The impossible choice.
A young Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) is widowed young when her husband, Luke (Callum Turner), dies in the Korean War. In the following years, she meets Larry (Miles Teller) and marries him, spending 65 years married to him.
Then she dies.
And when faced with an eternity in one place in the afterlife, she has to choose between her first husband, whom she lost young, and the husband she spent her entire life with and built a family with.
When I heard the premise for Eternity, I placed myself in this dilemma, and although I often find it a problem that the choice is all too clear, I found that I truly had no clue what I would do; it sounded like a nightmare. The movie opened to Joan and Larry at the ages they passed at, in their late eighties, bickering in the car like an old couple over where they should go for the next vacation, a clear parallel to their differing views on where to spend eternity.
They were cute, but they had clearly lost the spark and passion in their marriage that had faded over time. I figured that one of the characters would immediately become the “unlikable” one of the love triangle, the one that nobody is really rooting for, because it’s clear she should pick the other.
But unlike in many other love triangles, I found that Luke and Larry were similarly matched; they both cared for her, and they both had unique characteristics that made them likable, and it made the choice even more difficult.
In many romance movies that follow the typical love triangle trope all three characters end up underdeveloped as the writers use the other characters as crutches for a lack of personality, but that really wasn’t the case in Eternity, each character felt like a unique person outside of their romance and plot lines and more like they could exist without it, something I think is scarce with this trope.
The film walked the perfect balance between philosophy, romance, and comedy as it bounced between scenes that made me cry in theaters to scenes where I worried I was laughing a bit too loudly for a public place. Around halfway through the movie, I realized that no matter who she ended up with, it was going to be a devastating ending, and I wasn’t wrong, but it was still incredible.
As a huge Wes Anderson fan, I really like bright visuals, unique camera work, and dynamic settings, and I think it incorporated all of these flawlessly. I didn’t feel like I was watching another Netflix Original movie with poor lighting and the same tried and true shots, but I felt like I was watching something unique.
The bright colors, the wide shots of the settings, and the attention to detail in a movie that didn’t necessarily require it only made me love it that much more. The main setting, the afterlife “limbo,” was gorgeously constructed and reminded me of The Good Place, one of my favorite sitcoms.
The afterlife can be a difficult topic to portray well in film, especially when it’s an unconventional idea such as this one, but the world-building and added details throughout the movie were well incorporated, and lengthy scenes of explanation didn’t feel like overexplaining for the audience, but rather they flowed as a natural part of the plot. This innovative idea for what a different kind of afterlife could look like was incredibly interesting to see played out and was a solid foundation for the movie. I would watch other movies following a similar premise.
My last note in my love letter to this movie was the amazing acting on the parts of all three main characters. In films, I prefer quick, dialogue-heavy scenes that give the characters more depth, and none of these characters feel like the typical romance archetypes that have been repeated countless times in the last few decades.
One thing I noted was that while Joan appears young, frozen at the happiest moment of her life, she still dresses and speaks in a fashion that could be considered “elderly,” and this attention to detail that she died in her 80s and still spoke like she was in her 80s in many ways was incredible. I like that the film didn’t push aside the fact that she was meant to be old; she had changed immeasurably in the years she had spent with Larry. Similarly, Luke spoke and acted more like he was in his 20s, the age when he died, and Larry also dressed and spoke like he was in his 80s.
They didn’t revert all the characters to the personalities of their youth just to make them more appealing to the audience; the characters felt true to themselves and like who they would’ve been after the lives they’d led.
Eternity was an incredible film that was both a philosophical evaluation of one of life’s hardest and most unique choices and a great character study into each of the main three, as well as a piece offering a laugh amongst the serious topics.
Eternity made me want to go back to the theaters and see every ending possible to the movie played out, but for now, I am content with the one I have.
