The red turtle, which was shortlisted for the 69th Cannes Category of Attention in 2016 and nominated for Best Animated Film at the Oscars in 2017, is directed by Dutch director Michael Dudwitt. If you don't think you know him well, you've probably seen his animated shorts The Monk and the Flying Fish and Father and Daughter, which won him the French César Award and the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, respectively.
Stills from Father and Daughter and The Monk and the Flying Fish
Talking about this new work, Michael Dudwitt said that it was actually Studio Ghibli in Japan who took the initiative to contact him and encouraged him to cooperate with animated feature films as his production company if he had the idea of a feature film. So, Michael Dudwitt says, he began his journey with the company of his dreams to make The Red Turtle.
From animated shorts to feature films
Michael Dudwitt's short films have the characteristics of smooth movements, expressing emotions through subtle body language, simplified facial details, muffled dialogue, and touching people's hearts with the simplest story. And these personal cartoon traits are well continued into his feature film animation "Red Turtle". I believe that this has a lot to do with the production of Ghibli, giving the creators the degree of freedom, at the beginning of the cooperation between the two sides, it was clear that Ghibli is only a producer and animation production, the entire film will be directed by: Michael Dudwitt, his own theme and story script, "The Red Turtle" will be a pure European animation.
So, thanks to the efforts of the animation workers, we had the privilege of seeing the long-awaited "The Red Turtle" in a kind of attention unit in Cannes and the Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature. Michael Dudwitt said that when he thought of the red turtle, he knew that the character was most appropriate in the story, and it was also extremely appropriate to use it as the title of the movie. The "red sea turtle" is a synthesis of both fear and awe, its mystery carries complex meanings, and has a deep emotional communication with humans.
Abandon dialogue and narrate with body and camera language.
What is reflected in the film is the most essential emotional communication between people and nature, between people. Let the audience feel the struggle and suffering of people through the realistic natural environment, of course, there is also beauty and leisure. The opening chapter of the film shows the man who was killed in the sea, in the wind and waves, precariously grabbed his small wooden boat, and finally drifted exhausted to the deserted island.
The man circled the island, ate a full meal of tree fruit, and began three escape journeys. Each time, however, it ended with the bamboo raft being knocked over. When he went to sea for the third time and finally saw the culprit, the "Red Sea Turtle", he was angry. However, when he fell into the sea and faced the huge red sea turtle, he was afraid again. When he returned to the island and saw the red sea turtles that came ashore at night, he couldn't help it, and brutally retaliated against her with violence.
Here, we don't see men crying or crying out in despair. Instead, they are constantly expressing their emotions through behavior. In the film, even if there is a close-up, the face of the character is only the size of a tadpole, blinking and blinking, and we read more about the body language of the character in the film, as well as the relationship between the character's actions and the external environment.
For example, the man decided to give up the idea of going to the sea for help and fell asleep in the woods of the island for several days and nights. Even if the main character does not move, and the environment around him interacts with him all the time, not to mention the small sand crabs that constantly interact with the man's behavior before, the centipedes in the woods, the small ants and so on. The wind, rain and woods in the picture are all alive, and they live together with the male protagonist on this small island. Men's absence also has a direct or indirect impact on them.
And all of this, we can perceive only from the rhythm and action in the picture, without the need for narration or dialogue. The man's slow pace can express his tiredness, and the man who falls to the ground and cannot afford to sleep for a long time can understand his decision to give up, as well as a heavy sense of loss. These picture information give the audience the pleasure of interpreting the film and perceiving the movie to a greater extent.
These delicate characters are handled in the heart of the 80-minute movie. More will be reflected in the film to the second half of the story, a family of three men and women, between each other, and never need language to communicate. The red-haired woman comes from nature, so silence is her language.
When the distance between the characters is far, they will express themselves through simple gestures, and the audience can interpret the meaning without any barriers. This is a good negative example of the overly complex information transmission in many of today's cartoons or film works. At the same time, it gives the audience a different experience, or a simple audiovisual enjoyment.
The blurred line between dreams and reality
There are several important dreams in the film that serve as a turning point in the story. The first time is when the man, after giving up survival, is awakened by the quartet symphony in the moonlit night, but when he walks to the sea, everything is illusory imagination. His memory and connection with the real world, the last bit, gradually disappeared.
Later, when he meets a red sea turtle that comes ashore at night, he begins his own act of revenge while continuing to build his own cross-ocean bamboo raft. However, at night, because of his uneasy conscience, he had another dream of the turtle ascending to heaven. When he woke up, he began to try to rescue the sun-dried turtle, but unfortunately everything was in vain, and that night, the turtle's life should have ended.
