We'll meet skeptical grandparents and a dour father and a crazy cousin and a family of seals involved in a surrealistic conspiracy of silence with the seagulls. The imagination is important here because Sayles indulges in no fancy special effects.
Nothing is here merely to dazzle.
It doesn't hurt at all that Roan Inish is as soothing to the eye as it is to the spirit. For his part, Sayles freely adapted a 1957 Irish novella called Secret Of The Ron Mor Skerry by Rosalie Fry, whose own line drawings for the book appear at the end of the movie. So, out of this myth, that fantastical story, cascades a series of little truths. Add them up and we better understand our lives on this crazy planet. For me, that's reason enough to go to a film like this, as unlikely as it may be from John Sayles.