No one would mistake the aquarelle-styled result as a conventional commercial gamble — an entirely dialogue-free film about a shipwrecked man which doubles as a poetic allegory about love and relationships and the isolated bubbles each of us construct around our families.
Another anomaly in Studio Ghibli’s oeuvre, “The Red Turtle” wasn’t made in Japan and doesn’t look anything like the work of Miyazaki or Takahata, but it reflects both directors’ commitment to animation as a truly independent art form. Impressed by Michaël Dudok de Wit’s Oscar-nominated short “Father and Daughter,” the Ghibli duo approached the Dutch animator about supporting him in the production of a feature. No one would mistake the aquarelle-styled result as a conventional commercial gamble — an entirely dialogue-free film about a shipwrecked man which doubles as a poetic allegory about love and relationships and the isolated bubbles each of us construct around our families. “The Red Turtle” is what we think of as a “labor of love,” a painstaking effort (created using charcoal drawings and digital color) virtually without parallel in the world of animation. There are elements of “Fantastic Planet” or “Son of the White Mare” perhaps — experimental/expressionistic animated fables worth tracking down, if “The Red Turtle” speaks to you — but what makes this particular project so special is the way it seems to exist on an island by itself, enabled by those who love the medium so much they reached halfway across the world and helped will it into existence.