Issue 4: Hidden Gems
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When we began planning out this newsletter, underappreciated stories were our pick for November, but thematically there’s so much more tying together the two films we eventually chose. A more accurate but (much) less snappy title could have been “Girls and Their Mystical Connection to Nature”—maybe it’s a twin thing, but we both were drawn to modern fairy tales focused on girlhood and the environment. Alex discusses The Secret of Roan Inish, a retelling of the Celtic selkie myth, and Claudia revisits Peter Pan alongside Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy.
Alex on The Secret of Roan Inish
On Roan Inish, the remote island where she and her family once lived, Fiona Coneelly spots a little boy alone in a field full of flowers. When she calls his name, the boy runs for the beach. He floats away in a boat-shaped cradle, but Fiona knows she didn’t imagine him, and the boy isn’t a spirit like her cousin Eamon suggests. He can’t be—he was picking flowers, and she saw where he dropped them as he ran. He must be her brother, Jamie, who disappeared years ago.
A 1994 Irish-American independent film, The Secret of Roan Inish is both obsessed with small details—Jamie’s flowers, tiny footprints in the sand, a bed of ferns in an abandoned cottage—and insistent that those details matter. Eamon can explain them away; Fiona can’t. She’s paid attention, knows what she’s seen and what it’s telling her. Jamie is still out there, still alive. In order to be with him, his family needs to return to the island.
Fiona’s conviction is treated so seriously that, rewatching it now, the entire movie reminds me of the wonderful scene in Lady Bird where the protagonist dismisses her loving descriptions of her hometown with “I guess I just pay attention.” Her teacher asks, “Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?” The Secret of Roan Inish is set in 1940s Ireland, not 2000s Sacramento; still, like in Lady Bird, love is an act of paying attention and understanding, of inhabiting a place on its own terms. Fiona can’t win her brother back by tearing him away from the island. She understands this because she knows the Coneellys are supposedly descended from a selkie, a seal who could transform into a beautiful woman. Jamie’s bond with the seals and the ocean (he’s also a “dark one,” inheriting the selkie’s black hair and soulful eyes) ensures he’s not going anywhere. Instead, Fiona will have to make the island that sheltered him a home again.
It’s a monumental job, but it’s not achieved in a way that feels monumental, just hard. Fiona and Eamon sweep out cottages, rethatch roofs, clear out old junk, scrub rusty pots, and whitewash stone walls. Like Fiona paid attention to the details of her brother’s survival on Roan Inish, the movie pays attention to the details of her work. The scenes where she cleans out chimneys or washes windows make house cleaning feel heroic. Fiona may not have Jamie’s mystical connection with the seals, but she rebuilds a life with nothing more than everyday manual labor. It’s also worth noting that even though Jamie takes after their ancestor in personality and looks, Fiona is the one who makes a house worth living in for the solitary person she loves—like Jamie, the broody fisherman who stole his wife’s sealskin preferred sailing and living alone. Fiona’s work is its own kind of attention and its own kind of magic, transforming the empty cottages back into homes.
Roan Inish is made up of moments vivid enough that remembering them feels like you’ve lived them yourself, from Jamie racing through waves of purple and yellow flowers to Fiona scouring a pot with handfuls of sand. It’s a fantasy that’s not interested in being fantastical. Instead, it invites you into its world, encouraging you to pay attention, to love the details and find meaning in them like Fiona does. That small-scale focus might be the reason why, even though it was “[h]ailed as a groundbreaking work of ‘Irish magical realism’” when it first came out, I’d peg it as an only moderately well-known film today. I loved it as a kid, I still love it, and according to the Internet there are other people who love it too, but Roan Inish isn’t a touchstone classic kid’s film. And it’s not interested in being one. The Secret of Roan Inish is interested in what Fiona notices and what she builds, in the magical yet everyday details that might otherwise be forgotten. That’s what makes it unforgettable.
