Penguins of Madagascar (2014) — PASS
Song of the Sea (2014) — PICK
The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2014) — PASS

 

Three 2014 animated movies are new on home video. Two are artful, Oscar-nominated films: the Irish Song of the Sea and the Japanese The Tale of Princess Kaguya.

Both are low-key, moving films that center on a magical young girl whose exact nature is a mystery to her family members. At some point, the other world to which she belongs makes its presence felt. (Warning: Spoilers follow.) In a musical, transcendent climax, our world is heralded by the other world, and the sky is full of beings of light who may take the girl from her family.

I admire both films, but I have to confess that I love and can recommend only one: Song of the Sea, one of my top 10 films of 2014. Honoring Ireland’s mythic and Catholic heritage, Song is an accessible meditation on grief and loss. Young Ben lost his mother when his sister Saoirse was born and now lives with his grieving father (Calvary’s Brendan Gleeson) and Saoirse on a lonely island on the Irish coast.

Princess Kaguya is a more difficult film that contemplates the tension between social expectations and personal happiness. Kaguya’s father devotes his life to elevating her to the rank of princess, incorrigibly oblivious to her unhappiness. Kaguya offers a startling vision of divinity in a Japanese-Buddhist mode, supremely indifferent in beatitude. This may be a critique of Buddhist detachment and an affirmation of human life in all its imperfection and pain, but the film never offers Kaguya a real possibility of happiness. Give me Song, with its vision of stranded spirits set free to move on to their true home by Saoirse’s soul song, like the souls of departed loved ones ascending to heaven aided by our prayers.

Skip Penguins of Madagascar. Its desperate, substance-free, sugar-rush silliness is exhausting at feature length.