The Secret of Roan Inish

Alive with beauty, spirit and wit, Roan Inish is pure magic. Read full review

Darkly lyrical and imbued with a genuine sense of magic, ROAN INISH has the haunted quality of Irish folk music. It's family entertainment in the best sense of the term. Read full review

Stirred by the winds of nostalgia, lapped by its ocean of dreams, "The Secret of Roan Inish" is one of the loveliest surprises of the year. [03 Mar 1995, p.C]

Though its protagonist is a 10-year-old girl, it is a crackling good tale with a sense of wonder and mystery strong enough to captivate any age group. [03 Feb 1995, p.F1]

The film is unapologetically sweet and hopeful, but it's said the heart's true home is the water, that its nature is to bob atop the cares of the world like a wooden cradle on the waves. Read full review

John Sayles and Haskell Wexler, who has photographed this movie with great beauty and precision, have ennobled the material. Read full review

The Secret of Roan Inish is mostly a story about storytelling, and how folk tales and real life can intermingle. Read full review

There's a welcome lack of blarney (Mason Daring's score is never cloying) and a freshness about the performances that makes the movie feel contemporary. [17 Feb 1995, p.I30]

Director John Sayles mingles folklore and realism in a charming story that the whole family can treasure. [19 Jan 1996, p.14]

The story, although straightforward, is by no means simple, and there's enough in The Secret of Roan Inish to delight both children and adults. Read full review

It's beautiful to look at, but it's stiffly acted by some of the performers and tends to get ponderous. Read full review

The Secret of Roan Inish freely mixes Celtic myth and everyday reality. But "Roan Inish" is a different kind of ride, less intentionally rollicking and more reverential. Read full review

It's a lyrical, lulling, beautiful film that children may relish. Read full review

There's wonder and mystery in "The Secret of Roan Inish," a handful of utterly convincing characters, knit together by Sayles' ability to freight their naturalistic moves with larger, deeper meanings. [24 Feb 1995, p.71]

Sayles has also gathered uniformly strong performances from his ensemble cast of mostly Irish actors; he creates a rural Irish milieu with a remarkable authenticity (remarkable since he is not Irish); and he keeps the mood nicely balanced on a fine line between whimsical children's fable and realistic domestic drama. [17 Feb 1995]

The Secret of Roan Inish glows with a misty, lyrical beauty, helped no little by the cinematography of Haskell Wexler. Once again, writer-director Sayles ("Passion Fish") succeeds in creating a mature, complex film that touches the heart without using any Hollywood tricks. [14 Apr 1995, p.3E]

JOHN SAYLES has a filmmaking style that's often closer to leaden than lyrical. But his plodding manner works somewhat to advantage in "The Secret of Roan Inish," a modern-mythic drama set in Ireland that explores the special relationship between Irish seaside dwellers and Selkies -- seal-like creatures said to be part human. Read full review

What prevents "The Secret of Roan Inish" from evaporating into cuteness or from being smothered in mystical overkill is the director's firmly human perspective. Read full review

Sayles brings familiar tools to "Roan Inish": a passion for language, labor-intensive lifestyles and, of course, the moody beauty of the geography. The writer-director frequently links his characters' personal happiness with their environment. That, more than the unusual marine life of Roan Inish, is the theme of this amiable visit to northwestern Ireland. Read full review

John Sayles’ latest marks his entry into family-pic terrain, a crossing that draws pleasant but unexciting results. Read full review

Its writer-director, John Sayles, is one of my favourite American film-makers, when he is pursuing tough social and historical subjects as in Matewan, Eight Men Out and City of Hope. He's that rare being, a political director, but I don't care for Sayles's excursions into lyricism (Passion Fish, for example), and this present exercise in stage Irishry. [11 Aug 1996, p.8]