MovieChat Forums > La tortue rouge (2017) Discussion > Theory about the turtle...

Theory about the turtle...

posted 8 years ago by NitroForce
7 replies | jump to latest

As others have pointed out, I believe that the red turtle transforming into a woman and them having a child and all that was just an hallucination. There are some clues pointing to this throughout the beginning of the movie:

1) We know the man is already prone to hallucinations as he imagines the musicians playing on the shore. I believe this is shown to establish the fact that the man is not a reliable observer anymore and that not everything we see is real from this point on.

2) When the man finds the dead seal, there are some flies circling it. Then the man cuts it open and realizes it's rotten. I think this was shown to make the statement that flies = dead. Later on, when the turtle is lying on its carapace and apparently dead, we see flies flying around it. I believe this was shown to tell us that the turtle was, in fact, dead, and everything else that we see afterwards with the woman and the child are hallucinations fueled by loneliness and remorse for killing the turtle.

[–] niscaty 8 years ago

Valid points, but you can't know for sure and I'd argue that it doesn't really matter. This is not your "typical" movie that tells a story, it's one that tries to make you contemplate on life, death, loneliness and lots of other human experiences.
If you've felt something watching it, then the movie has achieved its goal.

[–] colman01 8 years ago

Like the other poster replied, I think you are taking this film way too literal. There is one review that broke it down pretty good (the one that talked about what the director had said). His observations of it being an allegory to a life's journey, is pretty much what I took away from it - emotionally first, but then it seems clear enough. Funnily enough the last review equated it with the woman trapping the man with a child and once the child had left the nest the man had outlived his usefulness and simply died as the woman moved on. Made me laugh. I guess that's one way to look at it.

[–] Black_Gestapo 8 years ago

There are two likely readings of this film:

Either it's a film about loneliness, in which a man cut off from the rest of society fantasises about having a 'wife' and child to keep him company... or, it's a film about a giant magic sex turtle that can shapeshift into human form.

While the latter sounds more like my kind of movie, I feel fairly confident that it's not what the filmmaker was aiming for.

[–] Alondro 8 years ago

Instead of talking to a soccer ball with a blood hand-face on it, this guy fantasizes about hot turtle women.

To each his own delusion! Solitude will lead most to bizarre places unless, like me, they are already quite mad and laugh with the voices. ;3

[–] fu_jac 8 years ago

those would definitewly be the logical explanations for the story.....i thought the same thing when i was watching it but i also thought that it might have been a magical miracle that happened to him......it is a story after all and in stories anything can happen.....

either way it was a great watch......the animation was absolutely sublime...... when he threw the rock into the sea for example, the splash was as realistic as live action

[–] Reno-Rangan 8 years ago

I have to disagree that there's no hallucination in the film. This is a fantasy film and that's how sometime things happen.

In my perspective, about the turtle, it gave what the man wanted. Like, human beings always need a purpose for everything, even to live. We don't know how he got lost in the sea and stranded on an island alone, but he was desperate to go back to the civilisation.

If you have seen the film, you will know who stopped him, but the reason was never revealed. If he want to stay there, he needed a purpose/reason, so the turtle gave one. Growing old together, loving, caring, even it gave a child. What's more important than a peaceful life like that even if it is not a human society.

BUT MY NEW THINKING IS...
Is this film connected to the director's previous short film 'Father and Daughter (2000)'.
Because the father never came back, that's where this story begins. Also, both the conclusions syncs as they both die and meet perhaps in heaven. It's just my theory, only the director can clear that.

You better know what you want to do before somebody knows it for you -The Astronaut Farmer

[–] Alondro 8 years ago

You get points for paying attention to details the typical 'splosion-addicted audience member won't grasp even when you explain it painstakingly to them.