The Red Turtle 2016
This animated movie is by Studio Ghibli, who produce all kinds of weird Japanese animated movies I don’t generally like. To my surprise, the movie is actually written and directed by Europeans, but, like many Ghibli movies still got some great reviews, nominated for an Oscar (losing to Zootopia, one of my favorites). So I thought I would try it out. Oh my goodness. First there are no words in the movie for 80 very long minutes. It is the story of a man stranded on island who has encounters with a large red sea turtle. While some things happen, I’m not sure why they happened or what they might mean. For a while I was thinking that this sea turtle, which bumps the man’s raft into pieces as he tries to escape the island, was just making sure he had a more seaworthy raft. And while he does make bigger rafts, this is not why the turtle did this. As I stated previously, I have no idea why the turtle did this because I am not supposed to understand why anything happens in the movie. Which is why I feel like I lost 80 minutes. It’s a pretty movie, though drawn in a simple style, and the lack of dialogue is a neat trick, but all of it gets kind of old, even when dialogue seems like it would have been completely appropriate, so now they are just forcing the trick for, again, no reason. Oh well, I tried.
Written: 27 Aug 2017