Movie Reviews for Writers: The Eclipse

Don't let the fact that this beautiful and intentionally slow-paced drama is billed as a ghost story convince you away from it because it is not at all a horror film. It is absolutely an A+ dark indie romance about an author and a widower. It also features a brilliant, atmospheric mood piano for a soundtrack. 

Lena is a horror author who is afraid of the idea of ghosts, so much so she chooses to sleep in a lighted living room and sleep on the sofa rather than moving to the bedroom because it's "spooky." 

Michael is a widower who dabbled in story writing and lives with his two kids and is haunted by visions of his dying father-in-law and apparitions of his dead wife. He always seems on the verge of falling apart from some unresolved issue with his wife's death. 

Nicholas is a popular author whose latest novel is being turned into a movie. He's also a huge asshole who has slept with Lena before, but she called off any relationship when she found out he was married. 

Nicholas chases Lena but consistently refers to Michael as a stalker (deference, clearly), while Michael seeks Lena because he feels she can help him with his visions. Of course, the two do actually begins a friendship and possibly something more. 

Unlike many of the movies I've reviewed here, this one doesn't dig down into the actual work of writing so much as the character of writers. 

If you've been writing for any length of time at all, no doubt you've attended a writer's convention or two (or 12 or 412!). If so, you will have met the archetypes presented in this film, which begins with a small Irish town hosting a literary festival, which features both Nicholas and Lena as keynote readers and speakers. Michael is the driver assigned to pick up Nicholas from the airport, but also assigned to Lena since her home during the event is out of the way. 

Naturally, Nicholas "interviews" Michael in the card, assuming he is either an aspiring or failed writer, and immediately dismisses him (as Nicholas is wont to do over people who don't benefit him. Almost every line he speaks early in The Eclipse is about himself or the money he expects from his film project. Nicholas completely sees himself at the writer with a capital "W" -- the self-declared auteur of words. 

Lena, on the other hand, always feels a bit like a fraud. She doesn't like going to events like the festival because she feels her work isn't really good enough and that she's not a natural performer like Nicholas. 

However, in trying to seduce Lena, Nicholas proclaims to her: "I'm a fake. I'm a miserable fake, and the dishonesty has to end." But later, when pushing for physical attention from her, he says (very tellingly) that "I realise I'm a little overwhelming." 

Nicholas is everything most other writers hate about self-declared Authors (with that "A" at the beginning). He brags, but humble brags and outright brags, he flashes his writing credits around, he expects his status as "arrived" to line up not only the groupies, but the wait staff, and fellow authors at the side of his bed for the experience of being with him. 

I trust you know the type and have probably met them at shows. I know I have. 

Lena, early in the film, reads a passage from her story, "The Eclipse":

When you see a ghost something very interesting happens. Your brain splits in two. One side of you is rejecting what you're seeing because it doesn't tally with our ordinary idea of reality. And the other side is screaming, "But this is real!" And in that moment, reality itself is collapsed and reconfigured in a way that changes you profoundly, although at the time you're not aware of it.  

When Mary felt someone sitting on the bed, a tiny depression, she assumed that her daughter had come back to ask her about the fortune teller. Half asleep, she reached out to reassure her, not feeling anything. She opened her eyes and looked up. What she saw was so casual she hardly thought about it for a moment. Seeing the dead woman's face, she thought, "Oh, I must be dreaming." However, when the woman opened her mouth, her jaw hanging slack and her sad eyes imploring to Mary from the gloom, then she knew. She knew that she was seeing a ghost.  

Then she realized for perhaps the first time in her life that she too would die, that her husband would die, and that her children would die. She knew in that moment that she was looking at reality. 

Aside from this being an amazing passage for a ghost story, I believe it is supposed to say something about Lena herself as she speaks the words to the Irish crowd gathered to hear her read. Lena is describing that moment when a writer learns he/she/they are a writer, that moment when one side of our brain refused to believe your words matter or you "earned" the title, but also that moment when your tiny little writer brain is screaming from inside, "But this is real!" And it changes us who feel it profoundly, although, at the time, we may not be aware of it. We are in that moment looking at reality. 

On the other hand, some simply don't wait or they ignore the magic of that moment and self-declare themselves to be (W)riters or (A)uthors and treat the world as though it owes them something since they have obviously earned their capital letter. They are in that moment faking their reality and living in  (as Nicholas said so aptly, dishonesty). 

As writers, it's a good thing to let the ghosts sit with us and change us, and we ignore them at our peril.