The Secret of Roan Inish
by John Sayles
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DVD details
Actor: Dave Duffy, Eileen Colgan, Jeni Courtney, Mick Lally, Pat SloweyDirector: John Sayles
Brand: Sony
Writer: John Sayles
Producer: Glenn R. Jones
Producer: John Sloss
Producer: Maggie Renzi
Producer: Peter Newman
Producer: R. Paul Miller
Writer: Rosalie K. Fry
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-07-25
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of The Secret of Roan Inish
DVD Review: I need better guidance!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this film from your site and found after I placed my order that the film if for zone 1. I live in Australia and so I need zone 4 copies. Can the zones be clearly marked next to each product please? Margaret James DVD Review: The Secret of Roan Inish
Summary: 5 Stars
Want to remember how it feels to believe in what seems impossible but is?
Then, this movie is for you. A wonderful story for old and young alike. It is a reminder of the continuous connection of our family linage and how all things move in a circle ... maybe even us!
DVD Review: Sweet story
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a charming story for anyone, especially if you like mysteries and love Celtic music. Fiona's family suffered a loss and left their island home as a result. Fiona's return marks the beginning of healing for everyone.DVD Review: An it be a fine way to introduce a people in love with story
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a Scot and a whole lot of mixed things. Irish among them, that lost a great connection to family history in the immigration to America long, long past. I'm also a teacher among those things, lover of story, American, with nothing to add here that the hundreds of reviewers haven't eloquently spoken. What a masterful movie maker and movie. But it's St. Patty's Day and this is the movie I've shared for ages with my classes to set the tone and introduce the "culture of Ireland."
Asking permission of course.
It's a movie that for kids starts with a child losing her mum, losing her brother,now going back to her grandparents who are living by the sea with a father not coping well with any of this, earning his way now in the city.
He's a drunk and you can't blame him drowning in sorrow and guilt. She, Fiona, returns all by herself, a first glimpse into her independence and character (and situation) to Grandparents displaced off their beloved island by war. But they love it as their center, and they tell her of it, and of themselves so she might be re-entered into the heart of family. Splintered they are by these tragedies.
This I know well from my own family way, telling you of who you came from. It's gauzy, you feel pieces of understanding building meanings, you have back story, flash backward, enter myths and dreams and gain an understanding of these people, crawling through the tales. Genius willingness to allow you slowly into both the terrible that's happened, but also who they are, how the stage is set for accepting what will be. All well done work.
The children I teach at first watching struggle with this, as we are just now talking about how time can work in stories and I stop and give pieces of explanation. The story centers on Fiona as she snuggles into her life with her grandparents getting out of the filth of the city, no place for a child. She wants to open up the story of her brother, hear what happened, know about him, a tiny infant lost at sea when their family was removed from this island. She wants to wander into the place I think I'd call the silences of things we cannot face. She is the one brave enough to lead them all on forward. It's important to note that is built beautifully, acted simply, and just as fresh as the spray off the sea here.
And as she does this, as she goes back to the island, as the movie progresses into something surreal and about the power of myth, she takes her audience, us, into the places myth serves. It's as if while we are healing with them, retelling to lead to acceptance, sharing this pain, while we are dreaming and designing what can be, what comes to pass, the miracle here, it starts to bring to my class actual joy and a sense of wonder. I cannot reveal so much without giving the plot away (and it certainly is revealed in other reviews) but this family so used to hardship remarkably through their young get a break, yet it comes in the magical realism. It is a miracle.
So why use this with a class, why watch year after year? I am very fond of how this uses flashback and dream sequences in talking to time and memory with children. It has a place in talking to people's ways of telling to their young the story of family, something my kids understand, it has a heroine-a character who is female that asks questions, investigates, seeks what she knows to be true. It discusses truth interestingly along the way. And the film speaks to the silkies, man's ties to animal, a people living in fishing and the sea many generations, their hard work and respect for the home they have, for the children. It helps us talk about how myth grows. It's purposes. It's familiar just as it is distant. The sound of the voices, the sound of the seas, all of this the filmmaker captures, designs and gives to the children.
Everyone knows this film has been around a long time. It's tested and true as a story worth seeing. This day I'm out of school sadly not sharing the holiday with my class too ill, but we will finish it tomorrow on my return. Despite everything they'll cheer that. No class ever failed to vote it one of the best experiences I provided. I think because it's embedded within a culture and family with a wee naked baby running through and it ends as we wish it might, it is a movie, and we have permission to allow things to be ok, just for a little while.
And that feels like the gift story can bring. Well worth watching.
Happy St. Patrick's...may you find yourself in a happy ending.
DVD Review: Irish Folklore
Summary: 5 Stars
I had lost my VHS of this film; sent for the CD, and was more than satisfied with the product.
Description of The Secret of Roan Inish
A gentle charming tale of a girl who is sent to live with her grandparents and discovers the myths and magic that have affected her family. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 11/27/2007 Starring: Leonard Maltin Run time: 103 minutes Rating: Pg Director: John SaylesAs one of the most respected American independent filmmakers, John Sayles has created a body of work as distinguished in its diversity as for its consistent quality and inspiring originality. He's never been one to march to the commercial beat, but chooses instead to follow his creative impulse wherever it leads him. The Secret of Roan Inish led Sayles to the beautiful and moody West Coast of Ireland; it is a tale of a girl who discovers that her family has been touched by myth and magic throughout the years. Following the death of her mother, young Fiona (Jeni Courtney) is sent to live with her grandparents on the Irish coast across from Roan Inish, the island where her family once lived. She's told stories about the selkies--seals that can turn into humans--who have been connected with Fiona's family over the ages. At first she's not sure if the selkies are real or mythological, but she later realizes that they hold the key to reclaiming her family heritage.
What's remarkable about this film (which Sayles adapted from Rosalie Fry's novel Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry) is that it's not told as a cute fantasy for children, but as a straightforward, unsentimental story of a young girl's family history. That gives the film--which was beautifully photographed by master cinematographer Haskell Wexler--an understated charm that is completely absorbing in its atmosphere and subtle tone. There's magic as well, to be sure--you could almost swear that the seals and seagulls in the film took direction from Sayles as well as any human actor! --Jeff Shannon
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