Treasure Island (1985)

Original title

L'Île au trésor

Directed by

Raúl Ruiz

Genre

adventure film, pirate film, treasure hunt film

Country

Chile, France, United States

Runtime

1h 55m

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 11 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Raúl Ruiz adapts Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure into a complex and dreamlike puzzle. A young boy joins a pirate crew on a treasure hunt, but the story keeps shifting into strange and playful detours.

dreamlikewhimsicalplayfulsurrealpuzzle-likeslow-burnunconventionalcerebral

What happens

Treasure Island (French: L'île au trésor) is a 1986 fabulist metafiction film directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. French, British and American companies funded Ruiz's obscure and complex adaptation of the classic 1883 coming-of-age adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island stars a young Melvil Poupaud, a familiar face in Ruiz's filmography, alongside popular veteran actors such as Martin Landau, Anna Karina and Jean-Pierre Léaud. The film's play on the traditional narrative of an iconic and frequently dramatized story is very representative of Ruiz' oneiric approach and style. Ruiz takes his fondness for cartography to a new level with Stevenson's narrative, making the book into a map to the treasure in this rendition. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• The Goonies (1985)
• Treasure Island (1989)
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
• Jungle Raiders (1985)
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
• The Secret of Treasure Island (1938)
• That Man from Rio (1964)
• Return to Treasure Island (1954)