Duality begins at the very beginning of the animated film. The frame moves and changes like a kaleidoscope, everything is rounded. The film opens not with a picture of the past, but with the memory of a boy. The whole cartoon can be perceived in two ways: as a fairy tale or as the world of a boy with trauma. And these two positions are so inseparable. Is it true that
Maha is the same grandmother, Mac Lir, who flooded the ocean with his tears - is he a father grieving for his wife?
Moore, of course, created "evil" and "good" characters, but "goodness" and "evilness" in his films are so conditional. Maha does a lot of typically "wrong" things, but then her actions are explained. She could not see her son's sufferings, she wanted to take his grief away. Bronagh says to Ben: "Remember me in your stories and songs." And he could remember the fairy tales that his mother read to him at night, he could think of his sister as a selkie so that he could feel less lonely. But if we think so, if we take out all the miracles, we just spit in the face of Tomm Moore and Ben. In "Song" the director created not a simple film for children, but explored the psychology of a small child, the very essence of a fairy tale. Magic helps to better understand the world, but it is wonderful in the way it is.
The lack of unambiguity is manifested in the choice of an era. Although the action takes place in the time of tape recorders with cassettes, Moore choses "modernity". Not the 19th century, and certainly not the Middle Ages, as in The Secret of Kells. The world was depicted differently – timelessly. We can substitute any era: 15th, 19th centuries, and nothing would change.