Red Island

An interesting little drama filled with fantastic performances.

visually impressive film with strong performances and a story that kept me engaged.

Movie:

An engaging movie, and it's nice to see one about Madagascar that's about _humans_.

For most of the movie you can kind of go along with a conceit that we're primarily getting information from the point of view of the protagonist, a child who is inspired by a character from books he reads to observe people. However, eventually this becomes untenable as we end up seeing much more than what's available for him to see.

There are multiple interesting threads set up by the movie, but it doesn't feel like any of them really holds everything together. In particular, although we spend most of the movie with the French living at the military base, the ending of the movie centers on two locals reacting to the culmination of anti-government protests. So is the movie about a boy growing up and realizing bad things happen in the world? Or is it about the Malagasy struggle to free themselves from the French? I think you _could_ have done both, but here it seems like most of the movie was the former and then the ending was about the latter.

Extras:

Nice to have the trailer, but aside from a commentary track there's nothing else.

Book:

An okay essay that walks through the movie and makes a few small points.

Packaging:

The slipcover is very striking.

Visually stunning film on the French occupation of Madagascar.

Amazing performances.

Highly recommended

An enjoyable film.