Michael Dudok de Wit
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Connections, in both directions
He has no company, no volleyball à la Cast Away.
We’ve seen this situation before, from “Robinson Crusoe” to “Cast Away,” but more than almost any other film I’ve ever seen, “The Red Turtle,” which is entirely wordless, expresses the isolation of being forbiddingly alone with nature.
The Red Turtle isn't Robinson Crusoe or Cast Away, as it's after metaphorical game of a different stripe.
The early stretches recall “Cast Away,” the first half of “The Black Stallion,” even the start of last year’s “Swiss Army Man.” Instead of a volleyball, a racing horse or a farting corpse, this one scores an improbably huge and vaguely sentient red turtle.
Film fans will detect nods to “The Black Stallion” and “Cast Away” during the film’s initial moments, as well as to such cinematic fables as “ The Secret of Roan Inish ” later on, when the stranded hero finds an unlikely antidote to his loneliness and isolation in the form of a dreamlike, shape-shifting presence.
The man on the island starts off like Tom Hanks in Cast Away , desperate to get off the island.
Coproduced by Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli (makers of Spirited Away), the film bears that company’s holistic belief in a wider natural world with powers of its own.
Dudok de Wit was recruited and mentored by Isao Takahata, of Japan's Studio Ghibli, which is best known for such tales of nature and transformation as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
The Red Turtle is a perfect synthesis of Ghibli's fantastical classics like Spirited Away with their quieter, down-to-earth efforts such as Only Yesterday.
With the company already known for critically lauded animated films such as 2001’s Spirited Away and 1997’s Princess Mononoke, The Red Turtle is yet another affirmation that the studio has a good eye.
Although Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away) co-produced the film, don’t look for any richly colored, mind-bending cat buses in it.
The humans may have beady eyes, there’s not a trace of spoken dialogue beyond the occasional “Hey!” and the tale is more allegorical than usual — closer to a fable than a shape-shifting wonder like “Spirited Away.”
With the help of Ghibli’s artists and technicians—supervised by Grave Of The Fireflies / The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya director Isao Takahata— The Red Turtle is both minimalist and vividly rendered, from the computer-animated waves to the well-articulated hand-drawn human figures.
The Red Turtle is a collaboration between the Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit, who won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2001 with Father and Daughter, and the revered Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli, whose 80-year-old co-founder Isao Takahata (1988's Grave of the Fireflies) is credited as the movie's "artistic producer".
As he related in an interview at Cannes, the animator got an out-of-the-blue message from Studio Ghibli co-founder and legendary Japanese director Isao Takahata (“The Tale of Princess Kaguya,” “Grave of the Fireflies”) offering him the chance to be the first non-Japanese animator to make a film for the revered studio.
With the help of Studio Ghibli (who counts this film as their first care of a non-Japanese filmmaker) and Grave of the Fireflies director Isao Takahata, writer-director Michaël Dudok de Wit has spent the past ten years crafting something of a pure animated film—“essential” cinema in that it’s boiled down to its essentials.
Ghibli co-founder and director Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) helped Dudok de Wit expand his vision into a feature-length work, and his appreciation for eloquent details can be seen in the final product — though Dudok de Wit makes sure to clarify that neither he nor Takahata were emulating the look and feel of other Ghibli productions with The Red Turtle.
Dudok de Wit was recruited and mentored by Isao Takahata, of Japan's Studio Ghibli, which is best known for such tales of nature and transformation as Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
With the company already known for critically lauded animated films such as 2001’s Spirited Away and 1997’s Princess Mononoke, The Red Turtle is yet another affirmation that the studio has a good eye.
One of this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar nominees, the first-time feature from Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit is an animated film co-produced by Japan’s storied Studio Ghibli ( Princess Mononoke , Spirited Away ), but possesses none of Ghibli’s stylistic hallmarks.
The film retains the feminine strength common to Studio Ghibli creations, in movies like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke .
Get Out (2017)
Directed by Jordan Peele
influenced by Father and Daughter (2001), The Red Turtle (2016)
Also opening here Friday is "The Red Turtle" ($ $ $ and 1/2 out of $5), a uniquely told fable from Dutch filmmaker Michael Dudok de Wit, whose resume includes some Oscar fame for two animated shorts, "Father and Daughter," which won in 2000, and "The Monk and the Fish," a nominee in 1994.
Also opening here Friday is "The Red Turtle" ($ $ $ and 1/2 out of $5), a uniquely told fable from Dutch filmmaker Michael Dudok de Wit, whose resume includes some Oscar fame for two animated shorts, "Father and Daughter," which won in 2000, and "The Monk and the Fish," a nominee in 1994.
That’s definitely the biggest surprise in Dudok de Wit’s otherwise straightforward tale, which goes on to imagine the harmonious existence of the man, and now a mysterious woman, who live on the island like the two lovebirds in The Blue Lagoon — or else like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
For all its primeval appeal, the island isn’t nearly so carefree a paradise as “The Blue Lagoon,” and time brings significant challenges — as when the couple’s son tumbles into the same pool his father had several years earlier, or in the midst of a tropical storm that threatens to wipe out everything they have built together.
Film fans will detect nods to “The Black Stallion” and “Cast Away” during the film’s initial moments, as well as to such cinematic fables as “ The Secret of Roan Inish ” later on, when the stranded hero finds an unlikely antidote to his loneliness and isolation in the form of a dreamlike, shape-shifting presence.
Dudok de Wit appears to fall in the latter category, and so he takes “The Red Turtle” in a wholly different direction in its remaining running time, putting the film firmly in the territory of Neil Jordan’s “Ondine” and Tomm Moore’s “Song of the Sea,” movies rooted in Irish folklore where seals shed their skins and adopt human forms while on land.
“The Red Turtle,” co-produced by the legendary Studio Ghibli (of “When Marnie Was There,” “The Wind Rises,” and “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”), focuses on a shipwrecked man, swept out of his boat and into the churning seas during a rainstorm (animated terrifyingly and enthrallingly in overlapping shades of blue and grey).