Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Secret of Kells

An Irish BeautyBy John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"

"I've lived through many ages. I've seen suffering in the darkness. Yet I have seen beauty thrive in the most fragile of places. I have seen the book. The book that turns darkness into light." Aisling (Christen Mooney)

Writer/director Tomm Moore's Secret of Kells is an Irish animation more like a highly stylized, richly illustrated children's book than an historical look at the Book of Kells. Reverence for the illuminated manuscript so lovingly transcribed by Celtic monks in the post-Roman British era of Insular Art is there; characterization of the main players such as the Abbot Cellach (voice of Brendan Gleeson) is not there, as if the hand-drawn cells were the reason everyone is at the screening, not the characters.

The abbot's nephew Brendan (voice of Evan McGuire) is a young apprentice scribe who eventually saves the manuscript and whose presence is continual through the film, a symbol of hope for Irish culture and a dramatic necessity given the flatness of the other characters. His relationship with the sprightly Aisling is childlike and then mystical as they grow apart with different missions defining their lives.

The animation becomes as alive as the artwork with the arrival of the marauding Vikings, whose hulking, boxy blackness and menacing horns contrast with the richness of the forest green and the manuscript pages themselves. Sneaking in is a bit of CG to augment the busy background of Kells town and the manuscript.

The beauty of the animation is similar to that of the book itself, whose Christian gospels and motifs are lavishly ornamented, far superior to any other Insular Art in its time. The colors of the film remind me of the richness in Sita Sings the Blues.

The two-dimensional animation seems flat by contrast with the recent 3-D obsession, yet I was not interested in changing The Secret of Kells into a modern cinematic fad. Splendid 900 A.D. art is just fine, thank you.

John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com