By Emma Coleman, First Year, English
This animated fantasy drama was directed by Michaël Dudok de Wit, and co-written with Pascale Ferran. It was first premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and received wide-spread praise, scoring a whopping 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating. But let’s move onto the plot.
The story begins with a nameless man drowning in the large waves of the ocean, he washes up on a small, deserted island. Immediately, he faces many hardships including falling into a cave in pursuit of a barrel, that turns out to be empty. The man chooses to focus on survival by collecting food and building a shelter, but eventually has a dream about getting off the island. The following morning he tries to escape on a raft, inspired by his dream, but his attempts are thwarted by a mysterious sea creature that breaks his raft in both his escape attempts. On a third try, he identifies the creature as a large red turtle. Later he sees the turtle on the beach and decides to flip it onto its back, in anger, causing it to dry up and die. Whilst we may see this as cruel, his frustration and rage can be understood to be fuelled by his deep desire for escape, which is in turn driven by loneliness. Would you not kill a random sea creature to escape a monotonous and dangerous deserted island?
The man wakes and, miraculously, the turtle has become a red-headed woman. They are initially distant but grow close quickly and have a child together. They live happily until a tsunami hits, where the man nearly drowns once again, but is saved by his son this time. The son then decides to leave the island with a group of green turtles, and the couple grow old until the father dies in his sleep and his partner transforms back into a turtle and returns to the sea. Wow, a lot to unpack right.
So where else would I conduct my research but Reddit! The general argument that surfaced is that humans NEED companionship – it is literally built into our DNA. Our mysterious main character clearly lost everything when washing up on the island, but with no back story we don’t even know what his life was like before! This positions the film as a commentary on nature, rather than the human experience, and more specifically on sacrifice and forgiveness. After killing the turtle, the man is not punished but gifted a companion, suggesting this was all he needed to survive the harsh environment – not water, not food, but a friend. Thus it has been argued that the woman and child are part of his imagination and do not exist off the island.
Now let’s take a moment to discuss the beauty of the silent animation. Obviously one reason the film is silent is because for over half of it there is only one character – duh. However, I believe the two main reasons are: to make a more universal narrative and to highlight that not everything may have been ‘real’. Let me explain. Without dialogue, the man becomes a kind of ‘everyperson’, as he has no voice, no name, and basically no ‘identity’. Therefore this permits for these deeper interpretations that I have begun to explore. Secondly, I am CONVINCED that his family existed only in his imagination – as for one, the film is not ‘supernatural’ per say, so how can the turtle transform into a human? If it was supernatural he could have teleported or flown away! Consequently, I think speech would not have made sense, as the story would have become too literal.
Finally, I will leave you with an alternate and more obscure idea of what this film is really about (PS. thank you Reddit). This island reflects a metaphorical island that we are all on in life, which represents your ‘path’. Trying to leave is futile because, no matter how bad life gets, your island is designed for you. The way to enjoy the island is through having good people alongside you and being resilient, which permits our nameless man to live out a fulfilling life and pass on peacefully, completing his ‘path’.
I absolutely loved this film, as an English student with a desire to overanalyse everything I see, and yet it’s beauty really is in its simplicity.
What did you think of The Red Turtle?
