Eden
Running time 83 minutes
Written by Eugene O’Brien
Directed by Declan Reick
Starring Aidan Kelly, Eileen Walsh, Sarah Greene
Declan Reck’s Eden, from an adaptation by Eugene O’Brien of his play of the same title, reportedly differs from the play, which I have not seen, by eliminating the two lengthy monologues at the core of it, one by a disaffected husband in a failing marriage on the eve of his 10th anniversary, and the other by his disaffected wife. Instead, the husband has been changed to an almost completely inarticulate character in the film, with an embarrassing penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Also, whereas the marital impasse is never resolved in the play, it is in the movie.
As Mr. O’Brien explains the change from stage to screen, “People seemed more satisfied in the monologue form of the play; because they really felt they’d gotten inside the person’s head they felt that they’d filled in more of the blanks, they kind of knew what was motivating the person a bit more, so I was able to leave things more open-ended.
“However,” the playwright-screenwriter continues, “on film the audience has invested an hour and a half with these people. They will want to see them confront each other in the film, we see Billy and Breda together a lot more as a couple. We see the relationship still has potential.
“So we see the hope. We feel the love Billy and Breda really do have for each other; and I think the audience—because they see all of this in the film—would feel completely cheated if Billy just came home and gave up and went up to sleep with the kids—as he does in the play.”
It is not often that a playwright-screenwriter has described so precisely the crucial differences between theater and film, and blueprinted these differences for a director, his cast and his crew to execute with such excellent results as are to be found in Eden.
It helped that both Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Recks are natives of County Offaly in Ireland, Mr. O’Brien from Edenderry and Mr. Recks from Clara, and they had the opportunity to shoot on location in their bustling home county, far from the cosmopolitan distractions of Dublin, the metropolis from which cast and crew temporarily emigrated.
As one of the cast members noted, the land all becomes flat in County Offaly, which led the director and his cinematographer, Owen McPolin, to shoot the film in full anamorphic widescreen (2:35:1). This decision served to integrate the characters more convincingly with their constantly shifting environment.
Aidan Kelly plays Billy Farrell, a hard-hat telephone lineman cast adrift from his 10-year marriage to Eileen Walsh’s Breda Farrell. Billy’s marital malaise is caused at least partly by his lustful infatuation with Sarah Greene’s much younger and unattainable Imelda Egan. Billy is afflicted also with the traditional Irish curse of alcoholism.
The moment when Breda first notices Billy’s eyes directed toward Imelda in a crowded dance hall, Breda’s eyes fill up with pain and disillusion as the camera pans slowly and meaningfully across her now contorted face. This leads her to plunge distraught into the night for a sexual adventure of her own, cross-cut ironically with Billy’s final futile, drunken, groping humiliation in public by an outraged Imelda.
The acting alone makes this picture well worth seeing.
asarris@observer.com
