Set in 9th-century Ireland, during the age of Viking expansion, the film's protagonist is Brendan, a curious and brave boy living in the tightly knit Abbey of Kells under the care of his stern uncle, Abbot Cellach, who is obsessed with building a high impregnable wall encircling his Abbey to prevent Viking attacks.
Apprenticed in the scriptorium of the monastery, Brendan hears the other monks talk of Brother Aidan, creator of the Book of Iona, and becomes curious about the mysterious illuminator and the book that turns darkness into light (the unfinished Book of Kells). Aidan arrives in Kells, accompanied by his white cat with heterochromatic eyes, Pangur Bán,[7] after escaping from his monastery at Iona in a small boat as it is destroyed by a Viking raid (seen in brief in the opening titles).
After eavesdropping on a discussion between Cellach and Aidan, Brendan wanders into the scriptorium and finds the still-to-be-completed illuminated manuscript guarded by Pangur Bán. Aidan arrives, and tells Brendan all about this great book.
Seeing Brendan as a suitable apprentice, Aidan sends him to follow Pangur Bán out of a secret passage under the abbey wall the cat has found out into the summer woods to obtain gall nuts to make more ink. Cornered by a hungry pack of wolves, Brendan is saved by the Aos Sí or faerie, Aisling - a shape-changer - who overcomes her initial suspicions and accepts Brendan after he reveals his intentions of helping to create the book. They become firm friends.
After a close encounter with Crom Cruach - an ancient and long-forgotten deity of death and destruction - of whom Aisling is deeply afraid, because it orphaned her long years ago, Brendan and Aisling return to the outskirts of the forest, and she assures him that he can return any time.
On his return to the monastery, Brendan is reprimanded by the Abbot, who forbids him to leave abbey grounds again. Continuing to work with Aidan, Brendan learns that the work is endangered by the loss of the Eye of Colm Cille, a special magnifying lens, that was lost in Aidan's flight from Iona. Brendan recognises it as one of Crom Cruach's eyes, so when Brendan tries to visit Crom's cave to obtain another ‘Eye’, Cellach confines him to his room for disobeying his instructions.
Freed by Pangur Bán and Aisling, Brendan runs into the heart of the woods, where a shocked Aisling begs him not to confront the dark god, warning that Crom Cruach will kill him, just as it killed her mother and the rest of her people. Declaring that the book will never be completed without the 'Eye', Brendan persuades Aisling to help him enter Crom's cave, narrowly escaping death in the process. Brendan duels with Crom and seizes the Eye, blinding Crom completely and causing the deity to consume itself, becoming an ouroboros. Returning to the cave entrance, Brendan finds the forest covered in white flowers.
Brendan returns to the abbey and continues to assist Aidan with the new Eye of Colm Cille in secret, watched excitedly by the brothers of the monastery.
A wounded messenger from outside warns Cellach that the Vikings are on their way. As the Vikings penetrate more of the Irish lands, the Abbey becomes a sanctuary to more and more people from the surrounding lands. By winter, the whole of the abbey grounds are covered by a refugee encampment.
In a fit of anger and frustration, Cellach locks Brendan and Aidan in the scriptorium, but not before ripping out a page Brendan had created. The Vikings breach the great wooden gate and invade Kells, to Cellach's great horror. The Abbot is wounded by an arrow, then by a Viking blade, as the raiders swarm the abbey. The wooden staircase to Kells's central tower becomes overloaded with panicked villagers and collapses, while the encampment and the other abbey buildings around it are set ablaze. Still locked in the burning scriptorium, Brendan and Aidan escape from the raiders using green smoke from making the gallberry ink as a diversion. Unable to help the Abbot or any of the others, Brendan and Aidan flee to the forest with Pangur Bán and their illuminated manuscript via the cat's secret passage, as the Vikings breach the main chapel and attack the monks and villagers hiding within.
Vikings in the forest find Brendan and Aidan during their escape and grab their great tome from them, just to rip off the bejeweled cover, while scattering the seemingly worthless pages of the book, but Aisling's wolves arrive and either scare away or kill the Vikings. As Brendan finds the final page of the book, he comes face to face for a moment with a white wolf, presumably Aisling.
