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Hendry (represented by A Running Commentary) and Neil Boyle were somewhat up against it from the start, however, as, er, Morpugo "didn't like any previous film adaptations of his work." The next director(s) to disappoint him would be stranded on a desert island like protagonist Michael. When Morpugo saw what Hendry and Boyle had done, he broke down in tears… the good kind. "Not only is 'Kensuke's Kingdom' his favourite adaptation of his book," Hendry says, "he now prefers it to the book." So how did the two directors defy the odds?
It started with a screenplay written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce that kept dialogue to a minimum. The less is more approach appealed to Hendry and Boyce, who traced a line back to silent movies both old ('Robinson Crusoe') and new ('The Red Turtle'). They turned to Will Cohen of String and Tins for the sound design and regular collaborator Stuart Hancock for the score—an adventurous suite that is pensive and perilous when needed. Does that mean Hendry and Boyle skimped on vocal talent? Not a chance. Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Sally Hawkins, and Raffey Cassidy signed up in no time (Murphy read 'Kensuke's Kingdom' to his children), but the voice of Michael took longer to pin down.
"It was a challenge because we probably looked at about fifty kids for the role," Hendry says. "A lot of them seemed to have that stage school, overacting vibe, but Aaron MacGregor was so natural, so vulnerable. As soon as we saw him, we knew he was our guy." Of course, 'Kensuke's Kingdom' is wild at heart. Michael and Kensuke share the island with bats, jellyfish, and orangutans—oh, and a dog called Stella [Stella Artois in the book]. Hendry and Boyce called on French animator and animal expert Ludivine Berthouloux to make the island's true residents as naturalistic as possible—no Disneyfication here, thank you very much.
"She and her team did a vast amount of research. They went through videos frame by frame à la Eadweard Muybridge to break down the movements," which helped make a jungle chase and a tender moment between mother and baby orangutan all the more believable and powerful. The directors took a different tack for the film's most plaintive scene: a flashback to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Inspired by nineteenth-century ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige, an ink splodge represents the explosion that changed Kensuke's life forever. Initial experiments were deemed too "tricksy", so Hendry and Boyce stripped back as much as they could.
"Whenever the animators were doing stuff in that sequence, we'd always say: "Do less, do less, rub out that line, get rid of that"," Hendry says. "Your brain just starts filling it in—what you can see in your mind's eye is always worse than what you can show." It's clear that New Zealander Hendry trusts viewers of all ages to connect the dots. When they do, they're rewarded with an island of calm in a sea of obnoxious, disposable animated adventures.
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