THE STORY – Follows Cass, a young woman who has come to a personal point of emotional invulnerability, until she meets Virgil, a cartographer. Along with his partner Malcolm, the pair will attempt to travel back in time to awaken Cass to love again.
THE CAST – Naomi Scott, Kit Harington, Simon Callow, Sonoya Mizuno, & Jay Lycurgo
THE TEAM – Yaniv Raz (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 115 Minutes
Cassiopeia Pfeffer (Naomi Scott) has had visions of the future since she was a small child. When she met Julian (Jay Lycurgo) in college, she saw their whole future together, from courtship to starting a cello-and-harp duo to ending with her wearing black in front of a church. Despite that foreboding image, though, she decides to jump in, experiencing the rush of love for the first time. They live a free and happy life for a while, but when Julian tragically dies in a plane crash, Cass shuts down. As the friendly storybook narrator tells us, she enters a state of perpetual mourning for her past, hardening her heart and locking away her harp. As she focuses more on tangible things like statistics and probability, her premonitions stop. However, on her 29th birthday, she drunkenly wanders into a map store run by Virgil (Kit Harrington), where she’s mesmerized by a fantastical map he made of the human heart. That’s not the most interesting map he has, though – he’s working on a map for his old friend and surrogate father Malcolm that will allow him to travel back in time and live a portion of his life over again. While she’s skeptical at first, Virgil convinces her to join them on a mapmaking outing. Inspired by Malcolm’s reaction to the “remembrance points” they find, she asks Virgil to make her a map as well, so she can go back to the beginning of her relationship with Julian. But as they work together, Cass grows closer to Virgil, and some of the visions she had of her future with Julian start happening in real life, with Virgil in his place. Is the universe trying to tell her something? Or is there no deeper meaning, just a series of beautiful coincidences?
Yaniv Raz’s “Eternal Return” desperately wants to be a whimsical fairy tale romance for adults. The third-person omniscient narration, the ethereally jaunty score, and the fanciful production design all work overtime to create an aura of magic that might work for some but will grate on others’ nerves. It’s a tricky tone to get right, and Raz pours it on so thick that what should be a light dusting of magical realism comes across more as an artificial sweetener, an attempt to punch up a screenplay that’s really a basic narrative about learning to appreciate the present instead of dwelling on the past. The film’s perspective on that narrative at least feels original and even a bit surprising, as the concept allows for a unique perspective on that narrative. In order to make these maps, Virgil relies on equations from an old book with an ouroboros on the cover, based on the subject’s time of birth and certain places that have emotional significance, or “remembrance points.” Malcolm’s tales of hearing Allen Ginsberg read his famed poem “Howl” at the Chelsea Hotel seem silly at first, but the deeper layers of his story end up having a lovely resolution that has a believable effect on Virgil and Cass’s character arcs.
Callow’s deeply felt, classy performance gives the film a legitimacy that cuts through its more artificial qualities. Leads Harrington and Scott carry the film quite amiably. Harrington is quite self-consciously giving A Performance, pitching up his voice and adopting an overall lightness in tone that never tips over into tweeness. He makes Virgil much more endearing than the manic pixie dream boy he is on the page. Scott has the more dynamic role, and she plays to the extremes of Cass’s emotional arc very well. The joy she displays in the prologue with Julian is infectious, and her dead eyes in the period after his death always seem to be looking for something to bring that joy back, resigned to the perpetual disappointment of never finding it. While she plays the emotions of each scene well enough, she doesn’t really have any personality, coming across as a generic romantic heroine instead of a specific person. However, her palpable emotional connection with her co-stars lifts everything around her, making the film’s ending feel earned.
“Eternal Return” certainly has all the elements of a successful romance. Even the requisite Big Mistake that leads to the separation of the leads before the emotional climax feels believable, and not nearly as arbitrary as it often does in films of this ilk. The chemistry between the leads is good, the supporting players provide personality, and the premise is a genuine original. However, Raz has erred on the side of putting more personality into the filmmaking style than the screenplay. The film drowns in atmospherics, from the playful camera moves to the overly sparkly score. It’s too prescriptive for the audience, as though the director was worried his script needed help to get its point across. He needn’t have worried, as the screenplay and performers are full of charm that could have carried the film without any extra help. The film gets its title from Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, which posits that time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that we must find beauty in our fated repetition to have our best life. There’s certainly beauty to be found in “Eternal Return,” but it’s not a film you’ll likely want to watch on a loop.
