“The Eclipse” is a ghost story in the same way that “Hamlet” is a ghost story.
Both feature a ghost. But they’re about so much more.
The latest from Irish playwright-turned-moviemaker Conor McPherson shouldn’t be confused with the similarly titled upcoming installment in the “Twilight” series. No, this is a wonderfully nuanced tale of love and loss set in a picturesque Irish coastal town during its annual literary festival.
Michael Farr (Ciaran Hinds) teaches woodworking and is doing his best to make life normal for his son and daughter in the wake of their mother’s death. He keeps busy teaching, single-parenting and volunteering for the festival — a frantic schedule may be his way of not dealing with grief.
Awaking one night, Michael observes an indistinct figure staggering down the hallway and into the parlor before vanishing. It’s a goose bump-raising moment, but Michael shakes it off — he hasn’t time for this.
The ghost — or whatever it is — makes increasingly disturbing appearances. Finally Michael decides to confide in Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), a visiting writer whom he has been chauffeuring around town. Her new novel, “The Eclipse,” is about the supernatural; perhaps she can offer an explanation.
What follows isn’t horror but rather a fragile love story seasoned with bleak humor.
Even as Michael warms to Lena, she’s being stalked by the festival’s star attraction, best-selling American writer Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn). She once had a fling with the pompous, combative Nicholas, and he insists that they resume the affair.
The film is like several carefully crafted and intersecting short stories. It’s a romance. A ghost thriller. It’s even a sly (and frequently laugh-out- loud) satire of literary pretensions, courtesy of Nicholas’ bull-in-a-bookshop misbehavior. Quinn has never been better; too bad Oscar has such a short memory for spring releases.
But above all else it’s an exquisite character study of a man in denial. Hinds is a familiar face (he was Julius Caesar in HBO’s “Rome”) whose name often goes unrecognized. But in this rare leading role, he gives a virtual workshop in the art of understated acting.
Michael is a man reluctant to talk about his feelings, which means that Hinds must express the character’s inner life largely through the physical. It’s a near-perfect performance that never overstates its case, yet pulls us in so completely that when “The Eclipse” reaches its moment of ultimate catharsis — yes, there’s a ghost involved — it’s a shattering experience.
Like much good art, “The Eclipse” reveals itself slowly and never lays out all its cards. Audiences will mull over the film’s subtleties and ramifications — is the ghost real? A manifestation of Michael’s tormented psyche? — long after the actual watching.
And writer/director McPherson proves himself a master of mood.
“The Eclipse” casts a spell that seeps into your bones and won’t let go. It’s an intriguing contradiction — a film that in many ways seems tentative also delivers one of the year’s most satisfying experiences.
“THE ECLIPSE.”
R for language and some disturbing images. 1 hour, 28 minutes. Directed by Conor McPherson. Starring Ciaran Hinds, Iben Hjejle and Aidan Quinn. Opens today at the Mayan.
