Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 3, 1995 TAG: 9506060034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There are the bare feet of Irish schoolchildren dangling above a bench, and the English school master's forbidding shoes - so imposing in the background, you can almost feel them coming down hard on those naked toes.
There are Fiona's bare feet as she makes her way up the rocky shoreline of the home she can't remember, Roan Inish, and it seems right that she should approach like a pilgrim.
Finally, there is a field of purple and yellow flowers, nodding in the steady wind from the sea. A child's feet - Fiona's feet - come into view as she steps with strength and grace into the frame, as much a part of that field as the heather.
Almost any other director would offer us a field of flowers as a pretty postcard transition between scenes. Haskell Wexler's cinematography is unquestionably pretty. But John Sayles, who wrote, directed and masterfully edited this movie, never plies us with the naked beauty of this story, offers not one single, gratuitous moment or extraneous word. The flowers are there because Fiona has to walk through them.
What Sayles does offer is a movie about myth and its power to hold people together. It could be described as a children's movie, except for the fact that most children's movies work harder to keep little people entertained. Its pace is slow, but steady, perfectly in sync with the sea, one of the main players in this drama. But it is so deeply affecting that children - mostly those 7 and older - will not miss a bit of its magic.
As for adults, well, "The Secret of Roan Inish" could be offered as a test of soul-hardening: If you can't feel it, it's time to seek help.
The story is this: Fiona (Jeni Courtney, in a perfectly somber, subdued performance) has been sent away from the city by her widowed father to live with her grandparents (Eileen Colgan and Mick Lally) in a village across the water from the mysterious island, Roan Inish.
Little by little, Fiona learns the strange, sad story of her family's departure from the island, which reveals the central (and familiar) myth of the story. It is the myth of the seal woman - one of Fiona's ancestors - who left her skin to become a wife and mother but longed to return to the sea.
Drawn to the island by the hope of being reunited with her lost little brother, Fiona becomes a healer of great power through simple, practical determination.
Like most myths, the story reaches into the primal, which makes it a perfect John Sayles movie. The director of "Matewan" and "City of Hope," Sayles has a way of stripping things down to their basic elements anyway.
But there is no violence in the act this time. And, as with all Sayles movies, there are no concessions to "genre" or to the audience. It is a thing unto itself - a thing of rhapsodic beauty.
The Secret of Roan Inish
*** 1/2
A First Look Pictures release showing at The Grandin Theatre. Rated PG for some naked body parts. 103 mins.
by CNB