An enigmatic film that focuses on the spaces between people and events, looking at the ripples left after the break-up of the first scene and leading to an apocalyptic depiction of cultural and spatial alienation in the final. Like much of his work, L' Eclisse (1962) finds director Michelangelo Antonioni creating a slow, fragmented investigation about sight and perception, about people at odds with one another and the world that they inhabit, and left hopeless and weak as their internal thoughts and fears are projected outward, against the world, creating a void that sucks the life from everything, leaving only silence. As one critic puts it, the intent of Antonioni's cinema is not character or narrative, but rather, the echo that reverberates after the story has unfolded. This is an idea that can be seen in much of the director's best work, from the other two films that form the basis of this informal trilogy, to his iconic and unconventional examination into the conventions of the thriller with Blowup (1966).
L' Eclisse begins with a scene that recalls elements of Antonioni's first film in the trilogy, L'avventura (1960), with a couple going through the motions of a break-up from late evening to early dawn. The woman wants to leave the man, who dismisses her wishes and condescends to her and her decision, eventually agreeing to let her go in the belief that she will later come back to him. The scene is slow, drawn out and disconnected to the point in which it almost becomes tedious. There are long passages of silence, sideways glances and confrontation; with the distance between the two characters, both from themselves and from the audience, further expressed by the director's use of framing and a cluttered mise-en-scene. Although they are hard to interpret on our initial viewing, these early scenes are essentially the catalyst for the film itself, setting the tone and the mood that will escalate as the story-progresses. In a conventional narrative sense, the film should really end where it begins, with the relationship resolved and all words spoken, but instead of this conventional thinking, Antonioni uses it as a springboard to something else. The rest of the film is therefore the echo of this event, the emotional fallout in which our central character attempts to reconcile her particular ideas about love and commitment that are at odds with social and economical climate of Italy of this era, eventually leading to the ultimate breakdown of communication at even its most basic of levels.
Alongside these central issues, Antonioni riffs on the ideas of confrontation and crisis, framing his story of a relationship break-up against a backdrop of a terrible-stock market crash, and suggesting at the end of the film via a headline on a newspaper of the impending "atomic age"; suggesting further ideas of confrontation and crisis that could eventually follow. He also expresses these ideas through his use of production design, editing and cinematography, with the continual interplay between light and shadow, black and white and the constant fragmenting of compositions in which actors drift in and out of frame or are filmed through windows, doorways or mirrored reflections, to the ripples of events that accumulate during the wordless, ten-minute montage that closes the film on a note of loss and disconnection. Without question, it's a lonely film; one that creates a nocturnal dream world and uses it to envelope a central character out of step with the world and indeed, within direct contrast to a character very much in control of his particular world and with both characters unable to connect, despite the very basic and very human need for touch and communication.
The themes ultimately run deeper than this, but the power of the film is somewhat more personal, either capturing your imagination and carrying you along, or leaving you cold and despondent. For me, it was a strangely shattering experience; one that didn't make itself known to me until after the film had finished and I was able to gather my initial thoughts. Watching it, I was certainly interested in the characters and concerned about the direction that the story was taking, while on a more superficial level, I loved the scenes set within the stock-market or the vague and elliptical sequence in which the central character follows a man who has just lost his entire life savings on the financial crash and observes him passively draw flowers on a napkin in an almost complete acceptance of his tragic fate; but even in spite of this, the final moments of the film and the sense of emotional connection created after the last credit had rolled, turned this film into an absolute masterpiece; one of those films that I could watch again and again and again and still find the same sense of emotional transcendence that I did the very first time.
As ever with Antonioni there will be some viewers who find the film slow and perhaps even boring (though really, there's no such thing as a boring film, just boring viewers) but for me, L' Eclisse was entirely fascinating. The way in which the individual themes, rife with the continual ideas of loss, displacement, rootless disconnection, alienation and the visual presentation of space accumulated from one scene to the next was mesmerising and slowly hypnotic. Combined with Antonioni's masterful use of shot composition, editing and production design, which turn elements of suburban Italy into an infernal labyrinth of looming apartment blocks and vast empty spaces of cloudless sky and we have a film that manages, as one viewer puts it, to change our perspective on the world. For the right kind of viewer, L' Eclisse will offer a shattering and unforgettable experience, in which the conventions of the bourgeoisie romantic melodrama are final transformed into a moment of pure, apocalyptic despair.
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