OUT 30 OCTOBER
Arambunctious animation about a transformational friendship, Cartoon Saloon’s Wolfwalkers turns fairytales on their head. Co-directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s film centres on Robyn (Honor Kneafsey), a would-be wolf hunter shut up in Oliver Cromwell’s fortress in 1650. Robyn’s life is upended when she forges a reluctant bond with the feral Mebh (Eve Whittaker), a ‘wolfwalker’ whose bite brings out the animal in her.
Grabby, as well as gorgeous, the girls’ fast-paced quest to save the wolf pack from Cromwell’s assault is laced with family jeopardy (Sean Bean’s wolf-hunter dad, caught between love and duty) that gives it emotional heft, as well as pulse-quickening adventure.
Humming with Celtic culture and history, like Moore’s previous Oscarnominated Irish folklore fables The Secret Of Kells and The Song Of The Sea, the animation is fantastically dynamic and imaginative. It also resonates with the film’s well-woven themes of fear
vs. freedom. The oppressive, browngrey woodcut Puritanism of the village melts into exhilarating amber watercolour whorls of forest leaves as Mebh and her pack swarm through the trees like a scene from Princess Mononoke.
But just wait till the filmmakers’ play their visual ace, the innovative ‘wolf-vision’: a synaesthetic nightworld of vivid, swirling smell trails that plunges you into the wolfwalker’s POV. Not only will this wonder of a movie up your eco-awareness; it’ll make you hungry like the wolf. Kate Stables