In “Eternity,” David Freyne and A24’s new film, Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and Callum Turner star in a new romance dramedy that’s set in the afterlife. With a premise of only having seven days after you die to decide where to spend forever, “Eternity” approaches existentialism and death with a layer of comedy on top.
When Teller’s character, Larry, dies after hitting his head, he ends up in the junction, a scene similar to a New York subway station that’s bustling with the recently dead. The little information about this place is from his afterlife coordinator, or AC, Anna, who Oscar-winning Da’Vine Joy Randolph plays. Larry learns that any eternity is possible here. The only catch is once you pick an eternity, that’s it.
Larry’s death is soon followed by Olsen’s character, Joan, who dies of cancer. They reunite, thrilled that there’s enough time for them to choose their eternity together. This happiness is cut short when Joan’s AC, Ryan (played by John Early), reunites Joan with her first husband, Luke, played by Turner. Luke’s been waiting 67 years to spend eternity with Joan after he died in the Korean War.
Immediately, these three characters are plunged into a love triangle, where overwhelmed Joan has to make the difficult decision of who to spend eternity with. Of course, she loves Larry, but Luke was her first love, who was taken away from her too soon. She never got a life with Luke, and Larry is all she’s known for decades. This decision is impossible.
Luckily, Ryan and Anna pull strings for Joan and allow her into two eternities for test runs spent with either Larry or Luke. In both, she experiences the ups and downs of their relationships, as well as facing difficult truths with each of them.
With an hour and 54-minute run time, not a second of it seems wasted as viewers wait for Joan’s decision. Just as things seem to settle, there are more twists, more arguments and more realizations that keep watchers on the edge of their seats the entire time.
Although the premise of this movie seems sad, it is so obvious that this is meant to make viewers feel light. Freyne, most recently known for his film “Dating Amber," is not only a fan of rom-coms himself, but also remarks on the ways films should be able to include both light-hearted moments and more emotional, moving bits.
“We’re making the audience kind of properly belly laugh and properly cry,” Freyne said in an interview with The Upcoming. “Which I don’t think we see enough now in cinema.”
Along with this, Freyne also speaks about how fun it was to create this version of the afterlife.
“We wanted it to feel chaotic,” he said. “We wanted it to feel like a reflection of the world we’re living in, which is, you know, consumerist and it’s all being sold … and slightly unpleasant in many ways. And I think there’s also really lovely comfort in that.”
In many other media that tackle the afterlife, there always seems to be a connection to the human realm. However, in “Eternity,” the junction is it. It seems daunting, even with Fryne’s inclusions of the ACs and comforting ideology of what comes after death. Still, the entire idea becomes extremely existential when viewers begin to think about where and how they’d choose to spend their eternity.
“I was filled with existential terror at the idea of having to spend eternity with literally anyone (in only one place you can never leave?! horrifying!),” one Letterboxd user said in a review of the film.
Taking a step back from the plot and characters, this film is visually beautiful. To start, the movie poster includes Turner, Olsen and Teller sitting in clouds. Their image is repeated, seemingly going on and on forever, which references how serious Olsen’s character’s decision is.
Music adds an extra layer to this film. It’s learned in the film that Joan adores Dean Martin, so Larry tries to set up a personal concert for her. Without any spoilers, it doesn’t go as planned, but Martin’s “Everybody Loves Somebody” is used multiple times in the film. Along with this song, the score is beautiful, instrumentals swelling at the perfect moments to capture the emotions of each of the characters.
In the film, the colors are cohesive, the costumes act as their own characters and the fantastical scenery makes perfect sense. In the junction, where people first start to choose their eternity, day and night are changed manually, using lighting and draped fabric to signal the change. This adds to how strange time becomes, how frantic but slow it all seems.
Every scene, especially ones taking place in the junction, is chaotic. Hundreds of people passing by each other, ACs trying to get their clients to make a decision, because the junction isn’t meant to be a forever place. They cannot have an abundance of people there clogging it up, especially when there are eternity to be lived.
But even with all this mayhem and grief, “Eternity” is still somehow satisfying. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that it takes something as terrifying and unknown as death and creates humor to mask it. Or, it’s because viewers can tell how much love and thought were put into the story, characters and world.
“I got to fulfill my childhood ambition of building my own afterlife,” Freyne said in a letter to A24 fans. “It’s a far cry from the Catholic one of my youth which told me exactly what to expect and that, for me as a little gay boy, was damnation. Yes, my junction has it’s flaws … but it is also a place where you get to choose your happiness, whatever that may be.”
