I haven’t seen many films directed by John Sayles, but here I am with the second, and quite frankly, this one was a pure delight. Set in Ireland with an entirely Irish cast as near as I can make out, no real name actors, but just a delightful little story that would be perfectly fine for families and really gave off this sense of wonder and awe without having a bunch of fancy special effects.
Yeah, I think it’s safe to say I absolutely loved this one that I found on The Criterion Channel.
The year is 1946, and young Fiona Coneelly (Jeni Courtney) is in mourning. Her mother has just died, and her father doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with her, particularly given the mysterious disappearance of her infant brother Jamie. Fiona’s father may not be able to do much for his daughter given his own sense of mourning, but he can send her off to the coast to stay with his parents. Fiona’s own health wasn’t in the best of shape, so sending her off to the countryside to recover should help on multiple levels. Her grandfather (Mick Lally) is a teller of tall tales, the likes of which are delightful to both Fiona and the audience while her grandmother (Eileen Colgan) seems a more practical but loving type. Fiona also has an older cousin Eamon (Richard Sheridan) living with them, and he seems inclined to return to the island of Roan Inish, the island home that the Coneelly family, among others, once called home. The island was evacuated during the war, and Eamon for one has decided he is going to go back there.
Roan Inish is something of a magical place. Seals swim around the island, and local legend says there may be Selkies, or seal people, among them. In fact, Coneelly family lore suggests that a distant ancestor had found a Selkie in the form of a human woman and, taking her seal skin, was able to take her home to live as his wife and mother to his children for quite some time before she was able to get the skin back and return to the sea and her Selkie family. That would suggest that Jamie, whose bassinet was carried away by the tide during the evacuation of Roan Inish, may have been claimed by the sea or his distant Selkie relatives. Local gossip even suggests Jamie is still alive, floating around in the ocean and romping on Roan Inish near the old family home. Is he? Can Fiona find some truth behind these fantastic tales?
Oh man, I really enjoyed this one. It’s a film that plays with fairy tales but does so with minimal special effects and just some charming actors telling stories while Sayles’s camera shows seals and sea gulls acting in suspicious ways. There’s one Selkie transformation scene, but it looks like an actor shrugging off a rubber suit in a slow and methodical way. At most, there’s some animatronics involved. It’s a movie that relies more on simple storytelling over fancy effects, and given the subject matter is something of a fairy tale, that’s rather impressive that the movie did fill me with a good deal of fanciful wonder in ways bigger budget movies with fancy effects often can’t. I mean, even the live action Diseny remakes that I’ve liked haven’t managed that much.
Instead, it’s a movie that relies on good actors with good screen chemistry, good storytelling, and just a lot of charm. I figure this is a family movie that probably deserves more attention than it’s gotten, but it managed to be the sort of movie I think many kid movies try and fail to achieve. Just see this one.
Grade: A
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