Get ready to ride the waves of interpretation of Robinson Crusoe in this intricate musical feature film ‘The Island’ by Romanian filmmaker Anca Damian. The feature film has been nominated for the Big Screen Award and is currently screening at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) which takes place from January 26 to February 6, 2022. If you like musicals and animated musical comedies, this might be for you.
Robinson Crusoe is a 1719 novel by Daniel Dafoe about a young protagonist who travels to the sea, seeking his own adventure, and ends up shipwrecked and involuntarily trapped in solitude as a castaway in a tropical island. The character Robinson (voiced by Alexander Balanescu) in ‘The Island’, plays a similar character of the same name, except he is a doctor who chooses to be a solitary castaway on an island and takes an “upside-down” interpretation of the story.
‘The Island’s’ Robinson finds himself with an invasion of migrants, pirates, and guards. He also encountered another castaway named Friday, who was the only survivor of the sea on his travels from Africa to Italy. Friday is rescued by Robinson on the remote island and begins calling him his “savior”. Friday shares his adventures to Robinson about him and his companions’ escape from pirates who invaded his loved ones from the same refugee boat. With all these events leading to an invasion on the remote island, Robinson and Friday goes off to search for paradise.
With the storyline set in place, the film plays on a lot of symbolism on current affairs and events that begin to affect Robinson’s solitude life on the island. Themes of capitalism, ecological disaster, temptation, and deceit of creating a “Promised land for the refugees made with the best of intentions”. Robinson carries a tablet where he uses augmented reality to keep a diary of events that he encounters during his journey.
Ecological issues are painted with colorful characters like the Mermaid, who is introduced as a half-human, and the other half of her body full of empty plastic cups in replacement of her tail emerging from the polluted waters full of garbage she lives in. The invasion of the guards claimed the island to make it their own and sets rules to establish their control of the area, even though Robinson was there first. Without having to provide much explanation of these issues, they play out the actions that viewers could relate to and reflect similar issues of the real world.
Anca Damian’s creativity is limitless with the incredible animation set pieces and musical structure split into several chapters. It is filled with a lot of whimsical humour sprinkled throughout the film, though not necessarily intentionally funny. Both the music and animation in this film radiates incredible feelings of harmony that is unique from Anca’s signature artistry. Given that the film is pure animation, the film was willing to push the limits of recreating its own modern take of the 1719 literature. It is more of a spin-off that loosely takes a few inspirations from the novel.
The main characters’ dialogues also shine in the film, giving both a light-hearted tone in a troubling situation. Friday’s character is a stand out in this film as he plays a humble and innocent personality who becomes more likeable as his character develops. Robinson’s character is placed in situations that highlight themes of capitalism, and ecological disturbance, which might explain why he voluntarily chooses solitude as his utopia. The Mermaid symbolises temptation who occasionally appears to attempt to lure Friday into succumbing to his desires.
According to Variety.com, “’The Island’ will be accompanied by an AR exhibition inviting the audience to further explore its colorful universe, Variety has learned. A board-game based on her seventh feature has also been developed, mirroring its protagonists’ search for paradise in the film.” This will provide the audience more ways to immerse themselves in this wonderful film.
‘The Island’ is very playful in its blend of upbeat visuals and music combined with dark undertones of social, ecological, and political themes. This kind of film provokes the thoughts of these global issues which may generate discussions of what this film is about. The amount of work put into this film really shows why it deserved a nomination for the Big Screen Award at IFFR.