by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, John Early, Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Intro:
… the strong performances, panacean sense of humour, and thorny but level-headed approach to the idea of love everlasting make up for most of the lulls.
The idea of an afterlife is inherently overwhelming. Big pearly gates, fields of burning sulfur, a scale weighing a heart against a feather with a croc-headed chap licking his chops behind you, a grand drinking hall where the greatest of warriors swap stories… or maybe it’s just a movie theatre where they play nothing but Friedberg/Seltzer movies. Yes, what may lie beyond the veil could be terrifying.
But as films like Beetlejuice have famously shown, making existence after death into something recognisable, even mundane, doesn’t make it less unsettling. If anything, it just makes the whole deal weirder.
Eternity, from Irish writer/director David Freyne (Dating Amber), sets up his vision of the afterlife by taking a titbit of recurring sentiment about Heaven, of a place where all your loved ones are waiting for you, and turning it into a bedrock for raw romantically-tangled discomfort.
More specifically, it’s the story of recently-deceased Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), who is given a choice of who to spend her afterlife with: her first husband who died in the Korean War (Callum Turner’s Luke), or her second husband, who arrived here days before she did (Miles Teller’s Larry). She only gets one chance to choose, and it’s for… well, eternity.
Set against the backdrop of an existential transport terminal (reminiscent of a line from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods: “If Hell is other people, then Purgatory is airports”), there is a perpetual sensation of unease throughout. With all its supposed efficiency, variety of increasingly-buckwild travel destinations (the Weimar Republic option creates endless questions), and strict security presence (guess Matthew 18:18 was all too accurate), there is no real comfort to be found here. It’s all (knowingly) artificial, like a timeshare pitch that never ends.
Of course, Freyne and co-writer Pat Cunnane aren’t necessarily invested in the raw logistics of such an arrangement; this isn’t the kind of romance that will tear down this clearly-compromised system in a fit of rebellious fervour. Instead, this story is more focused on how human beings try and navigate these anxious environments. The script is upfront about how horrific this situation is for all three parties involved, and while some of that is down to competitiveness on the part of the guys, there’s a healthy admission that… well, there is no perfectly happy ending here. Any one decision will cause heartbreak, and for all their respective flaws, none of them are treated as if they should go through that. Only that they might have to.
Not that this is an entirely gloomy affair. Far from it; there’s plenty of laughs from the frank surreality. There’s also a certain sense that despite (or maybe even because) of the Pride-And-Prejudice-on-ayahuasca circumstances of the plot, the film and even the characters in it are having fun with the potent romantic drama. As strong as the central trio are as performers (Miles Teller especially puts in some of his best work since Whiplash), it’s Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early as two Afterlife Coordinators who help keep things stable. They are in full Team player mode, championing their respective suitors, and giving incredibly adorable reactions to the expected romance developments.
That might be the film’s single greatest strength. Beyond its existentialism, or its grounded and frequently-uncomfortable character dynamics, or its satire of popular conceptions about the Christian afterlife, it’s honest and giddy about its own existence as a romantic love triangle dramedy. That thrill and anticipation of weighing up the options (even the not-so-obvious ones) and maybe finding someone specific to root for; this is what makes the big-screen romantic experience. Sandwiched between its quaint aesthetics and its more modern perspectives on the promise of everlasting happiness, there’s an admirable earnestness in the way that the film weaves through quite a few familiar beats within its genre, but without it feeling strained or obligated. The stress is real, which makes the crowd-pleasing intent, the want to affirm that love still prevails, feel warranted. Sappiness has its time and place, and there’s a lot of time in eternity for that to happen.
Considering the bleakness that creeps through every frame, Eternity is remarkably breezy and fun. There’s some definite dad-bod-itis to the narrative structure (quite flabby in the middle), but the strong performances, panacean sense of humour, and thorny but level-headed approach to the idea of love everlasting make up for most of the lulls. The complexity of the film’s emotional wavelength gives it a distinct flavour that sets it apart from other rom-coms. It embraces the unease of the darkened tunnel as readily as the relief of reaching the light at the end.
