Eternity Film Review: A Love Triangle That Sets the Afterlife on Fire!
Eternity Film Review: It is a complicated matter that of Eternity, imagined by “With Eternity David Freyne creates a brilliant romantic comedy set in the afterlife, told as a trading post. A pretext to explore the complexity of long relationships contrasted with idealized love. A film that pays homage to the classic comedies of Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch, with a fresh tone and an artisanal, theatrical visual approach. Despite a certain predictability, the film lives thanks to the excellent performances of Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, and Callum Turner, who drive the story and allow a reflection on memory, identity, and love. Beautiful (beautiful?) the idea that after death one can live forever in an afterlife where almost everything is allowed, with some undeniable positive sides. For example, like that, when one dies, one goes back to the age when one was happiest, or that every sin is forgiven (but there are no divine gods or judges), with each person leveled on the same level regardless of the life he led when he was, well, still alive. The human being, basically, is terrified of death and, above all, of what may or may not be in a hypothetical afterlife, so much so that he has always been driven to imagine a possible world beyond the veil, exploiting popular culture and specific beliefs. Eternity, imagine this “beyond” as a train station, where souls gather and have time to decide their Eternity. Deceased travelers arrive disoriented. Death is not a situation and an easy condition for humans to digest, despite being the only truly mathematically certain aspect of life. Running trains and the feeling of panic fill the heart with Unwonted, torn between her two great loves. How can you choose between the first husband, whom the woman loved madly and who has been waiting for her for 67 years, and the second husband, who has shared an entire life with her, between joys and sorrows?
The last great decision that souls must make, a fundamental decision, and from which they will not be able to go back, since it is precisely about Eternity. The A24 stands out again in the original and dynamic cinematography, with a comedy that mixes romantic, dramatic, and fantasy elements with the plot, in a decidedly original combination, which entertains and moves while opening up to a decidedly interesting interpretation of the afterlife. The script manages not to take itself too seriously at the right times, using comedy and brilliant jokes to joke about life, death, culture, society, in short, everything. The director David Freyne builds an extremely energetic and attention-grabbing narrative, while also taking advantage of a cast that is not only individually capable, but also proves to possess an uncommon chemistry. Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, and Callum Turner manage their screen presence in a completely natural and vivid way, building a love triangle that brings laughter and drama at the same time, two different stories involving the same woman. Three profound interpretations, which know how to move sinuously between genres, and which give the public back a sense of empathy, of involvement so strongly that it triggers the most absolute attention in it.
Eternity Film Review: The Story Plot
Everyone is crammed into a timeless waiting room, a place of transition modeled on the shapes of a generic hotel designed with retro hues and extended towards infinity. Impersonal space that pushes disoriented (and unfortunate) guests to transit towards one of the equally infinite eternal dimensions. Real worlds modeled on the more or less unbridled desires of the deceased: Space World, Mountain World, Bromance World, No Men World, and so on. Some are full, some even banned (ah, the good old racist worlds…). In short, it is not easy to say, and it is not easy to do, as Mr. and Mrs. Larry (Miles Teller) and Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), who have been together for over sixty years, discover at their own expense. He chokes on a pretzel and precedes the terminally ill by a week. They meet again right on the gong of the time given to Larry, at the right time to choose the future together. Except that… Joan meets Luke (Callum Turner), her first great love and husband, married at a very young age, before he left and died in the Korean War. And she hesitates, because he’s been waiting for her for six decades – you can do it, you just need to get a job in “the hotel”.
Things don’t go so well for Larry then, who, despite the help and support of his own “coordinator of the afterlife” (Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, always a great performer), rediscovers himself as part of a competition that he didn’t see coming, and in which he realizes he has much less sprinting. On this triangle, the screenplay by Freyne and Pat Cunnane sets up a romantic comedy with a tantalizing premise and is built entirely on expectations: on the memories that torment and nail during these potentially interminable expectations and on the choices to be made while cooking in the soup of an insolvent dilemma. Eternity puts Joan in front of one impossible choice. It does this by setting a fresh tone that looks at the brilliant comedies of Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch. Those who, in their apparent lightness, were able to talk about profound issues, as happened, for example, in the apartment or write me post office. An increasingly less frequent cinema, but Patrick Cunnane’s screenplay, from 2022, in the Blacklist of the most interesting scripts in Hollywood without a producer, has been brought back to the surface.
