The longing of Michael Dudok de Wit (2016)

Directed by: Thomas Doebele, Maarten Schmidt | 55 minutes | documentary

Sometime in 2006, the Dutch filmmaker Michael Dudok de Wit received an email from Japan. Whether his acclaimed short animation film ‘Father and Daughter’ (2000) – which won Dudok de Wit, among others, an Oscar and a BAFTA – could also be released in the Land of the Rising Sun, and whether he ever planned a longer to make an animated film. Because the sender wanted to cooperate with that. The email was signed by the highly regarded Studio Ghibli. It is reported that animation grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki (‘Spirited Away’, 2003; ‘Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea’, 2008) himself had given the order to contact the Dutchman. Dudok de Wit neatly answered the first question in the e-mail and indicated that he did not fully understand the second, he was so perplexed that the Japanese wanted to do business with him. Studio Ghibli has never worked with non-Japanese filmmakers before, and he has never made a full-length animated film before. Dudok de Wit is used to keeping everything in his own hands – literally that is, because he drew his short films manually and largely on his own. Now he had to manage a team of 25 to 30 men. This joint project by Dudok de Wit and Studio Ghibli – ‘The Red Turtle’ (2016) – was to be unique and a first in many respects.

Documentary makers Maarten Schmidt and Thomas Doebele (‘Times Like Deese’, 2011) decided to record the special production process in their film ‘The desire of Michael Dudok de Wit’ (2016). They followed the perfectionist born in Abcoude for more than two years during the making of ‘The Red Turtle’, the film about a castaway who is stranded on an uninhabited island and has to build a new life for himself there. It’s a film he works on five days a week from 7:00 am to midnight (after seven years of intensive preparation). Outside these times, he can’t help but stop by animation studio Prima Linea in Angoulême in southwestern France to cast a critical eye at the scenes drawn by his team. He’s behind schedule, so he has to. Although he is not the most enthusiastic speaker, it is interesting to hear how Dudok de Wit experiences the process, how desperate it can sometimes make him and how hard the toil is. “You don’t do it for the money, it’s a calling, even an obsession.” Dudok de Wit explains how he picks up the thread when he doesn’t feel like it anymore, or as he says himself, how he makes ‘the great moments of suffering less painful’. Schmidt and Doebele not only speak to the filmmaker in the studio in Angoulême, but also sit down at the kitchen table in his home in North London, where the theme that recurs in much of his work: desire. “Deep longing, even if it hurts sometimes, I think next to love the most beautiful feeling you can experience. It can completely control your life, influence your actions and let it influence you and determine your choices, whether consciously or not.”

Dudok de Wit works in his own unique way; in a passionate, almost obsessive way, he works with color, light, shadow and movement. If you are used to working on your own, it is not easy to transfer this to a team of artists from all over Europe. The filmmaker, who always gives his creations a personal touch, is now forced to leave this to others. The animators themselves also face a major challenge: just try to understand exactly what Dudok de Wit means; translate what he has in mind to the paper (or in this case, the computer screen). The perfectionist often disapproves of animations, scenes or parts thereof, because just that one detail is not to his liking. Because, as he admits, it’s never really good enough. That perfectionism is both its strength and its pitfall. “I always want to update everything a little bit, make it more beautiful, and every time I do that, I get more and more behind.”

‘The desire of Michael Dudok de Wit’ shows the Netherlands’ most successful animation filmmaker as he is: a hard worker who cannot let go of his work. An honest perfectionist who wants to pull out all the stops to make his film exactly as he has in mind. The documentary offers a nice look behind the scenes of ‘The Red Turtle’, but does not answer all the questions that viewers will have. Why was Ghibli so eager to work with Dudok de Wit, what appealed to them so much about his style? Is it simplicity, being able to convey a range of emotions without dialogue? The film focuses purely on Dudok and as genius and kind as he is, he is also a bit boring. That also applies to the documentary; This one doesn’t really excite. More insight into the film ‘The Red Turtle’ and the man behind the ‘artist’ is lacking; it’s all about the process. Perhaps that’s why this documentary is more suitable for animators-to-be and film students than for the interested but barely introduced layman.