‘Eternity’ Review: One Week to Choose Forever (Apple TV)
In the afterlife, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) has one week to choose eternity with either her lifelong partner (Miles Teller) or her first love (Callum Turner), who died young and has been waiting for her ever since. Streaming on Apple TV from February 13.
Classic cinema has returned more than once to the idea of the afterlife—everything that might happen once life is over. From It’s a Wonderful Life by Frank Capra to A Matter of Life and Death by Powell and Pressburger, from Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait and Alexander Hall’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan to more recent examples like Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life, films have repeatedly searched for metaphors to grapple with reflection, memory, and the meaning of a life lived.
Some of these films lean toward drama, others toward fantasy, spirituality, or comedy, but all leave room for emotion and introspection. Eternity opts for a light, comedic, and distinctly romantic tone. Even though much of the action takes place in a kind of limbo—a waiting room between life and “eternity”—at its core lies a surprisingly traditional, almost old-fashioned romantic triangle. In both its premise and the conservative nature of the choice its protagonist must make, it feels like a movie that could just as easily have been made in the 1940s or 1950s.
Larry and Joan are an elderly couple—by any reasonable calculation, around ninety years old—who have been married for 65 years, in Joan’s case a second marriage. She is terminally ill with cancer, but a foolish accident causes Larry to die first. Almost immediately, he wakes up—now appearing as a man in his thirties, played by Miles Teller—on a train headed to a vast distribution station. There, a perky assistant (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) explains the rules of this peculiar place to the bewildered newcomer.
As it turns out, everyone has one week to choose the version of Eternity they will inhabit forever, with no possibility of changing their minds later. These eternities are presented like exclusive clubs or gated communities, themed almost as if they were attractions at a convention: a 1960s Paris, a beach resort, mountain adventures, LGBTQ-friendly spaces, and a host of curious options (a Marx-themed one that’s already sold out, another evoking Studio 54). Their omnipresent signs provide a steady stream of visual jokes and background amusement.
Larry, however, wants to wait for Joan, whose time on Earth is almost up. What he doesn’t know is that Luke (Callum Turner), Joan’s first husband—killed in the Korean War—has been waiting for her in this same in-between place for decades. When Joan finally arrives, now played by Elizabeth Olsen, she is confronted with an impossible decision: which man will she choose for eternity? The husband with whom she shared most of her life, children, routines, conflicts, irritations, and compromises? Or the first love whose story was cut short after only two years of marriage, forever preserved as a promise unfulfilled? Was Luke her great lost love, and Larry merely a consolation prize—or is it more complicated than that?
Built around this dilemma, David Freyne’s film unfolds as a romantic comedy in which both men compete to win—or win back—Joan’s heart, hoping to be chosen for eternity. Tests, challenges, misunderstandings, and emotional confrontations are spread across a somewhat overlong two-hour runtime, all centered on defining which option truly makes sense for her. At its heart, the film poses a philosophical question: stick with what is familiar, tested, and ultimately satisfying despite its flaws, or take a leap toward a love that was barely lived but endlessly imagined? Since neither man is remotely interested in the idea of sharing, another possibility briefly emerges: what if Joan chooses to go on alone?
Eternity plays things lightly, allowing moments of genuine emotion without delving too deeply into religious or mystical territory. Pat Cunnane’s script keeps its focus squarely on the love triangle; everything else—the rules of the afterlife, the available eternities, the bureaucratic mechanics of this world beyond—exists mainly to serve that central conflict. Breezy, visually playful, and surprisingly conservative for a contemporary film, Eternity may not fully exploit all the possibilities of its imaginative setting, but it remains an engaging thought experiment about the choices we make in life—at least when it comes to love.
