Animated film delivers timeless tale

If you’re troubled by subtitles, this French film from Dutch director Michaël Dudok de Wit should please you. After the title card, not only are there no further subtitles, there’s no dialogue at all, in any language.

Even more amazing, neither do the film’s characters seem to miss it. When our unnamed protagonist washes up on the shore of a deserted island in the wake of a storm, his subsequent emotions — wonder, fear, loneliness, curiosity, determination, even shame at one point — are all made clear by his body language and, in the rare close-up, the expression on his bearded face.

Perhaps he is stunned to silence by the scale and beauty of the nature that surrounds him. Past the beach where he first arrives lies a bamboo forest with a fern floor, green on green. Beyond that, azure sky blending into sea, with no crack through which to escape.

He tries, building ever larger and sturdier rafts, which are destroyed by an apparently uncaring beast that reveals itself to be a giant red turtle. When the reptile subsequently wanders up on shore, he flips it on its back in revenge, letting it lie there.

By and by, a woman appears. Her arrival is explained, but not in a way that makes any sense. You may choose to believe that she is one more hallucination — he’s had a few already — although from there you may also have to conclude that life is but a dream.

In any case, from the woman there follows, in time, a child. You’d think this might be occasion for someone to speak, but they continue their lives in a glorious, only-in-the-movies silence, disturbed by nothing other than the film’s ethereal score and a soundtrack of wind, waves and the occasional scuttling crab.

The Red Turtle is an animated oddity — a Studio Ghibli production not created by one of its Japanese co-founders or stable of animators. Nonetheless, it fits perfectly into the company’s repertoire. This is a timeless tale that has no need to shout (or even speak) about how deliriously beautiful it is.