Review of The Secret of Kells (2009) by Jason W — 21 Sep 2010

Brendan dreams of writing the greatest book of all time, but he's stifled by his uncle, Abbot Cellach, who wants Brendan to be practical and help build a wall around the village of Kells to help protect them from an impending Viking attack. When Brother Aidan turns up from another village that's already been attacked by the vikings, he captivates Brendan because he was a great writer, and he asks Brendan to help him finish the now legendary Book of Kells. Now, Brendan must defy his uncle's warnings and venture into the forest outside Kells and confront his fears of the "Dark One" to find inspiration to finish the great Book of Kells.

The Academy Awards have a tendency to nominate a lot of films that have only been released in limited release and are not very widely seen. Some people see this as a detriment, thinking that the Academy has lost touch because it typically doesn't look at the more widely seen and generally loved movies. In my opinion this is actually a strength, when awards season rolls around I'm looking up those other movies to catch the gems that I missed, knowing that something great is out there that should have been released wide. That's the case with The Secret of Kells. To be honest, and it's kind of sad, I'm not too familiar with animation outside of anime and American anime. Thanks to the Academy Awards, though, I found out about this great animated feature.

Kells is the type of movie that kind of has one foot planted in fantasy and legend, and another foot planted in reality. The Book of Kells is a real historical book created around the 6th to 9th centuries and is considered Ireland's finest national treasure. The origin of the Book of Kells is still widely disputed, so the creation of the book is ripe to made into a film of sorts. In The Secret of Kells, the story revolves around an older monk teaching a child about inspiration and art to create the Book of Kells. In reality, it seems the major theme of this movie deals with one generation teaching another generation about the art of hand drawn animation. In a day and age when computer animation has all but taken over for the older hand drawn animation, it's great to see a film that's more of a call to the old traditions and does it so well. The Secret of Kells is beautifully rendered to the screen, as well as highly original, still looking better than a lot of computer animated features that come out these days which makes it's message that much more potent as well.

I highly recommend this film to anyone that like animated features of any kind. You'll find certain similarities to anime, as well as older animated films like some of the early adaptations of Rudyard Kipling books like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the like. Honestly, this might even be my favorite animated film of the year so far, at least it's very close between this and Up. Definitely give it a shot, great animated feature!

5/5.