Dear idyll The Red Turtle was disappointing. I had high hopes for the joint work of Japanese and French animators, and even cherished by critics. At that time, I knew French animation from the classic Wild Planet and the much less famous, but no less magnificent Rabbi Cat. I just love anime.
Here it is appropriate to recall the well-worn quote of Voltaire – that “all genres are good, except boring”. The problem of the Red Turtle is that its meditativeness turns into ordinary boring.
Take at least minimalist graphics. Everything is monotonous and artless - the sea, the leaves ... If all this was at least expressively drawn – no, there is no photorealism (as in Shinkai), no special beauty. There is nothing to catch the eye for, there is a lack of some small details, irregularities, strangenesses that occur in a real landscape. No extra shadow, no incomprehensible spot. Grass is grass, water is water, sand is sand. Boring.
Music to match is something chamber, pseudo-classical. In Soviet times, people also liked to shoot meditative cartoons with this kind of boring music - fortunately, they were much shorter. Then, as a child, he fled from such works as fire, preferring “Well, wait!”
There is no speech in the cartoon, there is no one to talk especially and no one and no one with whom - there are only three heroes and they understand each other without words. So it remains to think about the symbols, trying not to fall asleep.
The plot is rather sluggish for a decent timekeeping. True, some emotional moments take the soul. But from a certain point the intrigue disappears, and what will happen next becomes simply uninteresting.
There was an attempt to dilute this naked symbolism with funny crabs, but it turned out poorly. Would you come up with something more meaningful and expressive? But "expressiveness" is not about the "Red Turtle."
And finally, the morality of the work is completely unclear. What is it? That no matter how much a man strives for freedom and the conquest of space, sooner or later he will inevitably find a woman and resign himself, content with the role of husband and father, and forget about ambitions and aspirations? But this is not so, often love inspires people to exploits, and having a family makes a person more responsible. Or maybe the creators of the cartoon want to say that sooner or later everyone slides into a philistine existence? Maybe an ascetic paradise in a hut and family happiness is good, but the Red Turtle is powerless to convince you of this. This happiness is too dull and blandly shown.
The result: a parable with an unclear morality (!) in a dull minimalist style. For aesthetes.
5 out of 10 Original