The Secret of Kells is a small miracle: a movie inspired by an eight-to-ninth century Irish artifact, the Book of Kells, executed in a visual style informed by said artifact, awash in Irish cultural nationalism associated with the artifact, and yet produced by a broad coalition that includes not only principal studio Cartoon Saloon (from Kilkenny, Ireland) but also producers and studios in Belgium, France, Hungary, and Brazil. Co-directed by Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey and art-directed by Ross Stewart, Kells works out a neat reconciliation of flatness and depth, 2D and 3D, aesthetics, in a storybook style full of round and spiraling and interlacing imagery redolent of Celtic knotwork and illumination. It comes close to the hyper-UPA flatness and graphic energy of Genndy Tartakovsky et al. on Samurai Jack and Clone Wars -- the operative mode is graphic rather than photographic -- yet creates depth by, I gather, the ingenious use of digital animation to layer the various graphic elements. Graphic patterning is used to create an entire sumptuous world, and character and scenic designs are very boldly stylized, yielding a variety not seen in movies like The Princess and the Frog. At the same time, it is clearly the product of a unified sensibility, unlike Princess.
As a movie, it is gorgeously, mind-stoppingly one of a kind, a feast of imagery. As a story, it is unfortunately under-developed, with loose ends aplenty. Part of me is grateful for the loose ends: it's nice not to have everything explained, since, apart from Miyazaki, so few animated features have any respect for mystery and most insist on being thumpingly obvious. Kells plays up mystery: the influence of Miyazaki, particularly Princess Mononoke, is obvious in the way Moore et al. deal with the clash between nature and civilization (of course there's a wolf girl to contend with), and often the driving logic behind the encounters is graphic rather than literal. But I could have done with further development of certain points, particularly the relationship (and, implicitly, the cultural exchange) taking place between the young hero, Brendan, and the fairy girl Aisling (the wolf girl). Brendan represents the culture of the abbey, of struggling Christianity in the wilderness; Aisling represents a memory of Ireland's mythicized pre-Christian past: a symbol of Celtic paganism. The plot insists on bringing the two together for what would seem the most prosaic of reasons: the ink to be used to complete the Book of Kells must be made by squashing berries that can only be found in Aisling's forest, so Brendan must break with tradition (and the abbot's orders) and venture out into the woods, there to forge a connection with Aisling and what she represents. In this way the movie's plot dances delicately around the conflict of Christian and pagan, a sly move also enabled by the presence of the "Northmen" (the savage, in this case not even human-looking, Vikings) as hovering outside threat. That threat unifies Brendan and Aisling, or would seem to, though what it is she has to gain by helping Brendan remains very foggy.
Something fast and loose, perhaps, or certainly something ideological, is going on in the movie's ideal union of Christian and pagan elements. This is what I meant by cultural nationalism. But I was and am sympathetic to what the film is trying to do; it's just a pity that the plot hones in on the completion of the Book of Kells at the expense of all other considerations. When the movie ended I felt it was about ten minutes too short, as if something important had been trimmed away, story and motivation-wise.
In this sense, the film feels incomplete, which, again, may be a relief from the kind of insistently, stridently, clear "storytelling" of the Disney/Pixar mode, but which also left me with some nagging doubts. This is not to undersell the overwhelming, intoxicating beauty of the film's style, which aestheticizes the story to a very great extent without, thank goodness, removing all scares and passions. When the Northmen attack the abbey late in the film (I'd say "spoiler alert" but it's pretty obvious the film tends in that direction) the stylization and the violence collide so that all that Celtic interlace ends up billowing up in great red clouds like blood billowing in water, and the effect is stunning. Similar breathtaking bits dot the film throughout, and the movie shows a healthy regard, both graphically and thematically, for the work of imagination and the drawing hand. In this sense it's a reassertion of the human element in the age of motion capture and digital rotoscoping. I can imagine watching it again and again despite the nagging sense that, story-wise, it doesn't end up quite right.
Animation fans should see this to witness the negotiation of 2D and 3D. It's remarkable. Comics fans should note the frequent dividing of the screen into polyptychs in tribute both to medieval art and to contemporary comics, which clearly have influenced Moore. This is one of those graphic narratives where the term is really deserved.
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