Headscratchers / The Secret of Kells

At first, when Aisling helped Brendan fight Crom Cruach, I assumed she looked at the Book off-screen. The Fridge Brilliance section mentions that she can't go into religious buildings, so she couldn't have seen the Book. Was she letting him risk his life just because he claimed the Book was important?

• There's a scene where he's drawing some foliage in the woods and she takes the tablet from him and looks it over, so she had some idea of what was in there... but not that much. This bugged me, too. Maybe she helped mostly because she knew how important it was to Brendan?
  • She's a Fae, they do what they please, and helping this human kid struck her fancy.
    • So she helped him die?
  • That part wasn't drawn with the help of the eye. I find it hard to believe that she looked at a mortal drawing and thought "This is totally worth dying for".
  • She repeats the line "Turn darkness into light." She believed that there was some hope that Crom Cruach could be defeated by the book and/or Brendan himself.
    • I'm not saying it was hopeless. I'm just saying that she couldn't have been nearly certain enough of it to bet Brendan's life against a pretty book.
• According to the opening narration she has seen the book alright, so the question is when. The most probable answer is that Brendan has sneaked it out of the scriptorium to show Aisling, though now the question is why was it off-screen.
• She could have seen its assorted pages while her wolf pack shredded the Vikings.

Why is it assumed that Aisling lost her human form? She seemed to change to it just fine in the ending. I always assumed that she simply took any form that fit her, as we don't see her human form until she notices Brendan. So when she was running with her pack against the vikings, a wolf form was more useful than the human one.

• Some people didn't see her at the end. Also, Brendan's voice turns young again — that could have been seen as Brendan flashing back to his younger days.
• Though very subtle, this troper noticed that, when there is a close up of her eyes both in the beginning and near the end, the shape starts out one way, and then changes. For example, at the end, they start off round and oval-shaped (Human form eyes), and then begin to lengthen (Wolf form eyes). YMMV though.
  • The way I took it as that she didn't really lose her human form, rather, she was in human form but Brendan, as an adult couldn't see that form, and, so, he saw her in her wolf form because that was what he could see.

Why was there a secret passage anyway? Someone must have made or noticed it, and Cellach seems obsessive enough to check for that sort of thing.

• It's possible that others were allowed to go to the forest, for lumber or food or other such things, and so they kept a direct passage to the woods for as long as they could.
  • Then why didn't anyone other than Brendan and Aidan use it? You'd think that a few people would be shown heading towards it, at least...
    • Others did use it. We may not have seen them doing so, but there's a beaten path from the wall to the forest.

Why didn't Brendan tell anyone that there's a pagan god of darkness lurking in the forest?

That seems a little more important than bringing Aidan the berries.

• ...because the Abbot told him that things like that aren't real? You don't exactly worry about things you're told are imaginary.
  • But he was attacked by it, along with Aisling. That doesn't seem very imaginary.
    • The Abbot didn't see the attack occur. He would have assumed it was the work of the overactive imagination of a young boy and told Brendan off - or worse, believed his already wayward nephew was being possessed by Satan himself and exorcized him. And the Dagda forbid he learn Brendan was consorting with a pagan demigod.
    • Brendan's clearly been told off by Cellach in the past for blathering about imaginary things. Notice what he says about his dream of Iona being destroyed, when being scolded for being late bringing the wall plans from the scriptorium: "It was so real, Uncle!" This has no doubt been a point of emphasis in Brendan's upbringing. This is only natural - a talented artist like Brendan surely has an overactive imagination, which would've clashed time and again with Cellach's strict and very grounded ways.

If Aisling can turn living beings to ghosts and back, why didn't she do it to Brendan and allow him to escape instantly?

• The WMG page suggests the cat is also a fairy so maybe her magic works on her but not on humans? Or maybe the magic doesn't work on Christians? Or she can't cast a spell on someone inside a religious building?
  • According to the main page, celtic folklore stated that cats were capable of going to otherwordly realms that others couldn't enter. Maybe she just needed a bit of prodding?

Why wasn't the wall manned?

Okay, that's all well and good that he wants to build a wall. walls are effective defenses. But why does he not have anyone manning the damn things? I realize that he is a peaceful monk and stuff, but he could have built the wall to be the height of a skyscraper and all it'd have done was delay the Northmen if they have no one to actually repel the attackers from.

• Might be a bit of Fridge Brilliance, in that the abbot doesn't actually know anything about warfare. He might even have thought that the sight of the wall might be enough to deter any attackers. He wouldn't have been able to attain any information on the subject either, being surrounded by monks in a pre-hollywood society.
• Also, if it's strong enough a wall on its own could do the job; an attacking army has to worry about food (and other supplies) as well as weather, illness, injury, and morale. If your ravaging army saw a wall that would take weeks, maybe months, to get through, they may decide to seek their fortune elsewhere.

Where did the stairs come from?

