The Red Turtle (2017)

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I've not seen many films that have little to no dialogue, and immediately this reminded me of 'All Is Lost'. An international co-production between Wild Bunch and Studio Ghibli, this is simply a story of a man stranded on a remote luscious island where he must be forced to survive. Well...at first it seemed like that. Then he encounters the titular red turtle, survival has now turned into an intimate sublime view on life and death. It's hard not to appreciate a film that attempts to push boundaries, to use the medium as a means of art as opposed to mindless entertainment. The Red Turtle is just that. Art. Absolutely gorgeous animation, truly superb. The detail in the landscape and characters is rather minimalistic, but it's the colour palette and effortless blend of the greyscale pigmentation that elevates this cinematic piece to an exceedingly high level. As with many contemporary artsy films, the story itself is fuelled by metaphors. The subtext that lurks beneath the colourful surface. I'm sure you could interpret this in various ways, from the religious "Adam & Eve" connotations to the neglect of wildlife. I personally viewed this as the latter. A pivotal scene where the red turtle is washed ashore, our silent character does something. It evoked feelings of shock and disappointment but it was conveyed as a microcosm for society and how we treat wildlife. I'm still trying to work out the symbolism of the turtles but the beauty of such a short rapid film is that I can easily watch it again. The lack of dialogue doesn't deter from connecting with the story, in fact the characters had personalities. Sure they were simple, however it was well presented. Even the island itself felt like it had a personality of its own, especially with the wide variety of wildlife that reside there. The musical score was also breathtakingly beautiful, gave me goosebumps. All in all, The Red Turtle was a visual treat boosted by a mature metaphorical story to keep you intrigued.

I don't want to drag the rating system down on this movie by giving it a 5, when the Good Part of the movie is truly a 10. I just wish that I could rate the movie twice. So, it's 10 stars for the art and 5 stars for the lead character's stupidity.Here's the good: Stunning animation, visually jaw-dropping, LOVED the tiny touches of nature that almost all American Films miss: minnows in the pond, crabs grabbing a dead baby sea turtle to eat, etc. I was okay with the length and the silence of the film. I was even okay with 80% of the plot.What I HATED about the film was what I'll call "My Logical Brain" syndrome. It bothered my husband and I so much when OBVIOUS SOLUTIONS TO SURVIVAL were blown off, that my husband just walked away after 30 minutes. I only hung onto watching the film because it was "pretty to look at". These are the issues we/I had: 1) You're stranded on a deserted island, your raft is demolished 3 separate times and yet you are TOO STUPID AND DIMWITTED to use at least SOME of the bamboo to construct the simplest of shelter!?2) Again, BAMBOO...Hello!? He could have constructed a shelter, used parts of the canes to store water rather than trot to an inland pond to constantly slurp up the water like a dog, and burn some of the bamboo to COOK the fish/meat he found, rather than pillaging from a decaying seal he found on the beach! They obviously know about fire, since they burn the LARGEST MASS OF BAMBOO ever seen, when a tsunami wipes out the bamboo forest! And here again, WHY would you burn it all? Why not parse it out as fuel for the rest of your life? Or, a SHELTER so you don't spend your time in the rain storms???3) I'm cool with the transformation of the turtle into the woman and I even understand the frustration and anger that the man felt toward the turtle thwarting his escape efforts. But, after they became a family with a young child, the damn fool STILL hadn't built a shelter but sleeps on the sand on the beach! What gives? And still, NO vessels to store water or food? They act as if they've just landed on the island and not been there at least 16 years (based upon the age of the son.)4) The male character was just plain stupid. As the film progressed, I just wanted him DEAD! He couldn't provide for himself, he couldn't provide for his family by building a shelter or providing fresh water, and he was TOO STUPID to move out of the way of a tsunami...he just stood and stared at it as his wife/partner dragged the fool away! Based on the son's age, he had to have lived on the island for at least 16 years...did you learn NOTHING!?As I mentioned above, these issues I had are all as a reaction from my Logical Brain Center. I realize that it's completely contradictory to enjoy a FANTASY film about a transforming sea turtle and bitch about real life survival skills, but that's who I am. If it doesn't bother you at all that the male character is as dumb as a bag of seashells, then you'll love the film.

