307: The Red Turtle

[00:00:00] Chapter 19, Foreign Film. Let's get to the animated film The Red Turtle from 2016 which is directed by a Dutch animator but written by a French screenwriter and then also co-produced by Studio Ghibli. So a lot of different regions and countries in there and it's also dialogue-less. There's no dialogue

[00:00:25] whatsoever in the movie and the synopsis is a man is shipwrecked on a deserted island and encounters a big red turtle which changes his life. So I didn't know really anything about this one up until shortly before it came

[00:00:44] out. I wish I had been able to see it in theaters but I don't think I saw it until it came out on Blu-ray. I love and did love at the time Studio Ghibli. I love indie animation, hand-drawn animation, any sort of non-digital. Not to say

[00:00:59] there's anything wrong with digital animation but I'm always looking out for unconventional alternative forms of animation and more classical forms and so this one definitely piqued my interest. I love films that can be told purely on a visual level like no dialogue great I'm there. I like quiet

[00:01:18] movies like this and I think the movie is very very good. It does have points where maybe the plot becomes a little too conventional or the pacing drops off because it is a slower film. It's not very long but it's still mostly just one

[00:01:34] guy who washes up on an island and then this red turtle comes along. I can do spoilers here because it's old enough and changes into this woman and then there's a family dynamic towards the end and it's sort of in a way families

[00:01:48] letting go and moving on to other parts of your life sometimes suddenly such as washing up on an island and being isolated. So it's a very classically told traditionally told sort of film and very worth watching if you like animation and

[00:02:04] anything in that realm or Studio Ghibli. It's one of the best and one of the most unique. One of the best sequences for sure both suspense wise storytelling wise and animation wise is the tsunami sequence. I

[00:02:19] won't go into too much of the story but the tsunami sequence is amazing and really just the opening where there's this guy on a I think it's a raft and he's adrift in the ocean and then washes up on this island and basically just

[00:02:33] has to figure it out almost like a castaway sort of thing just more fantastical of course. The look of the red turtle is excellent the score is amazing like it's a really underrated hidden gem sort of movie

[00:02:47] talking about hidden gems this is a great example of a hidden gem movie because I never really hear anyone mention it and it's very worth having an audience and a bigger audience than it does because movies like this aren't

[00:03:00] made very often nowadays for a variety of reasons so absolutely do check it out. Not a masterpiece I don't think there are small issues with the film and maybe wouldn't be best of the decade or one of my top five or top ten anime movies

[00:03:14] ever but still nevertheless one of the most unique ones that I've ever seen so that is a heavy four out of five