The Red Turtle | Little White Lies

The Red Turtle

26 May 2017 / Released: 26 May 2017

A floating bamboo and leaf structure in a serene turquoise sea, with sandy islands in the background.
A floating bamboo and leaf structure in a serene turquoise sea, with sandy islands in the background.
4

Anticipation.

Ghibli! Michaël Dukok de Wit! Together!!

4

Enjoyment.

A languorously paced, elegantly animated fable of life’s cyclicality.

4

In Retrospect.

One for the desert island films list.

There’s an eco­log­i­cal thread run­ning though this delight­ful ani­mat­ed fable from Stu­dio Ghibli.

In Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Tur­tle, a man ship­wrecked and alone on a desert island con­jures for him­self a com­pan­ion who falls some­where between mor­tal real­i­ty and imag­ined fan­ta­sy, and the two go on adven­tures togeth­er that come to define life – and death.

There must be some­thing in the mil­len­ni­al waters. For the bare bones plot of de Wit’s min­i­mal­ist ani­ma­tion (or min­ime) can also be dis­cerned in recent, oth­er­wise dif­fer­ent, live-action films like Robert Zemeck­is’ Cast Away and Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Swiss Army Man, sug­gest­ing that here, strand­ed in our present age, exis­ten­tial ideas are afloat about the place of the indi­vid­ual in hos­tile nature and an unfor­giv­ing universe.

Faced with eco­log­i­cal threats, a shift from glob­al­i­sa­tion back to eco­nom­ic iso­la­tion­ism, and the atom­i­sa­tion of our lives in the dig­i­tal age, cin­e­ma is giv­ing us a time­ly reminder that the prin­ci­ple of no man is an island’ has once again become caught in the cur­rent. The tiny insu­lat­ed ecosys­tem in De Wit’s film is also a micro­cosm of 21st cen­tu­ry human experience.

After the suc­cess of his ani­mat­ed shorts The Monk and the Fish and Father and Daugh­ter, The Red Tur­tle is de Wit’s first fea­ture film. It is a co-pro­duc­tion with Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, and boasts Isao Taka­ha­ta (Grave of the Fire Flies, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya) as its artis­tic pro­duc­er, but nonethe­less its ani­ma­tion is a far cry from the stylised won­der­ment of Ghibli’s sim­i­lar­ly ocean­ic Ponyo from 2008.

For while here too a myth­ic mag­i­cal real­ism will even­tu­al­ly wash ashore, there is also real­ism of a more straight­for­ward kind, reflect­ed in the way the ani­ma­tion care­ful­ly observes the sub­tle shifts in weath­er and light on the island. Despite an increas­ing­ly fable-like turn of events, an almost doc­u­men­tary-like nat­u­ral­ism per­vades this film’s ani­mat­ed forms, all cal­i­brat­ed to dai­ly rhythms and lunar cycles.

The pro­tag­o­nist is a man first seen both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly lost at sea, tem­pest-tossed upon over­whelm­ing swells. He ends up on a small rocky atoll with bam­boo for­est, fresh­wa­ter pool and beach. Ini­tial­ly, his sole com­pa­ny is a curi­ous cho­rus of pet-like crabs. Our hero quick­ly gets the lie of the land, and deter­mines to make his escape. Yet every bam­boo raft that he fash­ions gets destroyed by some­thing mys­te­ri­ous in the sea. As an expres­sion of his frus­tra­tion and des­per­ate need for escape into a less lone­ly exis­tence, the man com­mits an act of cru­el vio­lence against the tit­u­lar crea­ture, only to wit­ness it not fade, but suf­fer a sea-change into some­thing rich and strange.

With no dia­logue beyond grunts and the occa­sion­al shout­ed Hey!’, events here are orches­trat­ed only by the sounds of the envi­ron­ment, Lau­rent Perez Del Mar’s score and by the beau­ti­ful imagery. It lends de Wit’s film an admirable back-to-basics puri­ty (in for­mal terms) that match­es the reduc­tion of its pro­tag­o­nist to the sim­plest sub­sis­tence. The result is a para­ble of Dar­win­ian drudgery and sur­vival­ist rou­tines that is every so often dis­rupt­ed by freak occur­rences of nature. The mag­ic of The Red Tur­tle ulti­mate­ly comes down to the mir­a­cle of organ­ic matter’s trans­for­ma­tive recy­cling. Life always finds a way, and death is always a part of that.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.