Song of the Sea

Japan’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li cur­rent­ly sits at a strange cre­ative impasse, the rumour being that no ani­ma­tor has been deemed wor­thy of car­ry­ing the torch first ignit­ed by its two out­go­ing vet­er­ans, Hayao Miyaza­ki and Isao Taka­ha­ta. Hope­ful­ly, some­one over there will soon catch sight of Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea and realise that the mag­i­cal spir­it of their work lives on, even if not through their own offi­cial channels.

Say­ing that Moore’s film is wor­thy of the Ghibi canon is high praise indeed, but it’s praise this spell­bind­ing film ful­ly deserves. It’s not so much the style or tone which denotes the over­lap, it’s the man­ner in which Moore enters into the mind­set of a child and perus­es the world through eyes which may not always com­pre­hend life in the same way as more world­ly adult con­tem­po­raries. It’s also a gor­geous exam­ple of hand­made arti­san craft.

Though the film takes place in a world beset by bump­tious faeries, friend­ly human-seal hybrids, over­sized fly­ing dogs and melan­cholic rock-faces, its con­cerns are whol­ly human, as rep­re­sent­ed through a cav­al­cade of fan­tas­ti­cal and metaphor­i­cal imagery. One rea­son behind Song of the Sea’s heady emo­tion­al poten­cy, though, is not that Moore demon­strates a basic under­stand­ing of sym­bol­ism and sub­text, but that he uses these meth­ods to address a pletho­ra of ideas and top­ics, not ham­mer­ing down on the same nar­row point which would allow you to say, ​‘Well this film was clear­ly about X or Y.’

It’s trick­si­er than that. One minute it’ll be talk­ing about how adults and chil­dren grieve for the dead, and then quick­ly on to exam­in­ing at the capri­cious nature of mem­o­ry, then the pain that comes from sup­press­ing ill feel­ing, and on to the com­plex rela­tion­ship dynam­ic between a broth­er and a sis­ter. And this is all artic­u­lat­ed in a way which is ener­getic and com­pelling, nev­er preachy or insipid.

Ben (David Rawle) and Saoirse (Lucy O’Connell) are – along with their sad-sack, inef­fec­tu­al father Conor (Bren­dan Glee­son) – the only inhab­i­tants of a light­house which sits atop a cliff on a tiny island. Wee one Saoirse has been bestowed with ill-defined folk­loric pow­ers which have been passed on by her moth­er who was swept into the sea direct­ly after giv­ing birth. Ben resents her for this, but they bond when their granny spir­its them away to the town to give dad a bit of time to gath­er his psy­cho­log­i­cal marbles.

The film is essen­tial­ly about the pair’s ram­shackle jour­ney back home and the influ­ence that var­i­ous eccen­tric par­ties have on their future. Their goal is essen­tial­ly to risk life and limb to pre­serve Irish folk tra­di­tions and under­stand their cul­tur­al impor­tance with­in every­day life. One cadre of urban faeries has tak­en the cen­tre of a round­about as their abode, final­ly see­ing a chance to break free of their squalor when Saoirse wan­ders by. The film also offers a plain­tive plea for open self- expres­sion, argu­ing that it’s coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and bad for the health to bot­tle up neg­a­tive emotion.

It’s heart-on-sleeve stuff, tee­ter­ing on the melo­dra­mat­ic, though it nev­er pulls punch­es in terms of accept­ing that life involves us accept­ing and pro­cess­ing a heavy tor­rent of hor­ror and depres­sion. That all of this is artic­u­lat­ed with such immense and play­ful visu­al splen­dour, lev­i­ty, and not to men­tion arch humour, makes it tru­ly a joy to behold.