I'm waiting for the film to come

Since enough people have asked me what I thought of The Secret of Kells, I am reposting my reply to asakiyume:

Visually extraordinary, one of the most unusually beautiful animated films I have ever seen: it does not look like anything else except ninth-century Irish illuminated manuscripts, including when the characters are in motion; it refuses perspective in historically intricate, elegant ways and the last shimmer of the Chi-Rho page of the Book is alive. The otherworldly characters are not and could never be mistaken for human or mortal. There's a hilarious bit with Saint Colum Cille. There is a white cat named Pangur Bán. The narrative has problems. Some of the ways in which it deliberately leaves its loose ends untied are both admirable and successful, but in places they cause the film to feel like two or three stories awkwardly joined—or two or three different takes on the same material that somehow wound up in the same draft—and there's one major instance where they fixed an emotional tension that I had found incredibly powerful when unresolved; it's a Disney-level misstep in a film that otherwise has very little to do with conventional animation and I have no idea what happened. The other serious problem, which is both artistic and narrative, is the representation of the Vikings as black-and-red horned monsters; they come across as aliens or Orcs that have somehow nipped over from Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth and it doesn't work, because the film is otherwise very shaded about people's lives and motivations—even the pre-Christian sacrifice-god that Brendan winds up confronting¹ is not portrayed as hellish, only very old, a bloodstained dark place, and still hungry. And given the manuscript look of Kells, honestly, I'd have expected the Vikings to be animated in one of the traditional Norse styles. Instead they're from some other planet and the disjoint doesn't ruin the film, but it did interfere for me. I would still recommend you see it. I'd certainly like to see what its creators do next.

1. In one of the film's showpieces—who knew it was possible to be reminded simultaneously of Beowulf and Harold and the Purple Crayon, but the results are gorgeous.

rushthatspeaks Someone whose identity I cannot apparently bring to mind has since informed me that what Tomm Moore is doing next is a selkie film, which makes me very hopeful. I should not like to see selkies become the Next Big Thing à la vampires or werewolves, because I would lose way too much of my life to banging my head into desks, but there are very few good selkie films—it's not exactly an overstuffed genre. The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) has the best explicit seal-wife on film, Ondine (2010) the hands-down best deconstruction; I know of another couple, like Bradley Rust Gray's Salt (2003), which I've never seen; I'm sure there's something absolutely terrible out there that I don't want to know about, so don't tell me. But nothing animated comes to mind, and I am profoundly grateful there is not, in fact, a recent Disney take on the Great Selkie of Sule Skerry; I would have to punch someone. Based on Aisling and Crom Cruach of The Secret of Kells, I'll much rather take my chances with Cartoon Saloon.

In other news, I will be spending damn near the entire day tomorrow at the Actors' Shakespeare Project's The Coveted Crown: Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2. I hope it will be awesome; the closest I have come to being disappointed in one of their productions was merely enjoying last June's Much Ado About Nothing very much. (I am optimistic: its Prince Hal is Bill Barclay, whose Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi almost singlehandedly made me fall in love with the play.) Then I can go around thinking in pentameter for a week.

And the rehearsal last night was great.