After Life(1998)

This is another one of those "has this already been talked about extensively and I'm just 28?" moments. At the end of last year I saw Eternity, and I thought it was such an original and fresh premise. Not that Eternity doesn't add nuance, but I now see it as a focused iteration of ideas that were already proven and established by a much more ambitious film almost 30 years ago in the year when I was born. After Life is phenomenal.

I thought the choice of deciding the person you spend eternity with was heavy enough, but choosing an individual memory that you spend the rest of eternity remembering is truly a debilitatingly hard and poignant exercise. What emotional state would I want to be put in for eternity with no other context? Do you want to be happy? content? hopeful? grateful? Do you choose a happy moment knowing that it ends with sorrow, even while knowing that you won't remember how it ends? The idea alone overwhelms me.

Recently I learned my childhood friend's mother passed away. She and my mom were very good friends too. My family moved to a different city when I was 8, physically separating our two friendships. Years after we had moved, I got a call from my friend during dinner, who told me to look out my window. There they were -- standing outside our apartment building. They ended up staying with us over the weekend and it was probably the happiest I'd ever been over 48 hours. I was beyond euphoric by this surprise and I was so young that I didn't think about how insane this behavior was for someone in their 30s. I texted my mom today to ask: did she not really not know? Did this woman literally drive hours to take herself and her son to a friend who she hadn't seen in years with essentially zero notice? This was before smartphones. They did not really keep in touch. And it turns out yeah, she really did that.

She and my mom eventually grew apart, and as did I from my friend. When she was diagnosed with cancer in 2023, my mom did not know and had to learn from me. I did not find this out from him either, but from someone else. Despite that, it's extraordinary that this is the first memory that came to me that felt final and happy enough that I'd cautiously say I can maybe live with this forever. Like Mochizuki, she most likely didn't know how much her memory meant to someone else's happiness. That leap she took on a random Friday, purely based on faith in the strength an old friendship, feels so deep and so beautiful now. I can only hope to be half as brave as she was.