Brendan and Aidan travel across Ireland and, after many years, complete the great book. Aidan entrusts the book to Brendan and then dies, and the now-adult Brendan returns to Kells with Pangur Bán, guided by a white wolf (revealed to be Aisling).
Folio 34r of the original Book of Kells shows the Chi Rho monogram.
Following being sacked and burnt, Kells is left with few survivors protected in the central tower, and the Abbot although severely injured, is one of them. Brendan reunites with his aged, guilt-ridden Uncle Ceallach, and shows him the completed work he now calls the Book of Kells.
The film closes with an animated rendition of the Chi-Rho page, featuring its intense detail.
Cast
Evan McGuire as Brendan, a bright, imaginative, and curious 12-year-old who leads a sheltered life
Christen Mooney as Aisling, a forest fairy, related to the Tuatha Dé Danann, living in the woods outside of Kells
Mick Lally as Brother Aidan, a wizard-esque master illuminator. This was noted to be Lally's last film before his death on 31 August 2010.
Liam Hourican as Brothers Tang and Leonardo, two illuminators from Asia and Italy, respectively
Paul Tylak as Brother Assoua, an illuminator from Africa
Paul Young as Brother Square, an illuminator from England
Influences
Folio 32v of the original Book of Kells shows Christ enthroned.
The film is based on the story of the origin of the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscriptGospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament located in Dublin, Ireland. It also draws upon Celtic mythology;[8] examples include its inclusion of Crom Cruach, a pre-Christian Irish deity[9] 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.[10]The Secret of Kells began development in 1999, when Tomm Moore and several of his friends were inspired by Richard Williams'sThe Thief and the Cobbler, Disney's Mulan, Gustav Klimt's paintings, John Bauer's illustrations and the works of Hayao Miyazaki, which based their visual style on the respective traditional art of the cultures featured in each film. They decided to do something similar to Studio Ghibli's films but with Irish art.[11] Tomm Moore explained that the visual style was inspired by Celtic and medieval art, being 'flat, with false perspective and lots of colour'. Even the cleanup was planned to 'obtain the stained glass effect of thicker outer lines'.[12]
Reception
Sculpture of the character Pángúr Bán from the film 'The Secret of Kells' in the Kilkenny Castle Rose Garden
The film was very well received by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 90% based on 84 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10.[13] Rotten Tomatoes critics concluded that the film was "Beautifully drawn and refreshingly calm, The Secret of Kells hearkens back to animation's golden age with an enchanting tale inspired by Irish mythology."[13] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 20 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[14]
Gary Thompson of the Philadelphia Daily News said The Secret of Kells "is noteworthy for its unique, ornate design, its moments of silence... and gorgeous music".[16] Leslie Felperin of Variety magazine praised the film as "Refreshingly different" and "absolutely luscious to behold".[17] Jeremy W. Kaufmann of Ain't It Cool News called its animation "absolutely brilliant",[18] and reviewers at Starlog called it "one of the greatest hand-drawn independent animated movies of all time".[19] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Charles Solomon ranked the film the tenth-best anime on his "Top 10".[20] On Oscar weekend it was released at the IFC Center in New York City and was then released in other venues and cities in the United States, where it grossed $667,441.[2]
According to Paul Young, CEO of Cartoon Saloon, "Kells came out and it didn’t really make much of an impact in Ireland... It made more waves in the US. It got picked up by GKIDS Films, which was the first time they had theatrically distributed a movie".[21]
Accolades
Tomm Moore, writer-director of 'The Secret of Kells'
Wins
2008: Directors Finders Award at the Directors Finders Series in Ireland
2009: Audience Award at the 9th Kecskemét Animation Film Festival; Kecskemét City Prize at the 6th Festival of European Animated Feature Films and TV Specials[23]
Keazor, Henry, "Stil, Symbol, Struktur: 'The Tree of Life' als Motiv im Film", in: Der achte Tag. Naturbilder in der Kunst des 21. Jahrhunderts, edited by Frank Fehrenbach and Matthias Krüger, Berlin/Boston 2016, p. 163 - 200
The Bob's Burgers Movie (2022; under and with Lighthouse Studios, as well as with Bento Box, Golden Wolf, Mercury Filmworks, and Tonic DNA, among others)
