The trailer for David Freyne‘s contemplative comedy Eternity (2025) presents the premise that Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) must make the afterlife choice of spending eternity with Larry (Miles Teller), the husband with whom she had a family and grew old with, or Luke (Callum Turner), her first matrimonial love who died at war and represents a profound what-might-have-been. The film itself holds true to this synopsis but ends up being much more about and placing the thematic center on Larry as a character.
The trailer (also) keeps as a surprise that the film opens with Joan and Larry well into their grandparent years and on their way to a gender reveal party of a future grandchild. They get on each other’s nerves in the car, Larry has a thing for pretzels, and Joan’s health is on the decline in such a way that they’ve decided not to bring it up at the party. The introduction makes the rest of the movie more satisfying as the characters and the viewer ponders what choice Joan should make within the parameters of how the afterlife operates:
~ Once you die and regain consciousness on a train, you end up in a bus terminal that has hotel-like accommodations for every newly departed.
~ You take on the appearance and age of the time you were the happiest, but your initial outfit seems to be whatever you wore when you died or were close to it.
~ You have seven days to decide to choose an eternity that is a geographic location as in a setting (the mountains or the beach), a city (Paris in 1955, a specific neighborhood), or a third place (a museum, a library, a mall surely).
~ You cannot change your mind once you’ve committed to and arrived at an eternity destination. If you escape and attempt to make your way back to the terminal, you will be chased down and then chucked into the void of darkness.
~ Each eternity has an Archives tunnel that allows everyone to see vignettes of key moments of their life.
I laughed a lot, got teary-eyed, wondered what I would do if I were in any of the main characters’ positions, and thought Da’Vine Joy Randolph was a scene-stealer in the role of one of the Afterlife Coordinators. Among her many memorable lines:
~ Everybody gets an eternity — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
~ All we are is a collection of memories.
~ Doing the right thing can sometimes feel terrible (paraphrasing).
I’d wanted to watch this movie on Thanksgiving but it wasn’t in the cards. I’m happy I got to see it today with just two other people who also laughed as much as I did at the relevant moments.
Pic creds: Youtube screengrabs
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