The Red Turtle

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The film has nothing to it. By the end of the film I did not learn anything, I was not attached to the story. it was way too simple to be a film, there is no deeper meaning no stunning animations, boring colors. it can be as a short film but will still give it 1/10. there is no plot, no meaning, they have not added anything new to the story, its awful. I don't recommend watching it, I don't mind there is no conversations in the movie there are so many movies that worked fine without it, but not this film. there are main and important quotations left unanswered, and when something kinda interesting happened they cut it off.

The movie was a pure masterpiece. Details were plenty for the eager-to- notice viewer, and provided great narrative and hints for the plot. Nothing is unimportant and this lively yet lonely world, and the more attention you pay to the smallest things, the more this movie makes sense. The music score was fantastic and at times it really flooded me with emotions. The plot has you thinking of all the possibilities that could have been true or not, and as such it's a fulfilling experience, one to be discussed for much time after the screening. As long as you have a vivid fantasy, you'll enjoy this movie and really think about it. The only setback is that at times it grew tiring and could use 10 minutes less time. Absolutely recommend! 9/10

I'm a big fan of survival films. In particular, J.C. Chandor's All Is Lost is my favorite film of the decade so far and it's with high praise that I say that The Red Turtle reminded me so much of it. The animation is simple, but it's perfect for this type of story. It's an amazingly written film. It understands the power of visual storytelling and it never loses our gaze. The music score is also perfectly integrated, composed and mixed with a real care for the quieter moments and it never overdoes anything (something that many dialogue-less films do). Animation or no animation, you become deeply invested in these characters. I can't recommend this film enough. I highly recommend it.

Gorgeous colors and graceful poetic images mark The Red Turtle (La Tortue rouge), a wordless 80-minute animated film co-produced by the Japanese Studio Ghibli and Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit. Made in France, the dialogue-free film was produced by Takahata Isao and co-written by French director Pascale Ferran whose 2014 film Bird People depicted a loving connection between man and nature. De Wit was recruited by famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki after he saw his 2000 Oscar-winning short Father and Daughter, a charcoal-drawn, also wordless film, about loss. The Red Turtle begins in a raging storm as a bearded young man defies death and is carried by enormous waves to the shore of a tiny island as pieces of his shattered boat wash up behind him. With his only companions being crabs and caterpillars, the nameless man plans to escape by constructing a raft of bamboo sticks but his raft is broken up during several attempts by a huge turtle of flaming red. Aggressively attempting to prevent this from happening again, the man turns the turtle over, leaving it to die. When the turtle transforms into a human female companion, the film becomes a beautiful and moving fable that recaptures the mystery and wonder of life. The Red Turtle is a short film but it is filled with adventure as when the couple's son tumbles into the same pool his father had almost drowned in several years earlier. There is also a raging tsunami that threatens to engulf the island, dream sequences including one in which he imagines a string quartet playing classical music at low tide, and allegories about life, all supported by the exquisite score of composer Laurent Perez del Mar (Now or Never). While I did not always connect emotionally with the animated characters, I was awed by the grace of the film's ballet-like underwater images, the glow of a magical sky, and the water, one minute a raging grey, the next a serene azure blue. Of course the central mystery of the film is open to interpretation. For me, it is an allegory about the power we all have to transform the quality of our life. Rather than being stuffed into a box labeled mythical fantasy or magical realism, the film is about the true magic of reality so often lost to us by our present-day scientific "rationality."

I am a big fan of animation, from Anime to Disney, DreamWorks, even French animation; but very few times I have seen an outstanding, gorgeous work of art like "THE RED TURTLE" To begin with, the film has a beautiful 2D animation, which is perfect to show the amplitude of the ocean, and the comparison between the human bodies and those created by nature. The sea, the island, the animals, everything in this movie is animated in an incredible way which makes you feel trapped by this world that looks like a painting in constant motion. Unlike other films, in THE RED TURTLE the approach is rarely only in its characters, but in the environment and how the protagonists unfold in a world as big and unknown as the ocean and the island. Many movies, specially animated ones, don't take too many risks, and nowadays with the computer animation, I feel like the style that each artist could give to their movies, is slowly disappearing, but this movie proved me wrong. Besides, this movie does nothing else than adding limitations: no dialogue; no facial expressions; not even detailed or "interesting" environments. But all this factors are not really necessary in this 80 minutes long movie, which focuses on the journey that the main character faces while exploring all the stages of life. The most incredible thing about this movie is that it is completely mute; therefore it only uses the music and animation to tell the story. It is very easy to explain what happens, but cinema is an audiovisual medium, and this film shows the true scope of the animation, and how it can combine the music, the images and the corporal movements of the characters to transmit the messages and emotions. Without the protagonists saying a word, one can feel the desperation, frustration, doubt, intrigue, happiness and madness that they experience. The story in this movie is very simple, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, because its objective is to use all the elements I mentioned before and use the simple storytelling and characters in their advantage so that they can make the audience experience a different emotion and messages. The main focus of THE RED TURTLE is on the meaning of life, acting like a mirror to our own, therefore, it is the audience the one that creates the complex story by relating the multiple variations and allegories to their own experiences, and this is what will make the story vary from person to person. Apart from the obvious moral of "man vs. nature" this film exploits other messages, such as "the beauty in the unexpected" and "the circle of life", explained, surprisingly, better than in THE LION KING, with the turtle representing the life of a person. Even the secondary characters, who serve as comic relief like the crabs, are very entertaining and fun without the need to go to the absurd, making the audience laugh with simple movements and few scenes, turning each appearance in camera into a luxury for the viewer. In my opinion, due to a beautiful combination of music, animation, plot and message, THE RED TURTLE is the best animated film of 2016. In conclusion, if you are going to watch this movie, don't try to understand it, because it doesn't have a "logical" story, since it uses a different storytelling technique making you experience different feelings and situations, while exploring the true meaning of life and death. So just seat down and enjoy the ride.

There is not that much in this drawn out short film to keep your attention. The scenery was pleasant enough, but nothing special enough that the eye would like to linger. The plot didn't hold any surprises, ending as expected, and the few perilous sequences were otherwise unconnected to the rest of the film. The clichéd old-couple-dancing scene was thankfully brief. It was also difficult to connect to the characters because of the lack of dialog. I starting fiddling playing with my phone around the 2/3 mark and left as soon as the credits started to roll.