| The Secret of Kells | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Tomm Moore Nora Twomey |
| Produced by | Paul Young Didier Brunner Vivian Van Fleteren |
| Screenplay by | Fabrice Ziolkowski |
| Story by | Tomm Moore |
| Starring | Brendan Gleeson Evan McGuire Christen Mooney Mick Lally |
| Music by | Bruno Coulais Kíla[1] |
| Editing by | Fabienne Alvarez-Giro |
| Studio | Celluloid Dreams France 2 Cinéma Canal + Cartoon Saloon |
| Distributed by | Gébéka Films (France) Buena Vista International (Ireland) Gkids (US) |
| Release date(s) | 11 February 2009 (Belgium/France) 3 March 2009 (Ireland) |
| Running time | 75 minutes |
| Country | Belgium Ireland France |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $8 million |
| Box office | $739,454 |
The Secret of Kells (working title: Brendan and the Secret of Kells) is a 2009 Irish-French-Belgian[2] animated feature film by Cartoon Saloon that premiered on February 8, 2009, at the Berlin International Film Festival. It went into wide release in Belgium and France on February 11, and in the Republic of Ireland on March 3. On February 2, 2010, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.[3][4]
Contents |
The story is set in the seventh century and gives a fictionalized account of the creation of the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin. Abbot Cellach, obsessed with building a mighty wall to keep marauding Viking raiders from destroying the early-Christian Abbey of Kells, expects his young nephew Brendan to follow in his footsteps. Brendan has apprenticed in the scriptorium of the monastery and has heard the story of Aidan of Iona, a master illuminator who is working on the Book of Iona. Aidan later comes to the monastery, accompanied by his cat Pangur Bán. Brother Aidan has escaped from the Vikings who have destroyed his own monastery, and had brought the unfinished Book of Iona with him. Taking Brendan under his wing, Aidan asks Brendan to venture into the forest to look for gall nuts to make ink, though the boy is fearful as he was forbidden to go into the forest by his uncle. Brendan eventually enters the forest, where he meets a forest spirit named Aisling. She is suspicious of Brendan at first, but soon befriends him after helping him find the gall nuts. Though Cellach learns of his adventure and forbids him from leaving the abbey's confines, Brendan secretly defies it as Aidan teaches him illumination while Aisling introduces him to a wider world.
Eventually, Brendan learns that Aidan needs his help to finish Book of Iona due to his failing eyes and hands, and the loss of the Eye of Collum-Cille, a special lens he possessed. Aidan reveals that his predecessor obtained it from Crom Cruach, a Celtic pagan deity, with whom Brendan had a frightful encounter prior. When Brendan tries to sneak out of the abbey to go to Crom's cave to obtain the other eye, he is caught and confined to his room by Cellach, who later gets into an disagreement with Aidan and demands that he leave when spring arrives. Having overheard the disagreement, Pangur Bán ventures into the forest to get Aisling's help. Aisling frees Brendan, using her magic to turn Pangur Bán into a spirit that retrieves the key to his room, and together they flee into the forest. When Brendan tells Aisling of his plan, she pleads with him not to go through with it, revealing that Crom Cruach killed her people and her mother and will surely kill him as well. Brendan tells her that he must retrieve the eye in order to complete the book. Eventually Aisling agrees to help him and manages to get Brendan into the cave, but appears to be consumed by Crom's darkness in the process. After some struggling, Brendan defeats Crom by taking the god's remaining eye and imprisoning him in a circle of chalk where the blinded Crom consumes himself. With the eye in his possession, he exits the cave to find the cloak he had given to Aisling neatly folded amongst the cracked rock she had lifted to give him entrance inside. Leading away from the spot is a trail of flowers left by Aisling as proof she survived. Brendan returns to the Abbey and continues to help Aidan in secret.
Shortly thereafter, the Vikings arrive and Cellach locks his nephew and Aidan in the scriptorium as his plan to protect everyone from the invaders falls apart. Managing to escape the carnage, Brendan and Aidan are confronted in the woods by the Viking leader and a band of his men. The Viking leader scatters the pages of the book, and the Vikings prepare to kill the two helpless travelers. Before the Vikings can strike Brendan and Aiden down, Aisling's black wolves converge upon them, killing the Vikings. As Brendan and Aiden collect the pages of the book, Aisling, in the form of the white wolf, appears to Brendan before disappearing back into the forest. Brendan and Aiden continue to travel across Ireland, working on the Book of Iona over the years. Inheriting the book after Aidan's passing, the now-adult Brendan ends up back in the forest of his youth, where he again meets wolf-Aisling, and she guides him to the village. It turned out only the villagers who made it to the abbey tower survived, along with a guilt-ridden Cellach. Now near death, Cellach reunites with the nephew whom he thought had perished in the massacre long ago, and is able to see the completed Book of Kells.
The film closes with a beautiful set of scenes showing the now completed illuminated pages which come to life as viewed.
The film was very well received; it holds a 91% overall approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 78 reviews with an average rating of 7.6/10.[5] with the selected Top Critics giving the film a score of 88% based on 17 reviews[6] and the film is "Certified Fresh", with the critical consensus that "Beautifully drawn and refreshingly calm, The Secret of Kells hearkens back to animation's golden age with an enchanting tale inspired by Irish mythology."[5]
Leslie Felperin of Variety Magazine praised the film as "Refreshingly different" and "absolutely luscious to behold".[7] Jeremy W. Kaufmann of Ain't It Cool News called its animation "absolutely brilliant,"[8] and reviewers at Starlog called it "one of the greatest hand drawn independent animated movies of all time."[9]
On Oscar weekend it was released at the IFC Center in New York City and it has since been released in other venues and cities in the United States. As of July 11, 2010, it has grossed $667,441.[10]
The film is based on the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament located in Dublin, Ireland. It also draws upon Celtic mythology,[11] examples include its inclusion of Crom Cruach, a pre-Christian Irish deity[12] and the reference to the poetic genre of Aislings, in which a poet is confronted by a dream or vision of a seeress, in the naming of the forest sprite encountered by Brendan. Wider mythological similarities have also been commented upon, such as parallels between Brendan's metaphysical battle with Crom Cruach and Beowulf's underwater encounter with Grendel's mother.[13]
The Secret of Kells began development in 1999, when Tomm Moore and several of his friends were inspired by Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler and Disney's Mulan, which based their visual style on the respective traditional art of the countries they were set in - Persia for The Thief, and China for Mulan. They decided to do something similar with Irish art. [14]