Claudia on Wendy
It was only a matter of time before I circled back to Peter Pan. If you read our second issue, you’ll remember that it’s one of my foundational favorites. Starting with a tape of the Cathy Rigby musical when I was about five, I’ve sought out dozens of adaptations and retellings. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, but the worst ones are boring. You can call Wendy, Benh Zeitlin’s recent reimagining, lots of things, but “boring” isn’t one of them.
Wendy premiered at Sundance and had a quiet release earlier this year. Taking a look at reviews from critics and viewers, it’s clear that no one really knows what to do with it. The PG-13 rating turned some people off, as did the violence, depressing themes, and tweaks to the original lore. The recurring complaint is that it’s not really a children’s movie.
To be clear: Wendy is not a movie for all children. It brings the fatalism that undergirds Barrie’s play and novel to the surface, and there are some emotionally devastating revelations. There’s also gorgeous scenery, wonderous storytelling, and a determination to take the emotions and struggles of its young cast seriously. For tough-minded kids starting to seek out darkness in their storytelling, the film transforms Peter Pan’s themes of control, changing the Neverland’s empathetic environment into something more unforgiving, but also more empowering for its titular heroine.
In Zeitlin’s vision, the Darlings aren’t privileged members of the Edwardian middle class—instead, Wendy and her brothers James and Douglas are raised by a single mother working in a diner by the train tracks. “Making sure I don’t screw y’all up too bad,” Mom tells them when Wendy asks her what her dream is. “Dreams change,” she shoots back when Wendy protests. Wendy vows that her life will be different, and that she won’t let her dreams of adventure fade as she grows older. Days later, she and her brothers get the chance to act out those dreams when Peter appears atop a passing train, urging them to join him.
The Neverland he leads them to is more apocalypse than wonderland, with one side of the island lush and fertile while the other has been devastated by a volcano eruption. The children who live on the island’s thriving side are protected by a mystical, fish-like creature Peter calls Mother. Mother can watch over the children and give them eternal youth, but only as long as they believe in her. Children who do lose faith are banished to the other side of the island, where they rapidly age into embittered, directionless adults labeled “Olds.”
In Barrie’s Peter Pan, the fantastic properties of the Neverland focus on Peter, showing his power over himself and the island. Wendy’s world instead spotlights the cruelty of nature, and its refusal to abide by the desires and rules of humans. This creates an atmosphere much more menacing for these Lost Boys and Girls, where children can drown and have their limbs amputated on screen. Despite the kids’ loving relationship with Mother, it's clear that this land is working against them, not for them.
This naturalistic pragmatism allows Wendy to take the reins of her own story. Peter Pan is preoccupied with the symbiotic relationship Peter has with the Neverland, showing how his control over the landscape is a poor substitute for the friendships he craves. The island in Wendy is harsh towards all its inhabitants, but this indifference means that Wendy isn’t bound by Peter’s rules. She can make her own.
Wendy needs all of her ingenuity and resilience to survive the series of tragedies the Neverland has in store for her. When Douglas disappears in a flooded boat, James loses his faith in Mother, eventually losing his hand and aging into a vengeful captain determined to kill Mother and eat her flesh to reclaim youth for himself and the other Olds. Only Peter and Wendy escape when James and the Olds kidnap the children to bait Mother, and it falls to Wendy to marry her sense of wonder with canny responsibility to save them, her family, and the Neverland.
In the movie’s final moments, when Wendy rallies the children and the Olds, convincing them to band together and create a myth that will restore the island, I’m reminded of an earlier scene when she tries to break the Olds out of their hopelessness with a game of make believe. Suddenly, the little girl slamming empty glasses and trays on dusty countertops with hard eyes becomes the pragmatic mother she and her brothers abandoned. The hardships of the Neverland show her that the sacrifices of adulthood don’t have to eclipse the creativity and hope of childhood.
Wendy was never going to be a blockbuster hit. It’s audience is too murky; its plot too freewheeling, for it to find widespread acclaim. What it can be is a fascinating, thorny retreading of an epic children’s classic. For me, that’s enough.
Thanks again for reading! Next month we’ll be getting Christmassy, and as always feel free to subscribe or follow us on Twitter @heykidwriting.
Till next time,
Alex and Claudia