their credit, Olsen, Teller, and Turner are fantastic, and they are the primary reason the film is at least worth watching until the end. The latter, especially, has always had an old-school appeal (the camera loves him), which was further exacerbated when he starred as Major John Egan in Apple TV’s Masters of the Air. The sense of alchemy feels palpable, and the tension between Luke and Larry is a pure riot to watch unfold. Freyne also doesn’t shy away from illustrating the characters at their most vulnerable, especially considering how their deaths have affected them at a profoundly psychological level. Waiting sixty-seven years for your wife to join you, without knowing that she has remarried, will invariably take a toll on him when he makes the realization that she’s moved on, or at least decided not to wallow and build a life she’s proud of.
Of course, she hasn’t truly moved on and still has strong feelings for Luke as much as she has towards Larry. They’re both important in her life, but the choice she has to make doesn’t feel urgent, because the predictable nature of the story sticks out like a sore thumb, even when Freyne and his co-writer Pat Cunnane attempt to complicate things a bit. We know where this is going. It’s all written in the sky, no matter the overlong permutations it takes before the movie abruptly ends with a conclusion all of us saw coming a mile away. And it’s a shame, because the ideas presented here are genuinely compelling and thoughtful enough to warrant a cinematic treatment.
Freyne’s film goes nowhere but in cyclical directions, then sags into an overlong denouement to ensure he gets the last tear out of the audience. But when one is feeling the artifice of the movie peer through at every turn, it’s hard even to shed one tear, as impassioned as the acting may be, and as detailed as the artistry behind the project is. It may be one of A24’s better “studio” efforts they’ve released this year, ever since they wanted to branch out on more commercially appealing films instead of sticking with their “elevated” brand, but Eternity won’t be remembered as one of their finest projects either, especially when the pacing is so languishing that the movie, while watching, feels like an eternity…