Like The Secret of Kells, director Tomm Moore’s first feature, Song of the Sea blends Celtic legends, bravura design and animation, and intelligent storytelling that understands but never patronises young viewers, to create an exquisite and rewarding work. In a vaguely 20th-century Ireland, pugnacious young Ben (voiced by David Rawle of Moone Boy) lives on a remote island with his lonely lighthouse-keeper father (Brendan Gleeson) and six-year-old kid sister Saoirse, a mute who, like the children’s lost mother, is a half-human, half-seal selkie.
Saoirse’s magical nature reveals itself when the kids embark on a cross-country adventure after their well-meaning but wrong-headed grandmother (Fionnula Flanagan) forcibly relocates them to Dublin. Folky music and Studio Ghibli-level flights of eerie fancy are obvious pleasures, but even more subtle and entrancing is the way Moore and his team use echoed shapes to suggest hidden patterns in nature and parallels between the real and the mythical. Fans may have felt rightly outraged that The Lego Movie wasn’t nominated for the best animated feature Oscar recently, but this film fully deserved its place on the final shortlist and perhaps should have won the Academy award, instead of the slick Big Hero 6.
• This article was amended on 13 July 2015 because an earlier version said How to Train Your Dragon 2 won the Academy award for animated feature film. Big Hero 6 won the award, although How to Train Your Dragon 2 was nominated.
