The Eclipse

 (Ireland)
By JOHN ANDERSON

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An Irish Film Board/Radio Telefis Eireann/Broadcasting Commission of Ireland presentation of a Treasure Entertainment production. (International sales: Submarine, New York.) Produced by Robert Walpole. Executive producers, Paddy McDonald, Rebecca O'Flanagan. Co-producers, Donal Geraghty, Cathleen Dore. Directed by Conor McPherson. Screenplay, McPherson, Billy Roche, based on Roche's "Tales From Rainwater Pond."
 
Michael Farr - Ciaran Hinds
Nicholas Holden - Aidan Quinn
Lena Morelle - Iben Hjejle
Malachy McNeill - Jim Norton
Thomas - Eanna Hardwicke
Sarah - Hannah Lynch
 
Don't die angry. Such is the lesson of playwright-provocateur Conor McPherson's "The Eclipse," a film of such seductive grace, humor and startling side trips into buttocks-clenching ghastliness that auds won't know what to make of it (although it won't keep them from wanting to visit Ireland immediately). Heavy distributor interest at Tribeca will guarantee the film a respectable theatrical run, as well as bouquets of affection for Ciaran Hinds and Aidan Quinn, who are as good here as they've ever been.

McPherson, whose theatrical work ("Shining City," "The Seafarer") usually includes supernatural elements, has accomplished what might be called a literary film, inasmuch as the spare but loaded dialogue and the visual signifiers -- a father emptying a dishwasher, for instance, near a photo of a hollow-eyed woman wearing a head scarf -- tell us everything we need to know in economical, elegant ways. The father is Michael Farr (Hinds), who has yet to adjust to his new role as single head of household; he's a bit confused about his new role, as are children (Eanna Hardwicke and Hannah Lynch). Mom, dead from cancer, is far from forgotten. In fact, she hasn't really left the room.

The city of Cobh -- its cathedral provides the backdrop for much of the movie (a political-theological as well as aesthetic choice on McPherson's part) -- is in the middle of its annual literary festival. Michael is a volunteer, and among the visiting celebs he's assigned to drive around are Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), a London-based writer of ghost stories, and Nicholas Holden (Quinn), an American whose novels are composed of elements of Hemingway, Mailer and Carver. Nicholas is an egomaniacal brute in intellectual's clothing, and he wants to revive the one-night fling he had at another festival with Lena, who is wisely declining his overtures. She and Michael, however, seem to be on intersecting trajectories. Michael and Nicholas are on course to collide as well.

But Michael has other emotional irons in the fire of his soul. His father-in-law, Malachy (Jim Norton), is residing, bitter and unhappy, in a nearby nursing home, and he's also making nightly appearances in Michael's dreams. Or are they dreams? It's no great leap to understand Michael's disordered subconscious as the result of unresolved grief over his wife and worries about his children. But McPherson never lets the viewer off with only one explanation for the strange things that appear -- or scream -- in the night. The inexplicable is a big part of the picture's charm.

McPherson's enormous indulgence, however -- and his mistake -- is in his visual realizations of Michael's horrific visions. Yes, the man is having waking nightmares, but the jump-scare manner in which Malachy appears, and the way he's portrayed, with a ghoulishness worthy of Rick Baker, is too much. Auds will laugh immediately after they gasp, and the effect is to take the viewer right out of the movie. It's a tonal derailment of everything else that's happening in the film and, unfortunately, will likely be the film's big talking point.

Much worthier of conversation are the performances. Quinn, alternately charming and loathsome, is brilliant, as is Hinds, an actor who has elevated everything he's been in (which ranges from "Prime Suspect" to "Persuasion" to "Munich"). Hjejle, the Danish actress seen in Nils Arden Oplev's "Portland" and Ed Zwick's "Defiance," is certainly glamorous, but also believable as a writer. That the drunkest person in an Irish film is an American (Nicholas) will have to be considered payback for what we did to Barry Fitzgerald.

Production values, notably the shooting of d.p. Ivan McCullough and the editing of Emer Reynolds, are first-rate.

Camera (color), Ivan McCullough; editor, Emer Reynolds, music, Fionnuala Ni Chiosain; production designer, Mark Geraghty; art director, Johnny Byrne; costume designer, Consolata Boyle; sound (Dolby SRD), Ronan Hill; stunt coordinator, Andy Bradford; second unit director, Paddy Breathnach; casting, Gail Stevens, Oonagh Kearney. Reviewed at Tribeca Film Festival (competing), April 24, 2009. Running time: 88 MIN.
 
Hollywood Reporter
April 29, 2009
Positive review
By Doris Toumarkine

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/film-review-the-eclipse-1003967218.story

The Eclipse
Bottom Line: Conor McPherson delivers a beautiful, even believable ghost drama that enraptures on many levels.

For "The Eclipse," Conor McPherson leverages several of the assets that made his award-winning, multi-Tony-nominated Broadway play "The Seafarer" a hit.

Back is that intriguing mix of engaging drama and wonderful dialogue, all infused with stirring hints of the supernatural. He also reconvenes the considerable talents of "seafarers" Ciaran Hinds and Tony-winning Jim Norton, here stretching far beyond their play characters in the kind of well-crafted work art house audiences will embrace.

Hinds stars as Michael Farr, a widowed father who cares for two young children and works as a woodwork teacher in the tiny scenic town of Cobh, in County Cork, Ireland. Each year Cobh welcomes a prestigious literary gathering at which Michael serves as a volunteer, often helping transport participants. This year, things have grown creepy as Michael, who recently lost his wife, senses that her ghost might be stirring about his cozy, dark wood home.

The real fun begins with the arrival of the literati. There's the self-absorbed Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn), a best-selling author with a weakness for the bottle and hunger for Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), another visiting writer who has brought her supernatural-themed book "The Eclipse." The two had a previous fling at the festival, but Lena is now having second thoughts because Nicholas, clearly a cad, is married.

Michael busies himself with his two kids and with nursing home visits to his aging father-in-law Malachy McNeill (Jim Norton), also grieving for his lost daughter. Michael also works as driver for Lena, who is being housed in charming seaside quarters on the edge of town. But it is the repeated spectral sightings that haunt him. It is therefore no surprise that he and Lena bond over her literary preoccupation with the supernatural.

The lives of Michael and the two writers collide as Nicholas, on the verge of a broken marriage, grows more aggressive in his pursuit of Lena just as Lena and Michael are growing closer. There's further drama, even a scare or two, derived from Michael's ghost-inspired premonitions of Malachy's death.

While the Lena-Michael romance evolves convincingly, the filmmaker also mines humor from bad boy Nicholas, the swaggering egomaniac of a booze-fueled writer who, thanks to Quinn's performance, dodges cliche. Hinds and Hjejle are outstanding, and the quaint Cobh locale -- captured with the new Red digital camera -- emerges as its own subject.

With "The Eclipse," which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, McPherson has craftily woven themes of grief, love and the possibility of the unknown into this closed, small-town world -- a magical place that characters and audiences alike can easily inhabit.