MARCH 2, 2017
It’s only eight weeks into the New Year, and we’ve got our second A-minus film already. I have a good feeling that 2017 is going to be a great year movie-wise.
If the title “The Red Turtle” rings a bell, it’s likely that you heard it at Sunday’s Oscar ceremony, where the film was one of the five nominees competing for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, which was won by Disney’s “Zootopia.” I hugely admired the wit and depth of “Zootopia,” which, like many recent animated blockbusters, is jam-packed with visual activity that keeps your eyes popping throughout the entire film.
“The Red Turtle’s” visual style is the polar opposite of the frenetic “Zootopia.” Its visual style is spare — our hero’s eyes are little more than two dots — and the verbal wit of “Zootopia” is missing, since “The Red Turtle” contains no dialogue. It’s not silent — there’s music and maybe a grunt now and then, but the film is brilliantly able to tell its story exclusively through its visuals.
I know that sounds like a lot of work to put an audience through, but believe me, it’s not. You’ll be carried along by the extraordinary visuals (check out the contrast of the gorgeous blue of the sea and the red of the turtle in the photo above), and while the story may at first seem simple, it is really about nothing less than the cycle of life.
In the film’s terrifying opening, a nameless sailor is tossed about in the sea during a ferocious storm and is right on the brink of drowning. He awakens, however, on a deserted island and is relieved even to be alive. The island is lush with fruit and small friendly animals, but despite its charms, the sailor wants to return to civilization.
He builds a large raft and sets sail, only to have his raft destroyed by a huge creature from below the sea. He tries again with another raft only to have the same result. On his third attempt, the sailor comes face with the creature, an enormous red turtle, which seems determined to keep him on the island.
One night, the turtle crawls onto the beach, and the man, seeking to remove the one impediment to his return to civilization, turns the turtle upside-down, effectively killing it. But he is shocked when that night, he sees the turtle’s shell split and from the shell emerges a beautiful woman. And the cycle of life begins.
“The Red Turtle” is directed and co-written by Oscar-winning Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit and is co-produced by celebrated Japanese company Studio Ghibli (home to the works of legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki), and the film reflects the very particular Ghibli style, sparse in character visuals but powerful in character development. (Though “The Red Turtle” is as good a film as any out there for families, the opening shipwreck and a later tsunami might be a bit intense for little ones.)
You may have to hunt a bit to find “The Red Turtle” in your local theater, as it is being released very slowly around the country. But when you do find it, don’t miss it, because it will an animation experience the likes of which you have never before seen.
GRADE: A-
