Wolfwalkers
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
We are playing catch up by reviewing films that are a part of the current awards season.
Cartoon Saloon is the kind of studio that I think gets overlooked in North America (well, unless you’re an Academy Awards junkie like myself). The Irish studio gets its Academy love literally every time they have released a film: The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, and now Wolfwalkers have all been nominated for Best Animated Feature. It’s so easy to see why. Even from an animation standpoint, their films are exquisite to look at, thanks to their digital animation that evokes what hand drawn cartoons felt like in a unique, imaginative way. Their stories are also mesmerizingly magical. I do think that their works get the short end of the stick by the overall public over here, so I hope this review can correct these oversights a little bit.
That is because their latest release Wolfwalkers might even be the best film they have released so far. The animation only got better: the mystical use of lights and ghostly images is just the cherry on top of illustrations that are close to iconography or representations of stained glass. I could only focus on how this film looks, and that would be enough of a selling point. The use of geometrical shapes match the mood and artworks of 1600’s Ireland perfectly. Cartoon Saloon works have always felt like I was watching living storybooks, but Wolfwalkers takes the cake in that department; this is like a popup book that has been enchanted.
The art style of Wolfwalkers is beyond gorgeous.
I could discuss how the film looks this entire review, but I won’t, because its coming-of-age story matches the excellency of the animation almost perfectly. A pack of wolves lives just outside of Kilkenny, with a firm command to rid the town of any wolves at any given time; they are painted out to be monsters that can kill anyone. Robyn is the child of a hunter, who already proves that she can think for herself early on in the film. Pitting a free spirit against a puritan ruler (real life general Oliver Cromwell is an actual character here) is a bold move on the part of Wolfwalkers, since this level of historical politics is something family films usually don’t try to touch with a ten foot pole.
This contrast between a solo mind and her constrictive world is a great backdrop for this neo-fable about the titular wolfwalkers: humans whose souls transform into wolves while they sleep. The literal usage of wolfwalkers is done cleverly, since it instills the notion of a double life during a deeply religious time in history; how can one live as themselves when they can be punished for being different? There is so much more to the wolfwalker side of this tale — particularly with Robyn herself — but I want to leave that for you to see, since this film really does go the distance with fully realizing its narrative excellency. All I can admit is that Wolfwalkers only got more and more exciting as it went on, and in this instance it was the animation that had to keep up (it does so with dynamic images, rich colours, and inventive tricks).
The compelling tale about being an outlier in a deeply religious moment in history really makes Wolfwalkers stand out.
Whether you look at Wolfwalkers on a literal level or dive too deeply into its metaphors (like I did), you’re bound to find an exciting, stunning animated film that is one of the best of 2020 (the best to not be named Soul, mind you). The animation style can take maybe one minute to adjust to (if you haven’t seen other Cartoon Saloon works), but then I guarantee you will be asking why there aren’t more animated films like this in the twenty first century. You’ll stay for this modern day fairy tale, that feels a little bit Twilight Princess (The Legend of Zelda, of course) and a little bit Brave (but leagues better). Forget animation: Wolfwalkers is a fantastic cinematic achievement of any sort in 2020, and it is an absolute must-watch.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.