(2009) After a wild goose chase, the youngest brother Brendan (voiced by Evan McGuire) and the monks of the abbey pluck five feathers to be used as pens for illustrating their books. The orphan boy's uncle is the authoritarian Abbot Cellach (voiced by Brendan Gleeson) of Kells, formerly an illustrator become intent on completing construction of a wall around the abbey "to save civilization … and out faith" from the invading Northmen.

When Brother Aidan (voiced by Mike Lally, the cartoon characterization with short white beard and long hair looking like Willie Nelson) from the island of Iona arrives with his blonde cat Pangur Ban, having barely escaped from the Vikings, Brendan ("little brother with big questions") already knows of his fame of working on the Book of Iona (its illuminated illustrations reputed to blind sinners), begun by St Columbkille (reputed to have had either a third eye or hand).

Raising a wall is futile, says Aidan: when the Northmen come, as they will, everyone must run for their lives. In the meantime, Aidan in the scriptorium shows Brendan the Chi-Rho page of the book, which he says "will turn darkness into light," but it is blank. To illustrate it he needs berries from an oak tree for green ink.

The tiny berries that can bring great images to life are in the dangerous forest which Brendan has been forbidden to enter. Not knowing what an oak tree looks like, he nevertheless ventures forth with Pangur Ban; they are soon surrounded by wolves.

Aisling (voiced by Christen Mooney, the cartoon figure somewhat looking and sounding whispery like the diminutive actress Shirley Henderson), the young she-wolf forest fairy, rescues them; and after extracting from Brendan a promise never again to enter her forest, leads him up an oak tree to the sticky, stinky berries. On the secret way back home, Brendan detours into "the place of suffering," the Cave of the Dark One, Crom Cruach, though he regards Aisling's warnings as "pagan nonsense."

Safe inside the abbey again, Brendan is given the task of illustrating the book - "unleash your imagination" - with Aidan's exhortation, saying that his own eyes are old and hand unsteady: "Finish what you start." One thing needed is missing - the crystal, otherwise known as the Eye of Columbkille - lost and destroyed during Aidan's escape from Iona; previously it had been the Eye of Crom Cruach.

As he is about to make another foray into the forest, the abbot interrupts Brendan, locking him away in the tower for his disobedience and to prevent his further association with Aidan, whom he orders to leave "with the first thaws of spring." Aisling comes to Brendan to assist him at obtaining a replacement crystal following a harrowing hallucinatory adventure back inside the Cave of the Dark One.

Through an animated medieval adventure with stylized drawings, in some instances inspired by the illuminations of the Book of Kells (the four Gospels of the Bible produced about the 8th century in Ireland), co-directors Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey have illuminated Fabrice Ziolkowski's screenplay (based on Moore's story) along with music by Bruno Coulais.

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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