I recently took my eldest son to see a special screening of the movie The Red Turtle. I loved it. He loved it. We loved it.
The movie is an animated movie with no words. I did not know this when I signed up for the event (we were invited to the screening) and I must admit that, when I arrived and heard there were no words, I felt somewhat disappointed. I was taking my 5 year old son and I assumed, with no words, he would not last long.
How wrong I was.
As soon as the movie started, we were hooked.
The movie is about nature, survival, love, happiness and family, all wrapped into a suspenseful story.
It starts off with a guy taking a ride in his boat. Then a storm hits. The scene clips to him waking up on the shores of a deserted island. He is banged up, confused and soon realizes that there are no other people or structures on the island.
He has to figure out how to survive. The beginning of the movie is all about him learning to survive (think Robinson Crusoe), while frantically searching for something, someone to help him get home and leave the island.
As more time passes, you feel him start to change. He starts to soften, blend, accept and be. He moves into another “plain”. He begins to flow with the rhythm of the land and the animals that inhabit the land: Eating, sleeping, swimming, and uniting with the environment around him. The image below is one of him swimming with the turtles (notice how he begins to assume the “shape” of the turtle’s movement):
The movie evolves through several stories, touching on concepts of love, family and the cycle of life and death. Beautiful, sad, real. All wrapped into one.