At the end, the people frantically run up the stairs to the top of the tower (Cellach's workroom). They seem to be entering the room through his window—you know, the window Cellach peers through dramatically at several points of the movie. But... for the vast majority of the movie, there aren't any stairs outside the tower leading up. For example, when Aisling climbs up the tower, there are no stairs to help her. Why did they build those stairs? What were they there for? And, another thing... for most of the movie, they reach the workroom by climbing the interior stairs of the tower. We know the Vikings broke into the base—why didn't they find those stairs and climb up?

• The stairs actually are there throughout the movie. There's a door in the tower, a dozen or two feet up from the ground. That's where the people are entering rather than Cellach's window, and they huddle in the base of it rather than Cellach's room. It's the same door that Spirit Pangur unlocks with the key. The door leads to what is essentially the ground floor of the tower (though it's well above the ground). Brendan's cell is underneath. Notice that his ladder is a long way down but he can easily climb to the window by standing on his bed. The best time to see the stairs is right after Brendan escapes his cell - he's standing on them when Aisling catches up to him and grabs him by the hand. The Vikings never break into the tower. They break into the church next to the tower.

Why are the Vikings in this movie are Portrayed as big black horned Demons and they speak in a growling voice? what are the Animators Thinking?

• Because they're the bad guys. And because the movie artwork is meant to resemble an illustrated manuscript and that's how the animators decided they might look if depicted in one.
• Plus the story is being told by the people the Vikings invaded and pillaged. It's little secret that Irish history and culture in general do not view the Vikings in a positive light.

What was the Secret of Kells?

• I kept expecting some big secret to be revealed, but it never happened. Is the Book of Kells supposed to be a secret? It hardly seems that way, since it's a famous book and everyone in town knows that it's there. Maybe it's known to the people of Kells, but it's kept secret from the Vikings? But there's no indication that the Vikings even care about the book, nor any reason why they should care. You could have done a story where, for instance, the book will magically "turn darkness into light" upon completion, defeating the Vikings forever and saving the Irish, and thus it's vital to keep this book secret while it's being worked on so the Vikings don't find out about it because if they do then they'll destroy it, and then you could have a plot where the Vikings figure out it that it's in Kells and thus they decide to attack Kells...but none of that ever happened. The book was portrayed as important but never as a secret to be hidden, and nothing else in the story really qualifies as "The Secret of Kells"...so what justifies the title?
  • Maybe it's Aisling.
    • It's probably Aisling, in the sense that cooperation of a figure of native pagan myth in the creation of a Catholic holy book, a faith where we can start at the point that they deny her existence... Yeah, that seems like a pretty heavy secret.

Why did the Vikings come to Kells?

• If they were conquerors seeking land, why didn't they keep the land once they had taken it? (As far as I can tell, the Abbot isn't living under Viking rule at the end of the movie). If they were seeking slaves, why did they let so many people go free? If they were bigots who just hated the Irish, why did they leave so many people alive? (Even Evil Has Standards?) If they were seeking precious materials (e.g. gold) that Kells possessed, why didn't we ever hear about that stuff? The Vikings came across as Card-Carrying Villain types whose goal was to cause mayhem, but who couldn't be bothered to actually finish the job and kill everyone in town, because that would ruin our happy ending.
  • We do hear about them seeking gold. From the Vikings themselves. It's the only English word they speak. If you wanted to find gold, generally it was in the possession of only two types of establishments: lordly, or religious. The lords and kings had armies which would fight you for the gold; the monasteries and abbeys did not. That made easy targets of the religious trappings like chalices and thuribles. Additionally, many scholars believe that the Vikings felt threatened by Christian expansion, being as they were pagans themselves. Attacking religious outposts was a thing they commonly did; quite a few scholars believe encroaching Christianization led them to target Christians as retaliation, or simply to keep the Christians out of Scandinavia.
    • Historically, the Vikings weren't super interested in active conquest. They did create settlements in Ireland, but while they raided monasteries and cathedrals a lot, they weren't particularly interested in the actual buildings or the land. They wanted the treasures in the buildings. If the Vikings had actually been interested in conquering Ireland properly, they'd likely have been able to do it, but it wasn't their goal.

Did the book actually "turn darkness into light"?

• It seemed like the book was going to do something magical at some point, or act as a beacon of hope for the masses in some way. But after all the build-up, at the end of the story it appears to just be a really fancy book, and there's maybe 10 people in the world who are even aware of it.
  • It makes more sense when you know how hugely important the Book of Kells is in modern-day Ireland. It's considered Ireland's national treasure and is probably the most famous illuminated manuscript in existence. Brendan isn't just handing his uncle a fancy book; he's handing him what could be called the Irish equivalent of Journey to the West or the Declaration of Independence.
  • The movie tends to tiptoe around the idea of Christianity a little. The Book of Kells is just a fancy presentation of the four Gospels of Christ, but this movie never outright mentions Jesus or the Gospels or any really direct, in-your-face Christian symbology or wording. The "Chi Rho page" is about as close as it gets. So, the intent of the book is to help Christian brothers and missionaries convert pagans into Christians by spreading the Gospel, but in the context of the movie, "turning darkness into light" is the way they chose to phrase that. It's what the Christians of the time believe will happen, after all.
  • Well if you take How The Irish Saved Civilization at face value then it might become obvious in a somewhat more secular way.