(courtesy IMP Awards)
Does love survive death?
We all like to think so; the innately romantic part of ourselves, which might get trampled down by life but never really goes away, wants to hang onto the comforting idea that not even death can stand in the way of love, true love, a force so powerful it can defy the Grim Reaper’s deadly hand, the decay of the body and separation from the one we love.
Eternity, directed by David Freyne to a screenplay he co-wrote with Pat Cunnane, takes that idea of the enduring power of love and does some very creative, heartwarmingly intense things with it, offering up the quite imaginatively original idea that not only can it survive death but that it can do for an eternity safe within a confected heavenly reality of your own choosing.
Ah, but there’s the thing – in this take on the afterlife, there is no heaven or hell as such and everyone gets a shot at an eternal existence, which as hilarious Afterlife Coordinator Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) confirms to her newly-dead charge Larry Cutler (Miles Teller), means that living a good life pretty much counts for nothing.
Leaving aside the nihilistic, morally chaotic premise of such an idea, which disturbs, albeit briefly, Larry who has shuffled off this mortal ahead of, but barely, his beloved wife of 65 years, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) who is dying of cancer, what really catches your attention about life after death is that the first place any soul lands is The Junction, like a huge bus station, where you have a week in nice hotel-like accommodation, and yes, you can eat and drink to your heart’s content, and longer in less salubrious rooms, to work out which scenario you want as your forever home.
But you have choose wisely because you only get one shot at it and if you change your mind, too bad because the only option, should you opt to flee your now-unwanted eternal reality is the black nothingness of the Void, which is policed uniformed officers who act with the grim alacrity of the Stasi.
So, it’s not all wine and roses and happy, cost afterlife.
But Larry is none too troubled.
He knows Joan sadly won’t be too far behind him, and when she arrives, they can pick their home for the rest of all time and settle in there, happy together as he believes they have been all their lives.
The fly in the ointment, and one that Eternity uses to full effect to both move and amuse and serve up a romcom for the ages, and literally, in this case, the ages, is that Joan’s first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), with whom she barely got to spend any amount of married life before he was shipped off to and died in the Korean War, is still at The Junction, having waited 67 years for Joan, his first and only true love, to arrive.
Thus, is set in motion the great dilemma of Eternity – will Joan, assisted by her Afterlife Coordinator or AC, Ryan (John Early), choose Larry, her husband of over six decades to fill in the long and hopefully happy years of her eternal life to come, or will she opt for Luke and see what life might have been like if he hadn’t died?
It’s a HUGE decision, and one made all the more pressing, not only by the fact that it’s a one-and-done deal, but by the competitive masculine hilarity of Larry and Luke who compete, with ever less grace and dignity, to convince Joan that they are her perfect companion for afterlife everlasting.
While there are quips aplenty and some very amusing moments, not only when we see Luke and Larry locked in juvenile but well-meaning competition but when the world-building of the afterlife is given free rein, looking like a cross between a career fair and a merch expo at a convention, Eternity is at heart a beautiful love story rooted in the messy reality of the fact that real love is never as easy or as pretty as it’s made out to be in fairytales and romcoms.
We’d all like it to be but after multiple kids and decades together, Larry and Joan, though devoted to each other – Larry, rather beautifully, tells Anna (who has many of the best lines and brilliant comic delivery) at one point all he has ever cared about is making Joan happy and that hasn’t changed in death – are feeling the weight of love getting bashed and crumpled and looking more than a little rough around the edges.
The question then becomes – does Joan choose the dependability and certainty of life with Larry as her eternal option so it’s just more of the same forever, or does she see what life with Luke might have been like if she and he had actually had the opportunity to live it?
Eternity has a lot fun with this, and the final act is a clever set of twists and turns where you can only guess at the ending, basing its verdant humour in really affecting emotion and some sage and empathetically rendered ideas of what love is really like when it comes face-to-face with the unrelenting reality of life down in the existential trenches.
There is a real heart to the film, and fervent intelligence too, and while it will have you laughing out loud frequently, it also is a sobering story to watch because it asks some big and extraordinarily hard to answer questions, which must find a resolution against the deafening noise of a ticking clock racing down to an unchangeable deadline.
As musings on the afterlife and the power of love to endure beyond death, Eternity is a gem of a film, funny, heartfelt, beautiful, imaginative and alive with ideas and the sort of raw humanity that tugs at your heart, gets you thinking about what you would do in a similar situation, and in the end reassures you that whatever the outcome, real love will triumph, even if its final form might surprise you and that it is absolutely worth fighting for, no matter what it takes.