How do you compete with a memory? The truth is, you can’t. And Larry (Barry Primus) is about to learn that the hard way.
After dying by way of choking on pretzels, Larry (played by Primus in his old age, then Miles Teller for the rest of the film), finds himself in the afterlife. This is not heaven, though – in “Eternity,” when you die you must choose one place where you’d like to spend the rest of time. But, whatever your version of paradise – the beach, the mountains, an endless art museum – once you choose, you have to stay. There’s no changing your mind.
Larry knows that his wife Joan (Betty Buckley) is also about to pass on, so he asks one of the many members of the afterlife workforce – his Afterlife Coordinator (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), as they’re called – if he can wait for her before making any decisions. Once Joan arrives (played by Elizabeth Olsen in the afterlife), they can make that eternal decision together.
There’s just one problem: Joan’s first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), who died during the Korean War and has been waiting for Joan to show up ever since. That pesky memory has reared its ugly head.
Despite the apparent choice at Joan’s disposal, the core issue with “Eternity” (directed by David Freyne and written by Freyne and Pat Cunnane) is that there’s really only one outcome that makes sense. And when the movie tries to pretend that there’s not, it only proves to be frustrating. “Eternity” is light and fizzy with fun performances, particularly from Teller, who finds his inner octogenarian with ease. But, while it’s certainly entertaining, the lack of tension while you’re waiting for the inevitable to happen – or getting annoyed when the movie tries to pretend like something else will happen – makes “Eternity” feel far longer than its hour and 52 minute runtime.
While “Eternity” is interested in exploring the dichotomy between young love and love that lasts a lifetime, there’s no real depth to that exploration, nor is there depth given to the world which hosts it. Whoever came up with the different ideas for each eternity – from Capitalist World to Weimar World (now, with 100 percent less Nazis!) – clearly had a ball, getting as creative as possible for what amounts to small flashes in the background. But the why of this sort of afterlife – an afterlife where there are rules aplenty, where you can’t freely visit your friends or family who have passed on before you – is never really fleshed out. There seems to be no functionality to these rules other than they need to exist for this plot to work.
In another world, it might be fine for something like “Eternity” to skate by on this easy, breezy chord. But it’s clearly aiming to make us really consider the complexity of the choice Joan has to make – the life she never got to lead with her one-time husband who died very suddenly versus the joyful, painful, magnificent, terrible, full life she led with Larry. Sorry, but it’s extremely difficult to sit through this movie without thinking: “There’s no way she doesn’t choose Larry, right?”
And there’s the rub. There is a swooning lilt to all of Joan and Luke’s scenes, but it feels so on the surface that it’s almost insulting that everyone involved expects us to believe this is a real outcome for her. Joan whispers Luke’s name like she’s in treacly romantic drama. Comparatively, she huffs Larry’s name out with annoyance, or fondness, or exasperation – or all three wrapped up into one, the full range of human emotion and a life lived together reflected in one word. A film would have to work a lot harder than “Eternity” does to make the audience believe Luke ever stood a chance.
Instead, what “Eternity” does is try and set up the audience to believe that Joan might choose Luke at the expense of the decades that she has spent with Larry, attempting to fool us into thinking – as Larry voices to Joan in one, painful moment – that she never loved Larry as much as she loved Luke. The movie justifies this contrived tension by making Larry’s faults out to be far larger than they are, and, unfortunately, turning Joan into a bit of a villain (it’s a testament to Olsen’s performance that she doesn’t fully step into that role).
All in all, the performances are solid. Olsen has always had an old-timey slapstick energy to her voice and physicality that plays very well here. Turner is appropriately handsome, a true puppy dog of a romantic. And Teller really shines, able to bring the hunched crotchety visage of his elderly counterpart to life with a furrow of his brow. But the story never really serves these three, forcing them to play into a concept devoid of the conflict it needs to work.