The Eclipse

The Eclipse is a 2009 film from Ireland, and should not be confused with the upcoming mega-blockbuster with the same title (minus the definite article) that is the third installment of the Twilight saga. Aside from the title and some elements of the supernatural, these films couldn't be less alike.

Directed by Conor McPherson, who also co-wrote the script, The Eclipse is a very small, intimate character study that has ghosts (or at least I think it does) but is not a horror film. Instead the apparitions are metaphors for other things, including grief and loneliness. There are a few standard "Boo!" moments, but these seem curiously out of place, as if McPherson were required to meet a quota for shocks. I suppose they are for the people who think this is a typical ghost story.

The film, set and shot in the coastal Irish city of Cobh, centers around Ciaran Hinds. He is a widower, who lost his wife to cancer, and is raising two children. A woodworking teacher at the local school, he volunteers to help out at the city's big annual event, a literary festival. Mostly he drives around the attending authors, including a boorish American writer of best-sellers (Aidan Quinn) and a beautiful woman who has written a popular book about ghosts (Iben Hjejle). Quinn and Hjejle once had an affair, and he is eager to take it up again, promising he will leave his wife.

When the film begins, Hinds hears a noise and thinks he sees someone--his father-in-law, who is in a nursing home. As he gets to know Hjejle he is drawn to her, and confides what he has seen, wondering if there can be a ghost of someone who is living. Later, after the father-in-law's death, the apparitions become more tangible, and Hinds and Hjejle become more involved, to Quinn's consternation.

The Eclipse is a fine, atmospheric film, with a modest 87-minute running time, but it isn't nearly as effective as I'd have liked. It's so caught up in atmosphere--it appears to have been shot using only natural light, so is almost always in darkness, that it can slide into a state of somnambulism. But Hinds, a bear of a man, is convincing, and Quinn is quite good playing a role we're not accustomed to seeing.