Eternity Film Review and Analysis
A genre that of the romcom, plastic and evergreen, perfect swing of emotions and drives, an ups and downs of gags and bickering with the most ungovernable of feelings, love, involved. And Eternity works with completeness on all the typical chimes, respecting the stations of a roller coaster of disputes, approaches, rejections, complete with an inevitable final race to decide the winner of a contest that is worth eternal life together. Because, as we know, this is a cinematic trend that cannot ignore the maxim of amor omnia Vincit, a narrative culmination in which love can and must triumph over everything. But the point of the discussion is never the finish line, but rather the stumbling blocks put between the feet of characters tossed between strengths and weaknesses. Because the question is what kind of love you aspire to. That of the good man Larry, grumpy but solid? Or that of the impetuous man, Luke, passionate and prone to blatant gestures? Joan – an Olsen with the idea of acting a hair too much in immediate nervousness – racks her brains in doubt, while she is also hammered by two very distinct ideas of personality and masculinity, both in their own way defective and insecure.
It’s a shame that some ideas of the strong premise are left unexplored, such as the tempting opportunity to make the protagonists interact a little’ more with the mechanisms of this afterlife with very rigid rules (when they break them, there are who knows what consequences) and perhaps make them cross paths with some bad faces (those forgiven people mentioned at the beginning), to build comic opportunities on them. Eternity still does its own, balanced right between the planes of humor and tenderness. Eternity feeds on a brilliant, almost dreamy photograph, which is made up of bright colors, including blue, white, red, and all pastel shades that give the film an extremely calm atmosphere, in contrast to what is happening. There are, however, moments in which photography becomes dark; they are those places where doubt arises in the characters, conflicting feelings grow, and sadness and resignation give way to comedy. Freynehe was able to make full use of colors to express not only the mood of the protagonists, but also the difficulties intrinsic to a post-mortem system that does not allow second thoughts. The images he created for the Alidilà reflect the defects of the earthly world, which seem to repeat themselves in a continuous and endless loop, leaving no room for change, even with eternal rest.
However, there is always the exception, that person who strikes a tear from the rule that completely changes the cards on the table. All combined with dynamic editing, which is often made up of quick and fast dialogues, composed of witty jokes that make fun of society and entertain the audience. Eternity is a film as simple as it is profound, which mixes different genres, including comedy, romance, and fantasy, to create a film that manages to strike the viewer, amuse and move him, while investigating one of the doubts that most torments human beings: what happens once you die? David Freyne builds a dynamic and visually brilliant narrative, which uses rhythmic and witty dialogue to entertain the audience, using a decidedly trained cast that has been able to create unique chemistry. What supports the film are the performances of Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, and Callum Turner. Three actors capable of playing with registers and ranging from romance to anger, from comedy to sentimentality, always remaining credible. In a story like that of Eternity, based precisely on emotions, the protagonists of the triangle needed to be able to drive the contrasting realities that move them. Just as the public needed to be lost in those feelings.
The visual system of the film also plays an important role in this. David Freyne chose an artisanal approach and, at times, a theatrical one. The different areas of the exchange station, as well as the Archive, a sort of gallery where you can review key moments of your existence represented as tableaux vivants in movement, give Eternity a unique style, as fictitious as it is warm. The limit of the film is in its predictability. Freyne never ventures risky choices or does not sufficiently delve into the many worlds between which souls can choose to spend Eternity, precluding a range of visual ideas that would have benefited the film. What, however, makes Eternity a film worth watching is the reflection on memory, identity, and love. Joan’s choice is not just a statement about who she loves, but who she is as a woman and a human being in general. Eternity, by definition, does not contemplate time, and behind her decision, Joan must first of all place herself at the center. We do not define or complement each other. And to be happy, for Eternity, we must first of all understand who we are. Not a bad lesson for being “just” a romantic comedy.
Eternity Film Review: The Last Words
Eternity is a film as simple as it is profound, which mixes different genres, including comedy, romance, and fantasy, to create a film that manages to strike the viewer, amuse and move him, while investigating one of the doubts that most torments human beings: what happens once you die? David Freyne builds a dynamic and visually brilliant narrative, which uses rhythmic and witty dialogue to entertain the audience, using a decidedly trained cast that has been able to create unique chemistry. With Eternity, David Freyne creates a brilliant romantic comedy set in the afterlife, told as a trading post. A pretext to explore the complexity of long relationships contrasted with idealized love. A film that pays homage to the classic comedies of Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch, with a fresh tone and an artisanal, theatrical visual approach. Despite a certain predictability, the film lives thanks to the excellent performances of Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, and Callum Turner, who drive the story and allow a reflection on memory, identity, and love.
Cast: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early, Olga Merediz
Director: David Freyne
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
