Mark Reviews Movies: WOLFWALKERS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 10, 2020

With Wolfwalkers, his third feature, filmmaker Tomm Moore continues his most distinct style of animation, creating characters and landscapes using noticeable geometry. Just about everything here has a distinct form—the heart-shaped face of a young shapeshifter, the perfectly aligned squares and rectangles of a walled village, the visible lines of sketched ovals and circles beneath the dark gray fur of wolves.

Even the trees of the forest outside the fort have a clear shape, as mounds of waves of tree canopies roll atop each other, forming half circles that express some kind of chaotic order within nature. Deep within those woods, in amidst rocks glowing with magical circles of the old Celtic ways, a sleeping mother holds her slumbering child in her arms, and they line up perfectly like nesting dolls.

Moore has employed this style at least twice before in his previous films, although this one displays a noteworthy evolution in his craft. With co-director Ross Stewart, Moore and the filmmakers' team of animators create layers upon layers of color and shape, juxtapose various design choices in order to communicate the division between two very different worlds, and add the illusion of another dimension when the wolves start running. This is a gorgeous film, crafted expertly and with obvious care by artists who refuse to take any shortcuts. They did it all, apparently, by hand, too, if those leftover outlines are any indication.

No, the sketched outlines aren't signs of a shortcut or a forgotten detail. They appear only occasionally, and to be honest, the remnants give the sense that the filmmakers are leaving proof of their craft. It's showing off, in a way, but when you've created something this intricate and visually stunning, a little showing off is more than expected. It's deserved.

The story comes vaguely from Irish folklore. Set in the year 1650 in Kilkenny (home of Moore's animation studio Cartoon Saloon, which partnered with Luxembourg-based Melusine Productions for the production of the film), the tale begins at the edge of the forest outside the fort, where some lumberjacks are beset by wolves. They're rescued by a mysterious girl, whose shadowy emerges from the dense of the woods to call off the beasts.

Back in the village lives young Robyn (voice of Honor Kneafsey), daughter of the successful hunter Bill Goodfellowe (voice of Sean Bean), whose surname denotes his character. The two have moved to Ireland from England, where Bill promised his late wife that he would their daughter safe. His job, at the behest of the Lord Protector (voice of Simon McBurney) of the land, is to hunt wolves, in order to keep the woodsmen safe to clear trees, freeing up more land to expand the area's farming prospects.

The girl wants to become a hunter just like her father, and sneaking out of town to secretly follow Bill on one of his hunts, Robyn, packing a crossbow, comes face-to-face with a wolf attacking a lumberjack. She freezes, accidentally shoots her pet falcon, and watches as a unique-looking wolf pulls the mortally wounded bird into the forest.

On a rescue mission for her bird, Robyn comes across the wolf again, but it is no mere wolf. The beast is a physical projection of a young girl named Mebh (Eva Whittaker, providing a boisterous and fierce vocal performance), who is a "wolfwalker" like her mother. The mother went away as a wolf, trying to find a new den for her daughter and their pack of real wolves to call home, but she has not yet returned. Robyn could help Mebh, just as she helped the young hunter by restoring the health of her falcon with magic.

The plot is simple and sincere, with some inevitable complications, such as Robyn becoming a wolfwalker herself, and plenty of dynamic action, such as an extended climactic fight/chase/battle, and overriding sense of the filmmakers' imaginations freed from any restraints of the real world. The animation is heavily stylized, but it's always in service of the story.

Take the dichotomy of the forest and the town. The woods here are a marvel of simple design, in the way those trees are like mounds stacked upon each other, and elaborate execution, in the shades and levels of colors used to give those shapes life. One might—and should—be tempted to just stare at how those colors are layered together like some free-form jigsaw puzzle.

They're even more impressive set against the sequences of the wolves running through them, because the details remain even with the blur of simulated three-dimensional motion. Another neat gimmick of design gives us an idea of "wolf vision," in which the sounds and smells of the world trail squiggly lines of color through that same but hand-sketched space.

As for the town, it is filled with drab hues of gray and brown. It is also, somehow, always flat, from no matter what angle it's seen. The effect is almost surreal or abstract at times, as if the town towers into the sky, instead of lying flat on the ground, and the guards atop the walls or at the gates take up space like giants. As Robyn searches the castle for her friend's lost mother, the interiors take on these impossibly even planes.

This is a place, not of bursting life and free-flowing shape, but of rigid symmetry and sharp angles—a place the stridently religious and orderly Lord Protector would dully call home. When the army of this dreary place finally invades the woods, looking to put an end to the wolves and their magical human allies, Moore and Stewart divide the screen into sections, forcing the order of the foes' mindset upon the natural world.

All of this is, well, quite something. If the craft on display often overshadows the story of Wolfwalkers, as heartfelt as it may be, that's almost to be expected. The design and execution of this film may serve the story, but the craft is so unique and prominent that it almost exists as a story unto itself—of how good and how devoted these artists are at and to their work.

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