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Song of the Sea
This is one of my favorite movies in a long time.
(It is my second favorite selkie story, because "The Brides of Rollrock Island" is beautiful and so sharp)
Ben and Saoirse live with their father in an isolated lighthouse. Their mother vanished when Saoirse was born, and the siblings have a fraught relationship, not helped by the fact that Saoirse, at six, hasn't started talking. Ben's father and grandmother are trying hard to deny the fact that Saoirse was a selkie, and her mother was one too, but when the kids are forced to move to the city, the nearby Danae Sidhe go in search of the selkie who can save them with her song.
The animation is beautiful, gently stylized and abstracted in places and always with a keen eye for detail, like the great Ghibli movies. The story is excellent though not wildly original; it's so far away from the formulaic kids' movies with the family drama awkwardly pasted on to the real plot, because the family drama and the fantasy quest plot emerge organically from the same source (and this is cleverly alluded to by doubling the voice actors in some of the family / mythic roles). As the Twitch review says :
It really is absolutely earnest and sincere and vulnerable and the only good comparison, I think, is My Neighbor Totoro, another movie that is definitely a children's movie but reaches out into adulthood not with sarcastic quips and double entendres but by being really good.
(I'm happy this seems to be getting some buzz - it sold out the showing me and my sister meant to see, and the one we actually went to was completely packed. It was a tiny theater, but even so.)
(It is my second favorite selkie story, because "The Brides of Rollrock Island" is beautiful and so sharp)
Ben and Saoirse live with their father in an isolated lighthouse. Their mother vanished when Saoirse was born, and the siblings have a fraught relationship, not helped by the fact that Saoirse, at six, hasn't started talking. Ben's father and grandmother are trying hard to deny the fact that Saoirse was a selkie, and her mother was one too, but when the kids are forced to move to the city, the nearby Danae Sidhe go in search of the selkie who can save them with her song.
The animation is beautiful, gently stylized and abstracted in places and always with a keen eye for detail, like the great Ghibli movies. The story is excellent though not wildly original; it's so far away from the formulaic kids' movies with the family drama awkwardly pasted on to the real plot, because the family drama and the fantasy quest plot emerge organically from the same source (and this is cleverly alluded to by doubling the voice actors in some of the family / mythic roles). As the Twitch review says :
Unlike virtually anything in American animation today - up to and including Pixar - this is a film that does not feel like a product in any way. Song Of The Sea is not about selling units, it's about story and heart and emotion and wonder and craftsmanship and because of that it becomes timeless.
It really is absolutely earnest and sincere and vulnerable and the only good comparison, I think, is My Neighbor Totoro, another movie that is definitely a children's movie but reaches out into adulthood not with sarcastic quips and double entendres but by being really good.
(I'm happy this seems to be getting some buzz - it sold out the showing me and my sister meant to see, and the one we actually went to was completely packed. It was a tiny theater, but even so.)