Cinema Travelogue

A blasphemy against exotica. The Castaways of Turtle Island is most farcical I’ve seen from Rozier and also his funniest. Literally got stomach cramps from laughing during one scene. In the beginning, the film intercuts between a jellyfish shaped lamp projecting shadows onto a portrait of a nude black woman and a man faintly opening his eyes. The text onscreen suggests some sort of malaise against familial city life and insinuates an impending classical mythic adventure for the man. But as the film unveils itself, the opening sequence proves to be a complete anomaly against the rest. It very much understands its world of commerce is different from the world of Robinson Crusoe. The idea of a castaway is mainly an ideological selling point by now and to have a salesman with such devotion to his product is both hilarious and kind of tragic.

While it undermines a lot of the preconceptions about films of its type, like your usual Rozier film, it freely establishes its own set of interests. As a travelogue film, there is inevitably a list of predestined points it needs to reach. But Rozier fills each moment with omnipresent joy and playfulness, noticeable from the chaotic collective of performances, music overlapping with speech, and many imaginative uses of the set pieces that frontlines the journey itself over the destination, or the idea that what you’ve been searching for has alway right in front of you. The contours of a script is completely erased, instead you have truly spontaneously moments unravelling in very active tense. The camera positions itself as an active observer, always shaking and panning to find valuable moments but never intrude the realism. It is good at capturing moments of oneiric beauty, but the cuts are aware to present overindulgence of the picturesque sceneries that slip the film into sentimental territories. As a result, The Castaways of Turtle Island is more curious about capturing the communal experience of the present moment than pursuing the long-gone ideals in fictional books.