![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mar. 18th, 2013 03:04 pm
The Secular Kells
The Secret of Kells was every bit as beautiful to look at as we had been told. Gloriously stylised images crowd every frame with sumptuous detail. The inspiration from early Celtic illuminated manuscripts is very clear even if the rigorously geometrical linework is ultimately very modern. There's a full range of interesting vantage points and perspectives with extensive use of ground to reflect the thoughts and preoccupations of the principals.
As for the narrative, well, let's say they made some very interesting choices. For starters, you wouldn't think someone could make a full-length feature about Christian monks producing an important Christian manuscript in a Christian abbey without once mentioning Christ, but they do. And if you don't know what the text of the Book of Kells is before watching the film, you won't know afterwards either. There's a lot of attention paid to the justly reknown chi-rho page--including a whole sequence which deconstructs the elements and sets them in motion--without every making mention of what "ΧΡ" itself stands for.
So what remains is essentially a paean to the illustrator's art and its inspirational power--which is hard to contest when you're under the spell of a parade of dazzling images. I'm very curious if a viewer without a Christian background will find this all as perverse as I do; I'm not sure whether my extranarrative knowledge of what was really at stake for the characters enriched the film or detracted from it as I puzzled about why they were dancing around any mention of God.
I was also amused at the decision to make the abbey a mini-UN of lovable ethnic caricatures (particularly given the contrasting depiction of the Vikings as inhuman killing machines barely capable of speech--the GWO compared them to Daleks). Given that Germany was largely Christianised by British and Irish missionaries, it's not implausible that a Teuton might retrace the route, and an African (albeit not a Black African with a Congolese name) can be justified--as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu pointed out--as an homage to the (North) African roots of Irish monasticism. But, really, "Brother Tang"? He looked teleported in from one of Tsai Chih-chung's comic book adaptations of the Daoist classics.
As you would expect, the film also plays as fast and loose with chronology as geography, compressing into a decade or two events which transpired over a span at least two centuries. I was indulgent of this, as it allowed for the insertion of Pangur Bán, whose immortality is owed to some Old Irish verses most likely composed by a monk living and working somewhere around Lake Constance on the German-Swiss border. (To my surprise--and despite the role W. H. Auden's version played in popularising the poem, the Old Man had never heard of him before.)
For some reason, I had thought the dialogue was recorded in Irish as well as English, but if so, the Irish audio wasn't available on the DVD we had. There was, however, a cúpla focal present: First, when he encountres the character of Aisling ("Vision"), our youthful protagonist begins reciting the Our Father in Irish. (Another odd choice given that (a) Irish is presumably the language they have in common and the one which is being rendered as "English" within the film and (b) one would've expected a monk to pray in Latin.) Then, as she gives him a tour of her forest, Aisling recites the seanfhocal "Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile" ("One beetle recognises another"). Later she sings a song to Pangur Bán which alternates between an English verse and a Gaelic one. And then lastly--and most charmingly--the late Mick Lally recites a verse from what sounds like a contemporary Irish translation of "Pangur Bán" over the closing credits.
I only watched a bit of one of the featurettes, but I was surprised to see Lally reading his dialogue together with Brendan Gleeson and child star Evan McGuire. With Hollywood films, the standard operating procedure is to record each actor separately--but then, I suspect finding overlap in the schedules of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack is a bit more of a challenge than bringing together one name star with a hoard of Irish blokes you've never heard of before.
As for the narrative, well, let's say they made some very interesting choices. For starters, you wouldn't think someone could make a full-length feature about Christian monks producing an important Christian manuscript in a Christian abbey without once mentioning Christ, but they do. And if you don't know what the text of the Book of Kells is before watching the film, you won't know afterwards either. There's a lot of attention paid to the justly reknown chi-rho page--including a whole sequence which deconstructs the elements and sets them in motion--without every making mention of what "ΧΡ" itself stands for.
So what remains is essentially a paean to the illustrator's art and its inspirational power--which is hard to contest when you're under the spell of a parade of dazzling images. I'm very curious if a viewer without a Christian background will find this all as perverse as I do; I'm not sure whether my extranarrative knowledge of what was really at stake for the characters enriched the film or detracted from it as I puzzled about why they were dancing around any mention of God.
I was also amused at the decision to make the abbey a mini-UN of lovable ethnic caricatures (particularly given the contrasting depiction of the Vikings as inhuman killing machines barely capable of speech--the GWO compared them to Daleks). Given that Germany was largely Christianised by British and Irish missionaries, it's not implausible that a Teuton might retrace the route, and an African (albeit not a Black African with a Congolese name) can be justified--as
monshu pointed out--as an homage to the (North) African roots of Irish monasticism. But, really, "Brother Tang"? He looked teleported in from one of Tsai Chih-chung's comic book adaptations of the Daoist classics.As you would expect, the film also plays as fast and loose with chronology as geography, compressing into a decade or two events which transpired over a span at least two centuries. I was indulgent of this, as it allowed for the insertion of Pangur Bán, whose immortality is owed to some Old Irish verses most likely composed by a monk living and working somewhere around Lake Constance on the German-Swiss border. (To my surprise--and despite the role W. H. Auden's version played in popularising the poem, the Old Man had never heard of him before.)
For some reason, I had thought the dialogue was recorded in Irish as well as English, but if so, the Irish audio wasn't available on the DVD we had. There was, however, a cúpla focal present: First, when he encountres the character of Aisling ("Vision"), our youthful protagonist begins reciting the Our Father in Irish. (Another odd choice given that (a) Irish is presumably the language they have in common and the one which is being rendered as "English" within the film and (b) one would've expected a monk to pray in Latin.) Then, as she gives him a tour of her forest, Aisling recites the seanfhocal "Aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile" ("One beetle recognises another"). Later she sings a song to Pangur Bán which alternates between an English verse and a Gaelic one. And then lastly--and most charmingly--the late Mick Lally recites a verse from what sounds like a contemporary Irish translation of "Pangur Bán" over the closing credits.
I only watched a bit of one of the featurettes, but I was surprised to see Lally reading his dialogue together with Brendan Gleeson and child star Evan McGuire. With Hollywood films, the standard operating procedure is to record each actor separately--but then, I suspect finding overlap in the schedules of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack is a bit more of a challenge than bringing together one name star with a hoard of Irish blokes you've never heard of before.