In the month of late November, afterlife romantic comedy Eternity was released in theatres. Using his visual direction and contrast, director David Freyne touches on the existentialism of love and happiness in the afterlife.
Freyne supposedly grew up in a strict Catholic environment where the afterlife options were limited. When developing this film, he created it as a range of options and expressions for what happens after death.
In his interpretation for when you die, you take the form of your “happiest moment”, which symbolizes the subjectiveness of true happiness, and the moments of freedom and love.
Joan Cutler, previously widowed by her husband in the Korean war, remarried Larry Cutler and lived a happy life in a lovable suburbia. After half a century of marriage, Larry dies, and Joan soon falls with him to meet in the afterlife hub, The Junction.
The Junction, a place for the deceased souls to choose which eternity they spend in, gives a one-week choosing period, infinite options that cater to every person, and afterlife coordinators to help.
In Joan’s situation, she is faced with a unique dilemma. She is surprised with her first husband Luke, who waited 67 years for her in the hub, and Larry who she’s spent most of her life with.
Joan ultimately has to choose between Luke, who was her young love and had the unknown of what could’ve happened if he survived, and Larry, who she has the enduring love and was married to for 65 years.
In the process of Joan’s decision, Luke and Larry begin a little competition for her affection and the eventual spot of who she’ll spend eternity with. Throughout the choosing journey, they both spend one day with her in eternity for a mini-preview of the future she could have with them. Through these experiences, Freyne contrasts possibility with permanence, allowing Joan and the audience to feel the weight of both choices.
As Joan navigates these emotional choices, the film once again introduces one of its most interesting concepts when entering the afterlife. Each individual appears as the moment of their “happiest self.” This choice reframes joy and fulfillment as fleeting, defined by a single moment rather than an entire life.
For Larry, this realization is quietly devastating for him. He comes to understand that Joan’s happiest version of herself was before their life together, eventually pushing him to convince her to pick Luke. Joan ultimately listens, but as a surprise, her decision does not bring the fulfillment she had hoped.
Within Luke and Joan’s eternity, Joan repeatedly returns to the Archive, a space that allows people to relive moments from their lives. Instead of revisiting her youth, or moments with her first husband, Joan finds herself drawn to memories of Larry, her children, and the normal domestic moments that shaped her later adulthood.
These scenes suggest that happiness is not always aligned with passion and adventure, but instead familiarity and emotional grounding, which is something Joan only fully understands once it is gone. She makes the illegal escape out of her current eternity, and back to Larry once again.
In its final moments, the film is less concerned with resolving Joan’s choice, but really on examining why it is overall impossible to make a clean one. Freyne creates the afterlife as a place of emotional calculation over reward, challenging the idea that happiness is singular or permanent.
By letting love, regret, and memory exist at the same time without easy closure, Eternity becomes a thoughtful reflection on what it really means to choose a life, and what parts of it stay with us forever.
