Flickering lights, a storm at midnight, wailing voices, screams, shadows, door slams. These are all staple elements of ghost movies. But try telling that to Conor McPherson, whose film The Eclipse is essentially a romantic drama — with a few ghosts on the side.
Michael Farr (Ciaran Hinds), recently widowed, lives with his two children in a small wind-swept coastal town in Southern Ireland. Just as the town’s annual literary festival begins, Michael begins to see ghosts at night. Disconcerted, he turns to a new friend he’s made at the festival, ghost novel author Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle). The situation is complicated as Nicholas Holden (Aiden Quinn), who has fallen for Lena, arrives on the scene in a rather insistent way. The film quickly descends into a complex love triangle, as the characters struggle to negotiate their relationships and the situations they find themselves in.
Though the ghosts in The Eclipse are actually few and far between, there are enough creaky doors, shadowy figures and sudden jumps to keep the viewer consistently on edge. Eerie choral music, piano etudes and protracted silences only help to set your skin a-tingle. McPherson combines hauntingly beautiful music with some unusual camera work, creating a supernatural quality in even the most mundane situations. And there is surely no better place to set a ghost-cum-love story than an old, slightly neglected Irish coastal town.
The acting is frustratingly overwrought at times and understated at others. Hinds portrays his character in a quietly convincing way, while Quinn comes close to overdoing it. Together, though, the actors have created an entrancing balance. It is remarkably easy to believe the chemistry between Michael and Lena (and the tension between them and Nicholas), and by the end you find you actually care about what happens to them.
In a story of lost and jaded characters, the supernatural functions paradoxically as both a diversion from and a catalyst for their transformations. In the end, The Eclipse is about memory, loss and grief, about overcoming tragedies. Both chilling and heart-warming, it leaves you feeling uneasy, yet oddly comforted. It ultimately poses the question: do you believe in ghosts?
Directed by: Conor McPherson
Starring: Ciaran Hinds, Aidan Quinn
Rated R, 88 min.
3.5 Stars
