Song of the Sea

I really do think that Cartoon Saloon’s feature films are the future. Or at least Tomm More’s films. They may not make much money right now – according to the internet, they don’t even crack $1m gross, on considerably higher budgets – but they are artistic, beautiful and hopefully after getting more and more established will eventually break through to the mainstream.

I really enjoyed The Secret of Kells, though it lacked a certain sense of scale and excitement. Song of the Sea is better in narrative and character terms, and the animation has also stepped up considerably. Underwater sequences in particular are very beautiful. This film also focuses on more well-known, though still esoteric, elements of Irish mythology, which is a great niche for this studio to have. At the same time, as has been noted elsewhere, there seem to be several nods to Ghibli here, especially in the old witch Macha. Her hair flares up like Yubaba’s and she struggles up the stairs like the Witch of the Waste. Some of the pacing choices also echo Spirited Away and its famous sudden slowdown for a train journey.

Song of the Sea is about an adorable 10-year-old boy called Ben, voiced in the sweetest lilting Irish accent by the kid from Moone Boy, and his discovery that his sister is a selkie. In Irish mythology, selkie are seals who transform into women in fur coats, and the way to keep them human is to take away that coat. Well, Ben’s mother was a selkie, and his sister is one too, but his father is deeply broken-hearted from being abandoned by the one he loves, and so keeps his daughter’s coat hidden away. Little Saoirse (‘Sheer-shuh’) doesn’t talk, only wants to be back in the ocean, making music with her seashell and regaining her voice. When they leave the isolated lighthouse they call home to stay with their granny, but attempt to return home on their own, an adventure into the world of faeries begins.

With Saoirse mute and the rest of the cast – mostly eccentric faeries like the Great Seanachaí who knows all the world’s stories, recorded in strands of his hair – appearing briefly, the whole movie rests on Ben’s shoulders. And young David Rawle gives a fantastic performance to carry it all, petulant at first and resentful because he believes his little sister is the reason his beloved mother is gone, but increasingly gentle, generous and brave. He has to convey stubbornness, fear, exhilaration and wonder, and it all works very nicely with the vocal performance and a funny little character model more basic than most you’ll see in animated feature films.

The ending is a little overly convenient. In particular, I’d like an explanation as to why Mac Lir’s sadness, which is the catalyst for all the action in the story, just vanished. And it could have been explained away in a line, but I felt that was necessary for a satisfying conclusion. Otherwise, though, the spectacle and happy resolution are both impressive and moving.

The art is beautiful, the music is lovely, the performances are all good and the sense of place is very strong. There’s not that much to hook the young kids who love action and explosions, and I suspect that critics and animation buffs will have greater connections with this than kids will, but it’s a wonderful movie that I hope will touch those who take the time to watch it, and look forward to more of More’s work. 

The Secret of Kells

Despite being an animation fan, I actually hadn’t heard of The Secret of Kells until about two months ago. I missed any news of its release in Ireland at the beginning of 2009, I missed the buzz when it was nominated for an Oscar in 2010 and I ignored the few images I saw of it online, until I read that it was a kind of successor to The Thief and the Cobbler, being a beautiful and idiosyncratic film made outside the influence of the big studios. Yes, this is the first really noteworthy production from Irish company Cartoon Saloon, previously known only for the rather ugly Skunk Fu!, which I caught on TV once or twice. It was financed by French production companies and is slowly growing in renown through word-of-mouth, and it’s my sincere hope that the momentum it’s given Cartoon Saloon will lead to several great little films: the next, Song of the Sea, is already well underway.

Make no mistake, though – this does not look like an animated film a master has slaved over for half a lifetime. It has moments of real, stunning beauty, but it is still economically made and does not contain the sort of jaw-dropping sequences of Cobbler. Indeed, though that film is cited by director and original creator Tomm Moore as a major influence, the link is mostly that Kells has a heavy influence from Irish traditional art, just as Cobbler is influenced by Persian aesthetics. In fact, my first thought was that it looked like traditional animation imitating Flash (and indeed, there are a few sections of very obvious Flash animation – a shot of the main character running in panic towards the camera made me check it wasn’t ALL Flash, just done very cleverly), and that the closest resemblance was to My Life as a Teenage Robot or Samurai Jack (the latter being another example of traditional animation that looks similar to Flash). Thus it came as no surprise to see Samurai Jack’s creator Genndy Tartakovsky cited as another major influence – a lot of the character look like they would be right at home on Cartoon Network. Especially the two kids at the heart of the story.

But in terms of story, feel, pacing and concept, this is nothing at all like those hyperactive cartoons. The story takes place in 7^th- or 8^th-century Kells (it’s hard to say because the book is 8^th-centry but characters here are historically 7^th), and is a fictionalised account of the creation of the very real Book of Kells – amongst the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts extant. It seems likely that the germ of this film came when the creators looked at the sublime art in the book and wondered what it would be like to see it in animation – especially as one of the film’s most triumphant sequences, closing the film, works on that very idea. Young Brendan is the nephew of a stony-faced abbot fixed on one idea – fortifying the abbey against the Viking invaders who so often plunder the holy sites of the British Isles. When renowned illuminator Brother Aiden appears from Iona, though, brining with him the most beautiful book ever known, little Brendan gets caught up in helping him finish it – which takes him into the forest, where mysterious creatures known to the pagan religions live, including the ghostlike but powerful Aisling (pronounced, here, ‘Ashley’) and the sinister Crom Cruach.

The atmosphere throughout is tense – the invaders will come, sooner or later, and there’s no standing against them unless the wall is finished. The book is beautiful, but is it worth risking everything for? And while the walls may encircle a holy place, the pagan gods certainly exist in this world too – the whole thing is rife with the sort of symbolism that is fun to analyse but will soon be overanalysed in a rather irritating way.

The look of the thing perhaps could have been more striking, but at times is a real triumph. The characters are very stylised, drawing influences from old Irish art, but very appealing – though I’m not sure why there needed to be token representatives of different races in the abbey, as if it was meant to be inclusive and progressive it mostly came over as crude stereotyping. The Vikings are not really human. Part of the influence from the manuscripts is some backgrounds with an immense amount of detail and patterning – and it’s when that happens this looks the best. It’s lovely to look at sometimes, and when there are stylistic changes, such as the Flash sequences for chalk on a slate or when Brendan comes up against Crom Cruach, the strangeness and uniqueness of it is a triumph and a celebration of animated art.

While it is beautiful at times, has a sweet and moving story with a very real basis is history, lovely voice acting and rich characters, I found myself wishing for just a little more – more story, more explanation, more development, more impressive animation sequences. But that doesn’t stop this being an excellent film. Count me as a fan of the Saloon.