Eternity: Was Poly Not An Option?
I watched Eternity twice. Once alone in my dorm (with an Apple TV free trial), and a second time with my friends (still on an Apple TV free trial). As I finished watching with my friends, a conversation ensued about how we all similarly felt that different relationships weren’t valued the same. From anecdotes about friends who became distant after getting a romantic partner, to the strange notion that romantic relationships were the missing piece to living a full life. While Eternity sent the message that love is an action that is defined by continuous journeys, my friends and I found that it illustrated the fascinating reality of the values we define love and our relationships with.
Eternity, directed and co-written by David Freyne, navigates the difficult decision Joan must make on who she will spend her eternity with. Having recently died a week after her husband, Larry, Joan is reunited with him, but also with her first husband Luke. Luke died in war and waited 67 years to find her and spend eternity together. A competition ensues between both men, leaving Joan in a state of confusion, movement between choices, and fears about what she will leave behind. However, for myself and the Letterboxd commenter who asked “Is poly not an option?”, this debacle feels wholly unnecessary. After all, if you get to pick your dream eternity, why would you have to choose between those you love?
As the film goes on, we are introduced to the key rules of the afterlife. You get a week to move from the transition place to your eternity, and once there you cannot leave. This creates a careful decision to be made regarding where you will go, who you will go with, and what regrets it will leave you with. With the dreamy and seemingly perfect Luke, Joan is enthralled in the nostalgia of their past and the possibility of her future. With Larry, there is endless comfort in how they have grown with each other through decades of life lived together. Both men are set on Joan deciding, even as she offers for them all to go to the same eternity. They refuse, each seeing Joan’s love as the victory they need to validate their end.
This ushers in my main point on the understanding of love and relationships this film roots itself in. In Eternity, love and relationships become a prize that only one person can win. Both men view Joan’s love and romantic adoration as a possession that is meaningless if owned by anyone else. This upholds a view of love and relationships heavily rooted in Western settler colonial values of ownership and accumulation. So much of how we talk about love, views it as wealth or currency, things we must gain possession of. The language we apply this to is rooted in transaction or extraction. This is seen in the reasoning both men have as they compete for Joan. Larry begins his reasoning with the life he has built with her, even stating that he gave her children. Luke leverages the 67 years he spent waiting, and while not explicitly stated, Joan cannot help but feel she owes him a chance to explore the future they were robbed of. Joan has a monologue in which she states how lucky she is to have been loved by both men, and those experiences adding richness to her life. Eternity’s articulates of love and relationships critiques the frameworks of ownership that we place onto our relationships. Even as both men come together and become somewhat understanding and friendly to each other, it is when they both have lost the competition. Even as they get closer with each other, no one reintroduces the offer to all go to the same eternity, with both men understanding that the richness they add to Joan’s life is not mutually exclusive. Instead, there can only be a loser and a winner.
I want to state that this point is not all that Eternity offers. The film also points out the beauty that lives in the ephemerality of life, where even the shortest of relationships define you, and you are forever shaped by them. However, I think with this message Eternity offers us a chance to critically think about our own relationships and the values we place on them. As I spoke with my friends, I understood that love was not static , rather it was living, ebbing and flowing. It had different shapes and different forms, but it was still love.