In an antique Irish coastal town where the past bleeds into the present, a lonely schoolteacher volunteers to help out at the annual literary festival. Michael (Ciaran Hinds) had lost his wife a few years earlier and is raising their two children alone. Unexpressive and tightly corked, Michael has been having disturbing dreams about his father-in-law, who is confined to an institution for the elderly. Actually, many of the apparitions are too physical, and occur in settings virtually impossible for dreams. If father-in-law weren’t still living, Michael would be forced to concede that he’s seeing a ghost.
The Eclipse is a film about haunting and stalking, memory and loss and specters that come and go in the shadows. One of the esteemed speakers at the festival, Lena (Iben Hjejle), is the author of a sophisticated novel of the supernatural—a psychological ghost story. As Michael learns, she saw a ghost as a teenager and the experience marked her. Lena is trying to shake off the attentions of a pretentious literary figure, Nicholas (Aidan Quinn), an obsessive man whose hinges come off when drunk. The emotional collision of these three people helps organize the film’s digressive plot—along with the occasional chilling apparition.
Out June 29 on Blu-ray and DVD, The Eclipse is an elegantly unresolved, atmospheric and conversation-driven film that mercifully sidesteps all contemporary Hollywood conventions of romance and horror.
