Ondine - A Movie Review

Ondine:  A Movie Review

By Dan McDonald

            Ondine starred Colin Farrell and Alicja Bachleda with a supporting role by child actress Alison Barry.  Farrell plays the role of Syracuse, shortened to an unflattering nickname of “Circus”.  Circus is a divorced, recovering alcoholic with a diseased daughter named Annie (Alison Barry).  Syracuse is a fisherman, and one day fishing off the coast of Ireland he pulls up his net to discover a woman entangled in the net.  She is confused, barely conscious, and shivering but will not accept any medical help.  She wishes no one to see her but him.

            Syracuse is at a loss of what to do with his catch.  Before this woman, who finally calls herself Ondine, had come into his life his fishing had not drawn many good catches.  But one day Ondine sings while aboard the boat.  It is a song like sung by a siren from an ancient mariner’s tale.  Syracuse draws up his net which has an extraordinary catch.  Syracuse connects her song to the astonishing catch.  He gives Ondine a temporary refuge in a cottage, out of view, to accommodate her desire to not be seen.

            There are multiple story lines playing in this film.  It is a movie reflecting Ireland’s struggle to hold on to what has made it Ireland while moving forward.  Syracuse is a recovering alcoholic but there is no AA chapter in his local town.  So he calls on a Roman Catholic priest to hear not the confession of a believer, but but to be a substitute for the AA chapter that does not exist in his town.  The priest takes on this responsibility sort of wavering between patience and boredom with the non-ordained relationship between priest and the man’s need for an AA chapter.  This seems to be one of the plot lines which writer and director Neil Jordan presents to us in “Ondine”.  Ireland’s past has had a strong connection to Roman Catholicism and the sacraments, but those connections are waning in modern Ireland.  Scandals of priests abusing young children have certainly hurt the church’s image in Ireland, but perhaps the distancing of the Irish people from Catholicism is a part, of a more universal European tendency, for Europe’s tribes to distance themselves from the old Christian faith that once explained life in these lands.  Still the new understanding often mixes with the old, so that ideals of the sacraments once partaken of in faith remain symbols of men and women seeking modern stories of redemption.  Syracuse uses a Catholic priest to be a substitute AA chapter.  Ondine describes herself as having died in the waters of the Irish Sea until Syracuse’s net brought her up from those waters and gave her new life.

            Syracuse tries to protect Ondine but isn’t completely at rest with the situation.  But his life seems to be blessed with her around in a way he cannot understand.  He visits his daughter Annie, who is having a hard time of it.  She asks him to tell her a story.  He can’t think of anything and makes up a fable about a fisherman who catches a woman in his fishing nets.  Annie sees through her dad and begins to think this is a real story.  She decides this woman must be a legendary selkie.  A selkie is a seal that magically turns into a woman and brings good fortune to the man she chooses.  But a selkie can be very fickle in her affections.  Of course, a selkie is always a beautiful woman.  Alicja Bachleda, who plays Ondine is all that.  The Polish actress, who was born in Mexico, and studied acting in the USA,  presents an Ondine who is pleasantly at ease, while remaining exotic and aloof.  She befriends Syracuse and Annie while remaining distant.  When Annie tries to get Ondine to acknowledge she is a selkie, Ondine evades any direct answer.

            The movie is sometimes escapist fantasy, but just as much brutal reality not for a child’s eyes.  While watching the movie, you’ll begin to believe there are selkies.  But writer and director Neil Jordan, I believe, is asking the audience to ponder other mysteries.  The sacraments and selkies are both myths, or are they?  The film’s darkness reminds us that life’s problems are seldom cured instantly whether in a new relationship, by a beautiful selkie, or even turning to God and His sacraments.  Still such are the ways of men and women seeking new beginnings in life.  An Irishman is something of a spiritual as well as national identity.  That is something the Irish don’t want to give up as they move towards modernity.  Perhaps this movie allows us to look at modern man through a modern Irish tale.  We tend to categorize as “nothing” anything not proven by science and reason.  But there is something in every soul that imagines something true beyond mere science and reason.  This poses a question for modern souls to ponder.  “If we were to learn everything, with nothing more to discover, would we eliminate all mystery from life?  Or would we instead finally understand and discover that mystery has been woven into the very fabric of creation?”