Posted in: A24, Exclusive, Interview, Movies | Tagged: eternity

Eternity DP on Surreal Fantasy Rom-Com, David Freyne, Sets & More

Cinematographer Ruairí O'Brien (The Fall) spoke to us about A24's latest fantasy rom-com, Eternity, director David Freyne, challenges & more.

When cinematographer Ruairí O'Brien picked up the script of A24's Eternity, he knew it would be an opportunity he couldn't pass up in his nearly 30 years of work, given the film's premise. The film follows the trio of Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) and the afterlife love triangle she gets caught up in with Larry (Miles Teller), the man she built her life with until death did them part, and her first husband Luke (Callum Turner), who died during the Korean War trying to return to the life he only knew before dying in service during the conflict. O'Brien, who's also known for his memorable work on Acorn's The Fall, IFC's Five Minutes of Heaven (2009), and the indie horror film Sea Fever (2019), spoke to Bleeding Cool about reuniting with Dating Amber writer-director David Freyne, his flexibility behind the scenes, and taking on the daunting challenge of conceptualizing heaven through various perspectives.

Eternity DP Ruairí O'Brien on Bringing David Freyne's High Concept Fantasy Rom-Com to Life

What intrigued you about Eternity, and how'd you get involved?

I shot David's previous film, Dating Amber (2020), and had a great time. I loved that movie, and then he sent me a script for Eternity. I read it, called him right back, and was like, "I will turn down absolutely anything to shoot this film. This is like the best thing I've read!" Every job that came my way after that, I was like David, "I've offered this thing, but are we ready to go? Because I'll say no." He was like, "Take the job," so it took about another 18 months for it to come together. I was in Vancouver recently, the script, and we went up shooting the film back there. There's a weird circularity to it.

What's it like working with David as a creative?

It's great, he is super supportive, and very collaborative. He's unusually open. There was a moment when we were making this where we're prepping something, and he went, "This scene is a funny line. It's a medical scene. Write me something funny right now." Okay, it's in the script. It's a tiny little passing line, and it was the same on Dating Amber. He said to me, "What song do you want in this?" I tell him, "What about that song?" He says, "It's in the movie." He's so open, and what it means is everyone gets behind him, and everyone wants to do their best work.

A film like Eternity, on the surface, could be a daunting challenge in trying to depict the afterlife. What has a film like that allowed you, as far as exploring the space creatively, that you haven't been able to do before as a DP?

Yeah, it was interesting because it was a chance to explore a lot of different things. The opening is very simple, shot straightforwardly, and it's very domestic. As soon as Miles Teller's character, Larry, dies, the world is infused with new color, life, and the whole field changes. Suddenly, we've got these anamorphic lenses, and everything's complementary to the cast. Things change, so it's great. Within the first 10 minutes, we've got two worlds going on, and then we explore different ideas of what heaven can be. Our main set is this place that we refer to as the junction, which is where all the newly dead arrive before being dispatched off to their various heavens, and that's a huge set of the size of a football field, so it's an interesting place to spend space to play with.

From the things I've seen, it looks so impressive, because of the breathtaking nature backgrounds, some of the more robust ones out there. You also have the terminal, which looked 1950s-inspired. What went into developing the setup, and I know it also gets into the set design, too. What went into picking those places?

It's funny because it's a mix of things we built, things we found, and things we had to massage into shape, which is always the challenge. The main set is what we built, and we spent a lot of time working on that, because it was going to be expensive with the stairs to the elevators. How much would an elevator cost? How much would stairs cost? We spent countless hours going over what seemed like minute details, but we were trying to really maximize what we could get out of it and still keep it in this kind of mid-20th-century type of design. It's beautiful, but tacky, because the idea is you expect the afterlife to be this heavenly place. It's actually a bit more of a resort hotel, and all that stuff took a lot of work.

In terms of locations, the trickiest thing to find, believe it or not, was just a beach. You'd think a beach would be easy to find with Vancouver being a city on the sea, but it's the city on deep inlets. Everywhere you go, you look out, and you see either oil tankers, skyscrapers, or mountains. It took us a long time to find a place, but the real inspiration for making the beach work was a 1958 film called Côte de la Côthe (Along the Coast) by Agnes Varda that David showed us, and it's covered in these colorful umbrellas. We dressed the whole thing, and then it became a very simple proposition, the effects of painting a few oil tankers, but apart from that, it was great.

Eternity, which also stars John Early, Olga Merediz, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, is available in theaters.

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