When the recent Oscar nominations came out, there weren’t really very many surprises. Okay, there usually aren’t, because by that time, there have been so many awards handed out the lead horses are easy to spot.
But in the category of Best Animated Feature, one film earned a clear “huh?” from most. That film is The Secret of Kells, and while it may not have had the wide release or big box office of Up or Fantastic Mr. Fox, its nomination was well-deserved.
Ninth-century Ireland can’t have been an easy place to grow up. Between the absolutely inhospitable climate and the occasional marauding horde, well there’s just not that much time for a kid to be a kid. And when you’re Brendan, the orphaned nephew of the Abbot of Kells, your chances for joy in life are slim. Brendan’s story, and the story of Kells, is the driving force behind the narrative of the film. While his uncle the Abbot is busy building a wall to protect the town from the approaching Norsemen, Brendan does just about everything except what the Abbot wants, including falling in with the recently-arrived Aidan of Iona, a masterful illustrator who sees Brendan as his apprentice. With the help of Aisling, a fairie spirit, Brendan discovers the world outside the wall, but it may be both his and the town’s undoing.
Kells was directed by Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey, and the visual style of the film is amazing detailed and completely fascinating. There’s no need for 3-D trickery here, this is pure two-dimensional artistry, with more to see in every frame than the eye could ever capture. There are visual elements borrowed both from Disney and from Japanese anime, but Moore and Twomey, and a host of artists, make them their own, especially the forest scenes with Brendan and Aisling.
I’m not going to pretend to have any context for the story of the Book of Kells, a medieval transcript that is a sacred item in Ireland’s heritage. But if the illustrations themselves are as spectacular as the animation in the film, it is a special book indeed. The Secret of Kells is, in many ways, a more lyrical animated film than I’ve seen in a long time. It moves at its own pace, with much the same feel of classic Irish song.
What Moore and Twomey have created in The Secret of Kells may not last as long as the book itself, but it deserves its own place in the soul of Ireland.
