The Secret of Kells, an animated feature film made in 2009, has been showered with awards since its release, including a Academy nomination for best animated feature film.
Maybe it is already famous in Catholic circles but I knew nothing about it, and had never heard of it before. It tells the story of the creation and preservation of the Book of Kells, the 8th century liturgical book of the Gospels from Ireland that contains many of the oldest images we have that form that basis of Western art. It is one of the great masterpieces of all ages, though I can’t say that I really knew about it at all before this before.
The movie focuses on life inside the Irish monastery where the book is created. It tells the story of a young boy’s relationship with a master scribe, and the tensions that develop with the abbot over how to prepare for a possible Viking invasion of the monastery.
This deals with some of my own personal favorite themes in history: the culture and technology of scribing, the role of monasteries in the fostering of civilization, the centrality of learning to Christian history, the problem of security in a time of severe threats. But when was the last time that a movie was made to feature all of these themes? In this film, Christianity is portrayed as the light, the hope of mankind. It’s true but we don’t often run across this truth, do we?
The animation itself is beyond spectacular. It is ravishing, gorgeous, astonishing. The music is perfect: liturgical where it should be (and in Latin!) and Gaelic/dance where it should be. How striking that it was made by an entirely secular animation studio!
In times of instant communication and universal distribution of text and images through digital media, we need to develop a greater appreciation for how we got from there to here. This film provides some of this background. It is suitable for kids and adults and everyone. Parishes could really benefit from a showing of this.