Directed
by Dutch animator Michaël Dudok
De Wit, “The Red Turtle” is at first fairly straightforward Robinson
Crusoe-like fable about a sailor shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island. But
what begins as a simple survival tale slowly grows into something much deeper
and more enigmatic as it progresses.
After
washing ashore, the unnamed man explores his new surroundings and we’re given
ample opportunity to appreciate the storybook illustration style of the island
and its lovely, subdued watercolor palette. Though he doesn’t have too much
trouble finding food and water, the man is desperate to get back to the life he
left behind and sets to work building a makeshift bamboo raft. But sailing out
into the ocean, his raft is destroyed by a large, red sea turtle once he gets a
certain distance from land. When his repeated attempts to escape the island are
thwarted, the man plans to take revenge on the creature, but things soon take a
mystical turn.
The film
is completely dialogue-free, and despite being a mostly silent story, Dudok De Wit finds unique ways to convey the man’s sense of
loneliness and isolation. Shots are composed in ways that emphasizes the
relative insignificance of our protagonist, contrasting him against the open
sea and vast, starry skies. We also meet a few of the curious creatures that
inhabit the island, and the occasional comic relief is provided by a family of
sand crabs who act as silent Greek chorus as they observe the action with an
amusing dispassion. Though it maintains a relatively gentle tone, there are
tense moments and a positively anxiety-inducing sequence in which the man slips
off a cliff and finds himself in a seemingly inescapable underwater cave.
Though
“The Red Turtle” has the feel of a classic folk tale, it’s actually an original
story from Dudok De Wit and co-writer Pascale Ferran, and the simple narrative lends the film an all-ages
appeal (as long as the youngest in the audience have some patience, as the
story unfolds at its own pace). The film was nearly a decade in the making, and
the care taken in its gorgeously rendered hand-drawn animation is evident in
every frame.
Nominated
in the Best Animated Feature category at this year’s Academy Awards, “The Red
Turtle” is co-produced by Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation house behind
films like “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away.” Though not created by any
of their in-house animators, the film feels very much of a piece with their
output, emphasizing the supreme power of nature and mankind’s shifting, forever
tenuous place within it.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2017.
