Skip to main content

Til Death do us Part

I really enjoy a good afterlife riff. Whether it is something poignant like A Matter of Life and Death, After Life, or Nine Days or something lighter like Defending Your Life, Soul, or The Good Place, it’s ample ground to both have fun and speculate on the meaning and totality of our existence. We don’t know what awaits us on the other side if anything at all, and so these kind of stories are a good way of reckoning with those questions while on earth. It’s also a space for tremendous creativity.
Eternity, a movie by David Freyne, isn’t particularly creative -at least not in its approach to the breadth and architecture of its fairly bureaucratic afterlife, which has shades of several of the examples listed. But what it does do interestingly is present a scenario that none of these other films had really yet thought of. What if David Niven’s character wasn’t able to come back to Kim Hunter and had to wait for her to pass and be united with him again? What if she had found lasting love with another during that time, and what would happen if he was here in the afterlife too?
That is the conundrum of this movie, which introduces an elderly couple Larry and Joan (Barry Primus and Betty Buckley respectively), who have been together for sixty-five years. Prior to Larry though, Joan had been briefly married to another man called Luke who was killed in the Korean War. At a gender reveal party for their great-grandchild, Larry chokes on a pretzel and dies. He then finds himself in the afterlife as a young man, now played by Miles Teller, where he is faced with choosing one of many idyllic eternities for his soul -but he is unwilling to make the irreversible commitment without Joan. She however succumbs to her cancer not long afterwards, but when she comes to the afterlife (now Elizabeth Olsen) and reunites with Larry, they are both shocked to find Luke (Callum Turner), who has been waiting in purgatory for her for sixty-seven years -and she must now choose between her husbands who to spend her eternity with.
It’s an amusing premise that the film has real fun with, particularly over the dynamic between Larry and Luke, pitted against each other for Joan’s eternal companionship. While Larry and Joan had a much longer, more lived-in relationship, Luke represents a life she never got to have and could maybe approximate to some degree in this next life. Also, the romantic notion of his yearning for so long is frequently evoked to Larry’s cynicism. It boils a little bit down to the fantasy vs reality romantic conundrum, and Joan’s choice isn’t made any easier by the competition it manifests as, where her assigned afterlife coordinator Ryan (John Early) encourages her more in the direction of Luke, while Larry’s AC Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) is thoroughly -if sardonically- in his court.
Divine intervention temporarily changing some of the arbitrary rules of this afterlife allows Joan a few trial runs with each of her husbands as a glimpse of what an eternity with them would be like. An amusing scene here involves Larry and her going to a beach afterlife that turns out to be quite crowded and not very accommodating. Alternatively, a mountain community afterlife with Luke seems a lot more charming and peaceful. Neither of them though are anywhere as interesting as the endless collection of afterlives offered to them in the Junction, including the aesthetics of every religion and some amusing ones such as a nudist paradise, a (currently full) man-free eternity, and 1930s Germany -but without the Nazis.
Freyne is not too bothered by the smattering of utopias (and the suggestion of their imperfection via the ones our characters experience), nor does he explore much beyond a few jokes the unsettlingly corporate character of the whole afterlife machine, with its lack of personal freedom and flexibility. It is left in a kind of neutral moral area, distracted by funny little aspects, some borrowed some genuinely inventive -the crummy living quarters for permanent residents of the in-between Junction a notable touch. On the other end of things are the Archives, long tunnels of museum-like exhibits that play out chronological episodes of a person’s or couple’s life memories, removed from specific contextual circumstances so that the background fades into crude illustration -but the people glow. It is a space of significant revelation for Luke and later Joan, a very stark -and perhaps too pointed illustration of the film’s ultimate intended theme.
Or rather one of its intended themes, the amalgamation of them and route towards a resolution are rather haphazard -the film trying to have its cake and eat it.  The obvious way to achieve that -the three just picking an eternity jointly with the insinuation of potential polyamory is nixed pretty early by Larry and Luke’s dislike of one another. But as things go along, a manner of solutions, from the two husbands beginning to respect one another to the option of Joan choosing neither of the guys, are raised and rejected. The scenes are played decently by the actors but feel like Freyne is consciously exercising each potential ending before deciding on one he likes best.  And naturally the ultimate ending is a disappointment as a result. The theme that brings it about on the lived-in nature of love is solidly related, but it winds up playing like a sudden heel-turn after so much sentiment was poured into an earlier conclusion, which itself is just as noble. Plus, the power of an act of self-sacrifice in a love story only has any value if there is real sacrifice. The ending to Casablanca would be meaningless if there was an indication Rick would be “rewarded” for giving Ilsa up by her coming back to him. And Freyne doesn’t appear to understand that, to the detriment of the movie’s final choices.
There is still some nice messaging in Eternity, and its vision of the afterlife is modestly fun if not so developed or original as it might be. The rapport between the three leads is pretty entertaining as well, especially Teller and Turner -the latter of whom does well to defy expectations of this upstanding 1950s fantasy soldier. But it gets muddled in its storytelling and efforts to establish thematic integrity -and for its romantic and existential musings, makes some pretty glaring oversights (neither the parents of Joan and Larry nor their children and grandchildren are considered much through the movie). A curious, modestly enjoyable take on an interesting premise, but nowhere as profound as it aspires towards.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Disney's Mulan, Cultural Appropriation, and Exploitation

