Director – Tomm Moore – 2014 – Ireland – Cert. PG – 93m
*****
A family is torn apart after the mother returns to the sea as a selkie – reviewed for Third Way, July 2015
Tomm Moore picked up an Oscar nomination for his medieval Irish animated fantasy The Secret Of Kells (2009). Like that earlier work, his equally impressive Song Of The Sea eschews Hollywood’s headlong rush towards 3D in favour of traditional 2D animation with an emphasis on drawing and visual design – and it’s a real pleasure to watch. A family movie in the best sense – there’s nothing here parents wouldn’t want children to see – it explores difficult issues about parents and children, being set in a family where, effectively, the mother has walked out leaving dad to look after the two kids. The plot employs Celtic folklorish figures of selkies – creatures who periodically change from female seals to human girls or women and back again.
Thus, the reason for the departure of Bronach (voice: Lisa Hannigan) a few minutes into the proceedings is that the sea is calling her to become a seal once again. She leaves behind her lighthouse keeper husband Conor (voice: Brendan Gleeson) and kids Ben (voice: David Rawle) & Saoirse (voice: Lucy O’Connell) to fend for themselves and their beloved dog Cu. Conor doesn’t really cope, and Saoirse goes out one night in her slip-on seal’s coat to swim, which makes her dad lock the coat away in a chest, then throw the chest and key into the sea. Granny (voice: Fionnula Flanagan) takes the kids inland with her to the city, but Ben resolves to escape with Saoirse and take her back home. However, to return to the sea, Saoirse will need her seal’s coat…
The overall look has clearly been influenced by pre-Celtish stone carvings, filtered through the sensibilities of paintings and drawings by Klee, Kandinsky and Basquiat. As in classic Disney animation, there’s a real respect for the visual source material; Moore and his crew generate a feeling that although we’re watching nineteen eighties children and adults, we’re experiencing the stuff of myth. As the narrative throws in assorted mythological characters and creatures, their presence within this nineteen eighties world appears perfectly natural.
Adults will be spellbound by this captivating piece of work as much as – if not more than – children. The small boy and his smaller sister are an obvious hero and heroine for our time. He is his sister’s protector who wants to see the right thing done and will take her on a hazardous cross-country journey to do so; she is a playful spirit torn between the opposing human and seal worlds of land and sea, without really understanding the problems this tension may cause.
If the adults understandably get less screen time, they are just as fascinating. Bronach, leaving her family who she genuinely loves because she feels she has no alternative, is wracked with guilt about abandoning them; Conor seeks solace in the pub downing pints with the local ferryman, while the distant, city-dwelling granny ruthlessly takes the kids, for their own good, to her urban home far away from the coast.
[Conor’s drinking recalls the mother in Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki, 2008) passing out drunk from cans of booze while her husband is away working on the sea. This scene may or may not be an influence, but Moore is on record as admiring Miyazaki’s ability to tell universal stories through indigenous national culture.]
This not a moneymaking movie made to maximize profits, but rather a film put together (with considerable charm, visual flair and more-than-competent storytelling ability) by someone who wants to spin a good yarn against the background of a cherished culture in which they grew up. These are aims at once modest and deep; it’s to the credit of all concerned that Song Of The Sea achieves such aims in spades.
Trailer: