Written by Linda
April 16, 2010
What I'll remember most about The Eclipse, which is essentially a quiet adult drama tinged with grief, were the few brief but completely effective scares that made me hit the ceiling and made the man next to me scream like a little girl.
Long-faced Ciarán Hinds plays Michael, a recent widower with two tween kids at home. He's keeping it together, and it is hinted that he has never dealt with his grief because of his concern for his family. His wheelchair-bound father-in-law lives at a nursing home, and is perhaps taking the loss even harder than Michael. The two men don't seem close, but are bound by their mutual loss.
One night, Michael wakes up in the middle of the night from a sound. He isn't sure what it is, and creeps downstairs to investigate. As he looks, we are not even sure what it is we're seeing. He thinks it is the figure of his father-in-law, who doesn't live there, and is over at the home, and, well, isn't dead. Can a living person have a ghost?
Michael volunteers as a driver for the local literary fest, and gets paired up to be the driver for author Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle) whose most recent book happens to be about ghosts. She is lovely, of course, and gives a reading from her book that moves Michael. Nicely, the film doesn't necessarily set up the relationship between Michael and Lena as a sparking romance, but for sure a friendship. Michael has been closed down, not dealing with the death of his wife. But he also thinks he is seeing ghosts, so Lena proves to be the perfect person to confide in. And just when you think there *might* be a connection beyond friendship brewing, Lena ends up having to deal with another boorish smitten writer at the literary fest named Nicholas Holden (Aiden Quinn), who can't get past a one-night-stand that he and Lena had at a previous festival.
Like I said, The Eclipse feels mostly like an adult drama of a man trying to re-connect with his emotions and sadness, and the woman who helps him through this process. But did I mention the scares? The Eclipse also happens to be a ghost story. I wouldn't go so far to call it a horror film, but Michael is indeed haunted by images that he can't explain, and that are truly scary. I counted three distinct moments that got HUGE reactions from the audience. The first one, a woman across the aisle from me screamed. The second, which really got me, practically made me hit the ceiling (even though I could see from a mile away that something was going to happen). And the third moment made the man next to me scream like a little schoolgirl, which put me into such a fit of giggles that I barely recovered for the sad yet satisfyingly appropriate ending.
In that way, The Eclipse is an unusual mish-mash of quiet drama and true frights. Because of the nice work of Hinds and Hjejle it mostly works. But then there's Aiden Quinn, who chews scenery, offers some laughs, and proves to be as distracting from the plot as his character is to Lena. Overall, I quite enjoyed the film, and it will stick in my craw as one of my more memorable movie screenings of late, thanks entirely to the squealing schoolgirl next to me. (You are so busted, mister!)
