Thoughts on “The Secret of Kells”

When The Secret of Kells was named as one of the five films nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the most common reaction was “What’s The Secret of Kells? It was a fair question. The Irish film had received only an extremely limited release in the U.S. I had read about it on a couple of animation news sites and was pleasantly surprised when it received the Academy Award nomination. I didn’t expect it would beat Up, which was favored to win the Feature Animation category. But I was hoping that the attention would earn the film a slightly wider release and an eventual U.S. DVD release. The latter hasn’t happened yet, but seems likely. The former is already happening. While The Secret of Kells isn’t playing everywhere, more theaters have started showing it in the wake of its Oscar nomination. Because of this, I was able to catch an evening showing last Friday.

Brendan is a young boy in ninth century Ireland. This is a very dangerous time, as marauding Vikings ravage the countryside in search of gold. Brendan’s uncle, the abbot of Kells, has devoted himself and the monks completely to building a protective wall around the abbey to keep the Vikings out. The monks have almost no time to work on the lushly detailed illuminated manuscripts and Brendan has never been allowed to venture outside of the abbey walls. All of this changes with the arrival of Brother Aiden, a refugee monk and master illuminator. Brother Aiden was able to flee with a precious manuscript when Iona was sacked by the Vikings and now seeks Brendan’s help to complete it. Now Brendan risks his uncle’s anger and his own safety in his quest to complete what will one day be the incredible Book of Kells.

Since the film’s primary inspiration is the Book of Kells – the most lavish and famous of Irish illuminated manuscripts – and much of the story deals with the power of art and inspiration, it’s no surprise that the visuals in Secret of Kells are the film’s greatest strength. The art style draws upon the illustrations and decorations found within the Book of Kells and other artwork of the era to create an unabashedly stylized look. Fields are rendered as perfect squares with sides parallel to the edges of the screen. Characters walk along the horizon line regardless of their distance from the camera. Trees form long rows of perfect arches that shelter smaller trees. Like the Book of Kells itself, the movie creates a world that mixes nature with patterns of intricate geometry, evoking a long ago time ever so slightly tinged with magic. Design takes precedence over realism. This theory goes beyond the background design into the staging of shots. At some points, the screen is split pieces, sometimes resembling a triptych. These shots can serve to call the viewer’s attention to multiple scenes or items of importance, or to demonstrate the passage of distance or time.

The character animation makes similar use of simple shapes with less of the detailed patterns found in the background. Brendan’s monk friends are largely big, friendly arch shapes (with the exception of one rectangle), while his stern uncle is an imposing, unshakable pillar, echoing the abbey’s tall tower. The fearsome Vikings are less human than shadowy monsters. Their faces are defined by their beards and helmets with two empty white circles for eyes. They are nearly unintelligible except for the occasional deep utterance of “No gold.” Preceded by the rough-feathered crows that foretell their coming, the Vikings conjure up all the fear that terrified Irish villagers must have felt upon seeing these formidable warriors for the first time. On the other end of the spectrum is Aisling, a strange forest child who befriends Brendan. Completely at home in the woods that Brendan is just discovering, Aisling is just as comfortable hopping from stone to stone like a frog, climbing to any height with catlike swiftness, or racing through the forest on all fours as she is walking upright. She has a long ribbon of silver hair that trails after her wherever she goes, adding grace to her movements.

Here and there, I did notice moments where the animation seemed jumpy, with not enough drawings describing the motion. This limited animation style wouldn’t be an issue if it were consistent throughout the film. But these couple of instances seemed out of place. There were a number of different studios named in the credits, so that could explain the occasional jumpiness. Whatever the cause, these moments are few and far between and do little to distract from the overall stunning look of the movie.

The story is at its best when it focuses on the central question of whether physical security or hope and inspiration is more valuable to a community in troubled times. Though he is curious about the world outside of the abbey walls, Brendan is initially reluctant to disobey his uncle and explore the outside world. But the power and beauty of the unfinished book inspires him. In turn, Brendan’s experiences in the forest inspire him to help Brother Aiden finish the Book of Kells. The fact that the world beyond the abbey is a dangerous place is indisputable; Brendan is nearly devoured by wolves and the impending arrival of the Vikings is a very real threat, as the refugees who continue to come to Kells seeking shelter show. But had Brendan been unwilling to face these dangers, he would never have been inspired by the beauty of nature to create new pages for the Book of Kells.

Though he is the closest thing the film has to a villain (the Vikings being more of a malevolent force of nature), Abbot Cellach is also one of the most interesting characters in the film. Though he is at odds with the protagonists of the film, he is neither a bad man nor a foolish one. He has simply pinned all of his hopes for the future on the abbey’s protective wall. He is as obsessed with the building of the wall as Brendan and Brother Aiden are with finishing the Book of Kells; the walls of his room are covered floor to ceiling with chalk drawings of plans for the wall. Later in the film, he has his sleeves rolled up and is pitching in with the taxing manual labor required to build the wall. He obviously cares about the people of Kells and Brendan in particular. But he has come to believe that the wall will both stop the Vikings and lead the Irish people to accept the Christian faith. Because of this, he has devoted himself wholly to the wall’s construction to the exclusion of all else.

My biggest problem with The Secret of Kells is its ending, where the film kind of fizzles out and never quite delivers on the setup. The Book of Kells is built up from the beginning as “the book that turns darkness into light,” a reference to the term “illuminated manuscript.” The implied mission seems to be that walls cannot keep the darkness and suffering at bay, but an artistic masterpiece can inspire people and act a a beacon of light in dark times. The religious content of the Book of Kells is very much underplayed, though this makes a degree of sense in light of the fact that the book was made as more of a devotional object than a utilitarian text and today it is revered as the greatest surviving example of Celtic Christian art. The problem is that the book’s ultimate impact on the world is never made clear in the movie. Before I saw it, I had wondered if The Secret of Kells was getting so little distribution in the U.S. because the Book of Kells is not widely known here. Now I wonder if part of the issue was that the movie almost requires the viewer to know a little about the book’s history. If you don’t go in knowing that the Book of Kells was an important religious object and is considered an Irish national treasure to this day, the effectiveness of the book in bringing hope to Ireland is unclear from what the movie shows.

Its ending aside, The Secret of Kells is well worth seeing. Its rich and inspired visuals are a wonderful reminder of the ability of hand-drawn animation to explore a variety of styles that would be impossible to replicate with computer animation. The story avoids many of the clichés that have come to be associated with hand-drawn animation and presents an investigation of the nature of art wrapped in an exciting narrative with no shortage of action and fun. It is a beautiful film and one that I hope will remind audiences of what hand-drawn animation is capable of.

All images in this article are copyright Cartoon Saloon.

Tags: awards, hand-drawn animation, movies

Written by Sara on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 9:51 am. Filed under movies, now playing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.