The Red Turtle

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It’s haunting and beautiful and tragic and oddly seductive. The Red Turtle is the prettiest girl in your class who also happens to pull down straight As: fecking brilliant. I wasn’t sure if it would even earn girl next door status with me – an animated film with no dialogue?

While The Red Turtle has no speech, no words at all, it is far from silent. It has lovely but 1027992-theredturtle-05retiring music throughout, but manages to speak directly to your heart. That’s sort of the catch with this film, you have to let go of the normal film-going experience, and just feel your way through this one.

A man is lost at sea and washes ashore on a deserted island. He makes several escape attempts but his rafts keep getting destroyed. The culprit turns out to be a red turtle, a turtle who just happens to have the power to die and come back a woman, which is a pretty cool power. Imagine how stoked the dude is – doomed to a solitary life but then magically accorded a mate?

Director Michael Dudok de Wit had only a few short films to his name when he got a call from animation superstar Studio Ghibli asking if they could distribute his 2000 short Father And Daughter in Japan, and oh, p.s., would you make a feature film for us? He was floored. Ghibli has never done a non-Japanese film before, but they were clearly entranced with Dudok de Wit’s style and talent. The result, La tortue rouge, is pure visual narrative. It’s extremely simple story-telling, but effective. It laps at you like waves on a sandy beach. Cumulatively, it can knock you off your feet. This may be Dudok de Wit’s first attempt, but he nonetheless has an Oscar nomination to show for it.What do I have? I have a teeny tiny shadow on my heart – a shadow in the shape of a red turtle sliding back into the ocean.

12 thoughts on “The Red Turtle”

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  8. Christopher

    The trailer for this came on when I went to see Manchester By The Sea and I was struck by just how exquisitely beautiful it was. The trailer left me feeling I’d just seen the entire story, or at least three-fourths of it, but it still left me wanting more because it wasn’t just the story itself. It was the way the animation told it that caught me.

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  9. osmovies

    I saw that movie. It’s really good. And I’m telling you, either this, or “Kubo and the Two Strings” or “My Life as a Zucchini” has gotta win that Oscar award for Best Animated Feature. 😲😲😲😲😲Not goddamn disney and pixar that I hate the most!!!! 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

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  11. Carey

    It’s a parable about the cycle of life, about the dreams of finding meaning, about the possibility of a future. There are no flashbacks to tell you the castaway’s story — only a couple of hallucinations that offer clues.

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  12. this movie bites

    I specifically sought out this thread, something I never do, to let everyone know how much this movie sucks after it’s all said and done!

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