The Red Turtle

The primary facet that'll arrive to your notice is the gorgeous, absolutely opulent hand-drawn animation! From the turtles finding its way back to the sea to the greyscale polychromatic color choices for the film, from the cute crabs and kid right to the smallest detail, it has classic written all over it!

We are introduced to a man stranded in an island after a disastrous storm. He survives his way through a series of struggle such as finding him stuck in a lagoon spool. After episodic discoveries, he begins to test the waters with self-made rafts. Up till this point, it's just Cast Away. Watch out for the son's paused wave dream here though.

The rafts he builds are constantly disrupted by a mysterious force, which turns out to be a rare, magnificent looking red turtle. Hereon forward, the story takes a fantasy route. You pity the man. His frustration is real, seen clearly from the way he screams and flips the turtle upside down! When his mind changes to not leave since the red turtle is a fine-looking lady, you immediately understand where all this is leading to. It signifies that he wants to live the moment. Maybe all of these happened for a reason. Maybe he's meant to meet this girl after all.

In a dialogueless motion picture as such, the writers have achieved the true intention of filmmaking - narrating a story through moving pictures. The visual storytelling here is outstanding! You'll have no difficulties understanding intentions, unspoken words, emotions or even inner thoughts! The sound design is excellent! It's the only audio cue you'll get to rely on in this feature. However, the sound mixing is loud when it concerns water, while every other effects are at harmony. The overabundance of bamboo source to make the raft and the lady's sudden disappearance before the man's return at multiple occasions are questionable too.

At the very core, this beautiful drama is a modern day Little Mermaid. The only surfacing issue is the switch of protagonist aka late reveal of the true main character. The tale is about the red turtle. It is a woman in disguise. Due to its unique nature, either its physicality or unmanned geographical habitat, it may have been living a lonely life. So one day, when a man comes by to its area, it seizes the chance to prevent him from going back to where he belongs. And the rest is history. It is not until the 24th minute we get to see the actual subject, while hints only starts at the 15th minute. This changes a lot because during that amount of time, our minds have aligned to a storyline already. It becomes incoherent, shifting from the story about a man's attempt to escape deserted grounds to being a love / family anecdote. While it works somewhat okay as the runtime progresses, this is still an identifiable problem. As we are used to looking at the account from the man's perspective like we are told to at first, it's hard not to when we're instructed otherwise later, even till the very end before his death.