A fascinating exploration into how the viewer can keep wondering what will happen next, only to be surprised by the truth that there is nothing. Don't be fooled by all the hype - this is the emperor's new clothes. For the first 10 minutes I was impressed by the artwork. The animation is delightful and stylistic. It's a fascinating film up to the point the protagonist takes revenge on the turtle. That's about 20 minutes in. The remaining 50 minutes is best described as tripe. I am sure people will wax on about how brave and challenging the film is, but the only challenges here are 1. reaching the end and 2. trying not to feel angry at the criminal theft of your time.

The Red Turtle washes over you like a cool breeze; pleasant, although the rave reviews of a life-changing experience may be a little overstated. The film is a co-production between Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit and the brains-trust of Studio Ghibli, as the crimson Totoro in lieu of the usual blue in the opening credits tells us. But you could learn that simply from watching the characters move and the sea shimmer in the opening sequence anyway; gone are the thick, clean anime-inspired lines of Ghibli's standard, the wide eyes and the fat limbs. And in their place, two black dots for eyes, a wiry frame drawn from thin lines, and an island setting that seems to be perpetually overcast. This is no island paradise - the backgrounds of sky, sea and rock are made of great swathes of watercolour washes, the dullness of blue and grey almost overbearing. No wonder that our protagonist is immediately searching for an escape. There are certain stretches of beauty amongst this: morning sun peeking through the gaps of a bamboo forest, and compositions of stark simplicity of a lone figure standing on the endless beach. Yet when night falls the film turns monochrome, and the harsh reality of waking up robs him of fleeting moments of serenity in his dreams. So it has a confident vision of its tone, and even the cutesy hijinks of a cast of cartoon crabs doesn't deter it. Aside from a few anguished shouts it is all but a silent film, leaving the sound design and swirling score to do most of the emotional heavy lifting. This all feeds into the moment that the red turtle washes onto the shore helpless, and in a fit that shook me, he turns it onto its back, and stomps down angrily. It is at this point that a comparison to Kim Ki-duk's masterpiece Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring is unavoidable. The vicious act is likened to that of a little monk's torment of three small animals, puncturing the quiet calm with sudden violence. They both draw our attention to the egocentrism of man, and make elliptical leaps through life in their editing. But the broadness of this tale leads it to eventually stumble. Its silence allows the viewer to fill the gaps with whatever thematic metaphor that is most applicable, while the actual narrative remains thin. Halfway through, the film skips ahead in leaps and bounds until it lands into another typical fable about a creature living amongst men, able to feign being human but hearing their calling elsewhere. A tsunami strikes the island suddenly, leaving devastation in its wake; this might be the slot where Ghibli's usual caution on the power and unpredictability of nature could be inserted, but it merely replaces dullness with a greyer dullness, and they stagger on quietly. Later, the child merges with another giant wave, overlooking his parents with a sense of detachment, and the message is muddled further. There are two stories and not enough time to explore them. I've seen the latter done better anyway, in Ghibli's own Princess Kaguya and the excellent Irish Song of the Sea. Consider a sequence from that film where Saoirse, the mixed offspring of a human father and a fabled selkie first dives back into the sea where she truly belongs. The watercolour animation swirls around her as if it had just been painted with wet brush, the sea springs to life in response to her touch. The moment is magical. Does The Red Turtle take any time out of its broad allegory to woo us like this? To sell us the fractured identities of these characters, and explore the potential of its medium? Let's put it this way: there's more charm in one of Dudok de Wit's eight minute shorts than there is in the feature length of The Red Turtle.