I’m late on this one I know. I wasn’t willing to spend thirty bucks back in September for a movie experience I knew was going to be far poorer than if I had paid half that at a theatre. So I waited for it to hit streaming for free to give it a shot. In the meantime I heard that it wasn’t very good, but I remained determined not to skip it entirely, partly out of sympathy for director Niki Caro and partly out of morbid curiosity. Disney’s live-action Mulan  I was actually mildly looking forward to early in the year in spite of my well-documented distaste for this series of creative dead zones by the most powerful media conglomerate on earth. Mulan  was never one of Disney’s classics, a movie extremely of its time in its “girl power” gender politics and with a decidedly American take on ancient Chinese mythology. It got by on a couple good songs and a strong lead, but it was a movie that could be improved upon, and this new version looked like it had the potential to do that, em...
1 comment
Read more

The Subtle Sensitivity of the Cinema of Wong Kar-wai

When I think of Wong Kar-wai, I think of nighttime and neon lights, I think of the image of lonely people sitting in cafes or bars as the world passes behind them, mere flashes of movement; I think of love and quiet, sombre heartbreak, the sensuality that exists between people but is rarely fully or openly expressed. Mostly I think of the mood of melancholy, yet how this can be beautiful, colourful, inspiring even. A feeling of gloominess at the complexity of messy human relationships, though tinged with an unmitigated joy in the sensation of that feeling. And a warmth, generated by light and colour, that cuts through to the solitude of our very soul. This isn’t a broadly definitive quality of Wong’s body of work -certainly it isn’t so much true of his martial arts films Ashes of Time  and The Grandmaster. But those most affectionate movies on my memory: Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together , 2046 , of course  In the Mood for Love , and even My Blueberry Nig...
2 comments
Read more

The Prince of Egypt: The Humanized Exodus

Moses and the story of the Exodus is one of the most influential mythologies of world history. It’s a centrepoint of the Abrahamic religions, and has directly influenced the society, culture, values, and laws of many civilizations. Not to mention, it’s a very powerful story, and one that unsurprisingly continues to resonate incredibly across the globe. In western culture, the story of Moses has been retold dozens of times in various mediums, most recognizably in the last century through film. And these adaptations have ranged from the iconic: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments;  to the infamous: Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings . But everyone seems to forget the one movie between those two that I’d argue has them both beat. As perhaps the best telling of one of the most influential stories of all time, I feel people don’t talk about The Prince of Egypt  nearly enough. The 1998 animated epic from DreamWorks is a breathtakingly stunning, concise but compelling, ...
Post a Comment
Read more