I can’t help thinking it’s a sad indicator of the state of the film industry that my two favourite films so far this year have been children’s films. (Though I do agree with some people’s suggestion that 90% of material produced in any medium is probably dross, with film you’re talking about budgets similar to those of small nations, and I think a little more care should be taken.)
The first of these films I saw was the Irish animation The Secret of Kells. Gorgeously presented in old-school, hand drawn animation, this film told the story of a young boy working at a monastery in Kells, taken under wing by an older monk who convinces him to help make the Book of Kells – a bible beautiful enough to be worthy of god’s word. Naturally, as it’s Irish Christianity we’re dealing with, there’s a good deal of fairy-taling and magic woven into the plot, too.
The second was the children’s horror Coraline, from Henry Selick. This stop-motion animation tells the story of a smart-alec young girl who finds a magical door which leads to a fantasy world. This world seems an improvement on her own in many ways, but the facade crumbles and leads to some truly terrifying moments – terrifying in the way I’ve found only children’s horror can really be.
I enjoy films (or any art form) that exploit their medium’s strengths, and both these films do so wonderfully. The Secret of Kells, set in medieval Ireland, uses the artistic style of that time as a basis for its own drawings. This is established right from the outset, with the opening ‘aeriel’ shot which shows the monastery from directly above, but with the tower shown as though pointed north rather than up. These little effects continue throughout the film, and always delight – from the group of monks who move en masse, to the use of the full width of the cinema screen to create tapestry-like panoramas. Coraline uses 3-d effects quite frequently, without over-doing them, and the fact of its stop-motion animation helps give it a weight and realism more than you get with computer animation (Pixar excepted) while also keeping its distance from reality through the ‘cartoonish’ style of its characters.
Unlike most ‘adult’ films these days, neither of these films is afraid to take risks. Coraline’s proxy mother is as terrifying a figure as any evil stepmother from Grimm’s tales, and we see the Vikings in the Secret of Kells as a merciless invading force. Neither film is short on scares, but then children’s fiction – the really popular, important stuff – never has been.
Incidentally, both these films had superb soundtracks – Secret of Kells by the innovative trad group Kíla, and Coraline by the French film composer Bruno Coulais.
Edit: Since writing this, I’ve discovered that Coulais in fact wrote the score for both films, but The Secret of Kells partly in collaboration with Kíla, who performed most of it.