Film review: 'The Red Turtle'

"The Red Turtle" is a glorious animated fairytale that speaks volumes without any dialogue. Providing a welcome meditative respite from the endless chatter that inundates our lives, it soothes the soul.

The film opens with a man's head intermittently popping up in a raging sea, fighting to stay alive. We see a small capsized wooden boat nearby, indicating he might have have survived a shipwreck. He awakens, stranded on a desert island and begins exploring it to assess his predicament. A gallery of sand crabs take great interest in his journey, providing spatters of humor throughout this visually astounding film.

In his quest for survival, the man painstakingly constructs a bamboo raft and sets sail. When a giant red-shelled turtle finally destroys his vessel and crawls up next to him on shore, he takes his anger out on the unsuspecting tortoise. When he realizes he has killed the reptile, he's deeply saddened. Suddenly, a beautiful woman emerges from the empty shell, and his mundane existence becomes a spiritual journey of biblical proportions.

Director Michael Dudok de Wit teams up with Japan's Studio Ghibli in his first feature-length film, and it's nothing short of astonishing. Hand-drawn animation (on Cintiq tablets) combined with some computer animation, a group of only six studio members and the director have created a masterpiece. For 80 minutes, we are mesmerized by mind-blowing images that are quietly seductive. Man vs. nature has never been so realistic without being real.

The scoring is a perfect blend of symphonic synchronincity between the audio and visual in this hypnotic fable. It elevates what's happening wordlessly, never missing a beat. Chirping birds, buzzing insects, rabid rains and rustling winds are also the sounds that intensify the sights in "The Red Turtle." But moreover, it's the skillfully etched facial and body expressions that tell the story of life in this magical movie.