When the red turtle transforms into a red-haired woman, the story begins a new chapter. The woman pushed away her own shell, the man pushed away his bamboo raft, and the two decided to stay on the island and live together. Their encounter is a miracle, love is nature, and no one pursues anyone. The two are from mutual attraction to ordinary couples who are in love with each other.
When their children are born, they experience the danger of their children and the crisis of their homes, just as we encounter difficulties in the process of having children. Children gradually grow up, and the meaning of home is always family, even if the external environment is attacked by wind and rain, the mutual support of the family is the core of a family.
At night, my son dreamed that he had reached the highest tip of the wave and waved goodbye to his parents on the beach. The next day, the son and several turtles fled. The mother wept faintly, and the father expressed understanding. Like countless little turtles who return to the sea in the moonlight at night and begin their adventures, the son is destined to go far away and begin an independent life.
The reality in the film triggers the emergence of dreams, and after the dream, it will affect people's reality. The two are interconnected and map against each other. Between reality and dreams, there is only a slight boundary, and sometimes, it can even be regarded as one.
Respect for nature, perception of the self
The film's simple opening and bland ending caught the audience off guard. The son's departure, the man's aging, the woman's departure. Everything is so simple and natural, and it conforms to the laws of nature and the fate of human beings.
In the film, the relationship between the characters is naturally mutually demanding, which includes hatred and pity. Just like the relationship between the red sea turtle and the man, they collide with each other, they are all lonely individuals, perhaps the red sea turtle itself is lonely, will always hinder the man's departure from the sea. And when they enter the second relationship journey from man and turtle, the two people love each other, dissolve all desires, the red turtle is multiplied, humans are no longer alone, and the two people pass through each other and spend time on the other shore.
In addition to the respect and reward between humans and nature. The film also shows a lot of individual perceptions. The human dream is one of them, and the son and the drifting bottle in the sea are also an interesting detail. When he was a child at the beach, he found an empty glass bottle, and his mother did not know the use of this bottle, and his father taught him how to fill it with fresh water.
After that, the glass bottle became the son's only treasure and only property. After the tsunami, he regained the empty bottles that were submerged in the low pool, but he had a longer-term view of life and life. So he held the bottle high so that the watermark in the bottle overlapped with the sea level. The contrast between the reality of his life on the island and the sea of the real world, and the life in his bottle, is immediately apparent. Then he dreamed of saying goodbye to his parents and embarked on a long journey.
If we say that in the journey of a person's life, he will eventually go through several stages of seeing himself, seeing mountains, and seeing sentient beings. Then the man and the sea, the man and the red turtle, the man and the son, helped him complete this complete life journey. In his confrontation with the sea, he saw his own smallness. In the confrontation with the red sea turtle, he saw his own sin. In his dealings with his son, he taught his son his own experience, and the use of the collection return and the use of water bottles actually conveyed more of the communication between father and son behind the scenes.
After her son fell into a puddle, the mother stopped her father's help and patiently and boldly directed her son, how to dive and return to the embrace of the sea by herself. It also highlights the laws of survival in the natural world, the interaction between the individual's instincts and nature, and nature will teach him everything. Understanding, trusting and letting go of children is a necessary process between mother and child.
In the story of "The Red Turtle", we don't see Hollywood-style personal heroism, how the protagonist changes his destiny in the climax. Instead, it obeys the laws of nature and the fate of human beings, and goes all the way to the end of life and the separation of relatives. This is exactly where this movie, pure and beautiful.
Of course, you can also think that the "red turtle" and the story behind it are the imagination of the male protagonist before he dies alone, but this does not affect the deep meaning of the story itself. I believe that in our vast life, we will meet our own "red sea turtle", which allows us to recognize ourselves and change ourselves, so as to spend an ordinary life and finally reach the other side of life.
Finally, it can be said that the director: Michael Dudwitt is extremely lucky, it is said that this is Ghibli's first attempt at international cooperation, and the studio people constantly encourage Michael Dudewitt to create according to his own ideas. It is said that the owner of Ghibli once said to him: In our studio, the director decides everything. I believe that this is also Ghibli's consistent policy, which is very consistent with the director's determinism in Cannes, France, and perhaps this is one of the factors that makes Japanese films more acceptable in Europe.
Talk about more new films and reply to the full name of the movie
Red Turtle | Escape from desperate town | Twentieth Century Woman | A man named Ovi decided to die | Ride the wind and waves | Split | Please call me by the name | Philharmonic City | Male lion | Deeper than the sea | Advent | New Godzilla | Nocturnal animals | Manchester by the Sea | Fassbinder | Billy Lynn | Bloody Hacksaw Ridge| Moonlight Boy | Julieta| just the end of the world| to the soup fire| I am not Pan Jinlian| Tony Erdman | Busan| crying | dancer