Movie Review - Wolfwalkers

This is the fourth feature from Cartoon Saloon, an animation studio based in Ireland. It's the third feature from co-director and co-writer, Tomm Moore, an Irish animator who has now been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He did The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014). Depending on how things go, it's likely that this film could be the third time Moore and the fourth time that Cartoon Saloon are invited to the Oscars. Moore's style and techniques in his films are always so lush and beautiful with dazzling and colorful designs. Usually, his animation is in wondrous service to a fun and perfectly told story of magic and adventure, involving literal or invented, Irish myths and fairy-tales. In fact, The Secret of Kells was literally a tale about a fairy. Song of the Sea was essentially about mermaids and this film is at its heart a story about a family of werewolves.

As I watched this film, two other animated features came to mind. The first was Aladdin (1992), given that this film is also about a young girl who is essentially trapped literally and figuratively behind walls, as well as the "walls" of her society. It's also about this trapped girl forming a relationship with someone outside those walls. The second film that came to mind while watching this one is How To Train Your Dragon (2010), given that this film is also about a child whose widowed father is a hunter trying to kill the very thing that the child befriends and is trying to save.

Honor Kneafsey (A Christmas Prince) is the voice of Robyn Goodfellowe, a young girl maybe 9 or 10 who lives with her father in Kilkenny, Ireland, 1650. She lives in Ireland, but she's not Irish. She and her father are English. They came to Ireland, as part of an English group that has taken control of this town and are imposing their rules and way of life. The group is also cultivating and farming the land in the area. They've started cutting down the trees in order to make room for grazing sheep and cattle, but the woodsmen in charge of cutting down the trees keep getting attacked by wolves who scare them. Robyn's father has the job of hunting the wolves and killing them. Because Robyn looks up to her father and idolizes him, she wants to be a wolf-hunter too.

Unfortunately, her father wants her to stay home and not go out because he doesn't want her endangering herself. She's a free spirit who sneaks out of the house anyway. Her father instead has to enroll her in the town's scullery. The scullery is a place where women are forced to do the cooking and cleaning for the men in the town, but the way it operates and the way women are dressed, it might as well be one step above a nunnery. Robyn is certainly not happy to be at the scullery. It's a place where women seem like drones or depressed laborers. It seems stifling and repressive. It's here that the film in subtle ways is critical of the idea of patriarchal systems, religious intolerance and suppression of freedom, as well as commenting on the time period.

The fact that Robyn lives in this town in this particular time isn't just random. The time and place plays a factor in a lot of the action and themes at play here. It's also endemic of the commentary. Robyn exists during the time of what was known as the Cromwellian conquest or the Cromwellian war in Ireland. The conquest or war was named after Oliver Cromwell who was an English general, known as "Lord Protector." Cromwell was a controversial figure where reportedly he hated the Irish and during the war he was regarded as being brutal or even genocidal toward the Irish. This film's principal villain is therefore patterned after Cromwell and in this film in fact is called Lord Protector, voiced by Simon McBurney. However, this film isn't necessarily about sympathizing with the Irish.

Eva Whittaker co-stars as the voice of Mebh Óg Mac Tíre, pronounced MAY-V OG MOK-CHEER-A. Mebh lives in the woods among the wolves. In fact, she's what's known as a wolf-walker, which is just another word for werewolf. In fact, Mac Tíre is Gaelic for "wolf." Basically, Mebh's name means "girl wolf." When Mebh goes to sleep, her spirit becomes a wolf that can commune with the other wolves in a wolf pack that is constantly by her side. When she's awake, she still has the characteristics of a wolf. She has an enhanced sense of smell. She can even see smells and her movements mimic that of a wolf also. She's a bit of a spitfire, very brash and sassy, smart too.

Mebh lives with her mother in the woods with their wolf pack. When the woodsmen try to cut down the trees in order to set up farms, Mebh and her wolf pack do what they can to scare them back. When Robyn goes into the woods, following her father who is hunting wolves, she meets Mebh. At first, there's tension and conflict, but eventually, Robyn and Mebh become friends. Now, Mebh doesn't identify as Irish, but her character is almost supposed to be the Irish proxy and her fight against the Lord Protector is perhaps meant to be a proxy for the war between Cromwell and the Irish. It works as a metaphorical history lesson. Yet, the film could also be an allegory for environmentalism.

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!

By the end, a third animated film came to mind, that of Beauty and the Beast (1991). In that 1991, Disney film, a young woman falls in love romantically with a half-man, half-wolf. Here, a little girl falls in platonic love with a half-girl, half-wolf. That 1991 film ended with an intolerant and domineering man falling to his death. This film takes a similar tact, but the very ending here did raise an eyebrow for me.

For starters, the film implies or outright states that the only way for people to understand the wolves or their plight, a person has to be converted or literally transformed into a wolf. Also, the film ends on a very hetereo-normative note. Robyn's father is single, widowed most likely. Mebh's mother is also single, widowed most likely too. The final scene then has what looks like Robyn's father and Mebh's mother together in what looks like a romantic couple, as Robyn and Mebh become less friends and more like sisters. My question is what if it had been Mebh's father and not her mother or what if it had been Robyn's mother and not her father that was her only parent. The implications at the end are just conveniently heterosexual.

Rated PG for sequences of violence and peril, scary images and brief language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 43 mins.

In select theaters for November and December 11 on Apple TV+.