Director
Tomm Moore, and his team at Cartoon Saloon, are known for creating rich
tapestries of Irish folklore in the form of their gorgeously animated feature
films, focusing on a trilogy that began with The Secret of Kells (2009) and continued with Song of the Sea (2014). This richly imagined trilogy is completed
with Wolfwalkers, co-directed by Ross
Stewart – a vibrant celebration of the glories of the wild world and the
ancient power of the friendships between women.
Irish
legends tell of creatures known as wolfwalkers – humans who commune with wolves
of the forest, whose magic can heal wounds and whose spirits become wolves
themselves while their bodies sleep. When the “Lord Protector”, Oliver Cromwell
(Simon McBurney) hires an English hunter, Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean) to
eradicate the wolf pack that thrives in the woods surrounding the town of
Kilkenny, Bill’s young daughter Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) must accustom herself to
living in a place of rules and overprotection. She begins to feel cooped up,
and escapes into the forest to try helping her father in the hunt – and ends up
face-to-face with the wolfwalker child, Mebh (Eva Whittaker), who ignites
Robyn’s free spirit and sparks a truly magical friendship. But with Cromwell’s
men decimating the forest and her father hunting wolves, Robyn’s loyalties are
stretched between the father who has always protected her, and the
free-spirited wild child who has stolen her imagination and unlocked her desire
for freedom. When she promises to help Mebh find her mother, whose wolf form
has been away from her human body for a long time – she finds her own
wolfwalker powers awakening, and must try to save both the only blood family
she has left, and the lupine family she has chosen.
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| Photo: Cartoon Saloon / Melusine Productions |
Cartoon
Saloon’s Irish folklore films are visually striking, using contrasting color
palettes and character designs to tell the inner stories of the worlds they
create. The Kilkenny of Wolfwalkers
is austere and angular, full of sharp, thickened black lines and a
burned-woodblock aesthetic to reflect the drab grey cage in which its people
live in fear, both of the natural world and of the divine punishments
threatened upon them by their Lord Protector should they stray from his fold.
The surrounding forest is contrasted in swirling watercolor scenes, its lines
playful and dynamic, the wolves themselves becoming part of the shifting
jeweled shadows and illuminating the blossoming sisterhood between Mebh and
Robyn in joyful hues of gold, silvered blue, and a bright gradient of greens.
The contrast between the puritanical “townies” and the wild forest children of
magic is a striking one – and in between the two worlds, Robyn and her father
stand out. Bill’s nose and chin viewed head-on are a pair of arrows, pointing
in opposite directions, foreshadowing the internal conflicts the character will
endure throughout the story, as he tries desperately to keep his daughter safe
even though he can see that the closer he keeps her to their new home and all
its rules, the more miserable she is becoming.
Robyn and
Mebh, and their unusual friendship, are at the very heart of this film, and
it’s difficult not to notice the transformation in Robyn as she begins to
discover the wildness of the spirit inside herself, inspired by the
irrepressible Mebh, and recall the other lively female characters in Moore’s
past films. Somewhere in between the secret suburban selkie Saoirse and the
feisty forest fairy Aisling is Mebh, growling and snapping like a little wolf
cub and yet longing for the gentle healing touch of her sleeping mother and
delighting in the bond she shares with Robyn as their wolf forms dash through
the moonlit woods together. Mebh is defined by both her freedom and her
loneliness, both informed by the deep, ancient magic coursing through her: the
wildness of women, the most secreted and sacred of any culture’s continued
survival, is a thread that runs through all three films in the trilogy, and it
is brought to life perfectly in loving detail. Hand-drawn animation has a power
of expression that doesn’t always exist within computer-generated films, and
Moore and his team understand this. Their features are designed to be enjoyed
repeatedly, with hidden details and subtle symbolism sewn into each
painstakingly illustrated frame.
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| Photo: Cartoon Saloon / Melusine Productions |
Lushly
scored by longtime Cartoon Saloon collaborators Bruno Coulais and the Irish
folk band Kíla, with a gorgeous rendition of Aurora’s “Running with the Wolves”
backing a key scene for Robyn and Mebh, Wolfwalkers
is a delight not only for its visual beauty and fantastic characters and story.
Everything comes together in this film, not only for its insular experience,
but for the entire trilogy. Ancient pagan legends of Ireland are brought with
these films into the modern world with a reverence and intuitive gentility only
truly found within the hearts of children – children like Brendan of Kells, Ben
by the sea, and kind Robyn Goodfellowe, all facing the awakening of such strange
primeval magic in their daily lives with tentative enthusiasm and discovering
their true strengths.
Wolfwalkers is the perfect ending to an
outstanding series of storybook animated features because it is a film that
exudes so much utter love – love for
the tradition of story, love for Ireland, love for the influence of change and
the jubilant purity of worlds discovering one another. Marrying the modern to
the traditional, both in art and in story, is a particular talent for Tomm
Moore, and one cannot help but wonder what incredible world he will open to us
in future projects.
--Dana Culling
