The Eclipse

The Eclipse

Directed by Conor McPherson

Runtime: 88 min.

CONOR MCPHERSON’S The Eclipse isn’t good enough. That demands to be said since the best movie in town right now is Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere; it’s likely to be the best movie this year, and a movie that great raises the stakes. McPherson brings his playwright’s clarity to the subject of brooding solemnity. Grave Ciaran Hinds portrays a frustrated writer still mourning his wife’s death, but there’s none of the surprise—nor Bellocchio’s marvelous sense of unfolding complexity—to watching Hinds’ mounting frustration and misery when he volunteers at Ireland’s Cobh Literary Festival and encounters successful authors and their peccadilloes.

McPherson takes the surprisingly trite approach of having Hinds literally haunted by ghosts and portents. Yet, The Eclipse has no metaphysical mystery; its conflicts are based in mortal interactions and eccentric behavior (Aidan Quinn portraying shallow, middle-aged vanity, Iben Hjelje as a ghost novelist frightened of the occult) that outweighs McPherson’s drab use of atmosphere. His visual style and poor sense of place (vacant hallways, Cobh’s cemetery and numerous steeples) are glum—especially after Vincere’s elating evocations.

Cheap effects like thunderous music and ghouls and skeletons that pop into the frame suggest a lame notion of what cinema should be. McPherson’s good actors remind you how stage plays generate interest solely through talk and, as The Eclipse gets further away from cinema, a bigger mystery develops:Why is McPherson’s filmmaking so uncinematic?

The Eclipse may result from film culture’s current disorder and confused standards. Its themes of family psychology, cultural legacy, sexual and social envy parallel the Mussolini tragedy of Vincere, yet Bellocchio’s amazing achievement was ignored at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where prizes went to movies that opposed its ideals: Palm d’Or winner The White Ribbon glamorized the advent of fascism; Inglourious Basterds distorted cultural history; Antichrist trivialized sexual exploitation. No wonder McPherson resorts to hoary ghost movie clichés.When an extraordinary film like Vincere gets marginalized, you wonder if McPherson is even aware his bump-in-the-night film shares a title with a great Antonioni work.