“The Secret of Kells” is a movie that’s all about the art. Made on a shoestring budget over the course of a decade, this is the movie that ran for the best animation Oscar against the likes of “Up”, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Coraline.” Done partially by hand and partially in computer programs such as Flash, “The Secret of Kells” takes an old Irish fable and illuminates it with the power of film.
Brendan is a young boy in a remote Irish settlement. The abbot of the settlement, his uncle, is both an arch disciplinarian who forbids Brendan from crossing the massive walls that protect the settlement from an always-present Viking threat. When a visiting illuminator named Aiden brings a fantastic text to Kells and becomes Brendan’s mentor, he begins to venture into the old world of Irish myth and legend: much to the abbot’s chagrin.
For the most part, the story of the film is a gentle family-friendly affair. The strength of the film lies instead in the incredible animation. Each scene is packed with detail while maintaining a strange sense of abstraction. There’s no perspective; objects are flattened like hieroglyphs so that the most interesting side is always visible. Thus, characters float over walls and floors, scurry out of the illustrated pages of books, slide over surfaces and occasionally slip past traditional representations of space together. By skipping over realistic animation, the movie opens to the possibility of unbridled expression.
The process of drawing, however, is the real substance of “The Secret of Kells.” The abbot covers the walls of his sanctuary with intricate blueprints drawn out in chalk. Brendan, in a similar way, uses chalk to hash out his frustrations and designs on tiny handheld slates. The relationship between Brendan and the illuminator blossoms around the process of decoration and inkmaking. These sequences allow the animators to indulge in winding, detailed designs: with Celtic motifs and patterns springing up off of the page and floating across the screen as the representational and abstract parts of the movie merge.
Occasionally, Brendan ventures outside the abbey into a massive, ancient forest. Here, the gods and images from the Celtic past are brought forward, and Brendan he meets a waifish forest spirit named Aisling. It’s not a coincidence shares a name with a genre of Irish poetry in which a female narrator anthropomorphize the spirit of the country. The relationship between Aisiling and Brendan represents the cultural contact between pagan past and Christian future that the movie’s Ireland faces.
For the most part, the movie plays out as gently as a Disney animated feature. Near the end, however, the story take on a tone that is several shades darker than the rest of the movie. The Viking antagonists aren’t characterized; they’re barely human in shape and speak in guttural, animalistic grunts. For the purposes of keeping the story simple and the art complex, this simple representation makes sense. Set alongside the rest of the movie, however, it’s jarring and intense: pulling the story down to bleak, unremitting depths and leaving the characters in a sickly state of shock.
“The Secret of Kells” is a gem of an animated film. It’s a heartfelt tribute to the beautiful illuminated texts of Ireland’s past, a serious look at the power of drawing and a rare visual treat. The detail and care which went into its production are visible in each frame; the film is so focused on the art, in fact, that the story and characters are often eclipsed. Nonetheless, it’s worth checking out on Neflix Instant View.
