The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

no copyright infringement intended
(http://lumeear.blogspot.com/2012/03/os-fantasticos-livros-voadores.html)

(click here for the Romanian version)
I found this 15 minutes movie totally by chance, as I was browsing the blog of a Portuguese books lover. I started watching the movie and I was immediately charmed. An old friend of mine came to my mind: a friendship of some sixty years old.

I was five or six, he was fifteen or sixteen by that time. An aunt of him was living together with us and he was visiting her very often. I was just opening my eyes to the world, and the world was immense and full of unknowns, so no wonder I had lots of questions. He was taking time to listen to my questions and to give answers. It was about anything one could imagine, about pirates and about explorers, about the North Pole and the South Pole, and about seas and oceans, about hunting exotic animals, and about what job to take when I would grow up. He explained to me that there was no job without potential risks: as a sailor there was the possibility of a shipwreck, as a soldier you went to war and get killed, as simple as that, as an engineer you could make some wrong calculus and provoke an accident, thus the prison would await you, as a driver the possibility of an accident was even closer. So I asked him what about to become a priest! He said that even this career was not risk-free, as you would be compelled to wear a very thick uniform, even during the hottest summer, which could bring you all kind of skin diseases.

After two years or so I started going to school, and he entered the University. He began to pass some books of him to me, as I remember it was firstly The Wizard of Oz, then some books by Jules Verne and Nikolay Nosov. The were also the tales of Andersen, an edition now enjoying the presence of my two little grand-daughters. A book about volcanoes followed, and then a book written by Sven Hedin about his travels all over the world. But the most astounding book I got from him was another one: The Travels of Marco Polo.

Years have passed, each of us was following his ways, while both sharing the passion for books. I was going often in a used books store, and sometimes he was there, browsing some old French book, or some album of old photos. Sometimes I was visiting him, together with my wife and my kid, some other times he and his wife were returning the visit. Each time it was a book that was coming in our discussion. When I left for America we met and he showed me three books he was reading somehow in parallel, about the American ways and about immigrant experience there. Of course, there were not only those three books our talk was about: Tocqueville was also present, in the background.

In America, I missed my books left in Bucharest, and I tried to find them again. Marco Polo and Sven Hedin, Stanisław Lem and Milorad Pavić, Father Alexander Schmemann and Vladimir Lossky; a friend sent me from Romania books that I couldn't find there, Mateiu Caragiale and Father Boris Raduleanu. Well, in America I discovered other authors that were new for me, English and Americans, and not only: the cultural interest there is open toward the whole universe.

After many years I came back and our friendship was no more the same. Maybe because both of us were old now, maybe because of lack of time, or because of lack of enthusiasm, or a bit of all these. Anyway our last meeting brought the subject of books again, only this time to punctuate disagreements. I was now using intensively the web and the electronic books, while for him only the printed books had sense, nothing else.

This was a couple of years ago. We tried to meet again, but each time it was something impeding it. We called each other by phone several times, then this stopped too. Life went on and electronic books became more and more sophisticated, advancing from desktops and laptops to tablets, while printed books remained the same, more and more forgotten on shabby shelves.

I called him again today, after watching the movie: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore tells a story about printed books, about their pages, full of words and images, about living surrounded by books, dreaming while browsing the pages till you get lost in their stories. It's about love for the printed word, and about the way the printed word returns your love. A movie about the aggressiveness of electronic books, acting like a hurricane, destroying the spirit of words and of images, and about the way to reconstruct the lost spirit. All this in an animation, in the form of a story for kids, a phantasy taking place in an atmosphere reminding sometimes The Wizard of Oz , maybe also a bit Le Ballon Rouge (while the hero somehow resembles Buster Keaton).

Ironically, the story is based on a book that can be read now on laptops and on tablets, browsing the electronic pages and inviting the reader to play interactively.

And I called my friend to tell him about all this, and I said that I would dedicate this text to him and to his love for the printed book, only he wouldn't be able to read it: the text is on my blog, on the web.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, authors
(video by Ravellan71)

Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation) award winning author/ illustrator William Joyce and co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a hybrid style of animation that harkens back to silent films and MGM Technicolor musicals. Morris Lessmore is old fashioned and cutting edge at the same time.

(imdb)

É um filme maravilhoso que tem todas razões para ser um filme vencedor. É encantador e transmite uma mensagem importante: os livros enriquecem-nos, preenchem completamente a nossa vida e mantém a nossa imaginação viva. Para além de tudo isto, é também uma declaração de amor aos livros de papel. The fantastic flying books… foi lançado o ano passado como um livro digital interativo para iPad que chegou ao primeiro lugar entre os mais vendidos nas lojas da Apple. Ora veja!

(http://lumeear.blogspot.com/2012/03/os-fantasticos-livros-voadores.html)

You can repair books, tumble through a storm, learn the piano and even get lost in a book, flying through a magical world of words... like a well-written bed-time story and an immersive animated movie at once.

(http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664419/an-ex-pixar-designer-creates-astounding-kids-book-on-ipad)

Morris Lessmore loved words.
He loved stories.
He loved books.
But every story has its upsets.
Everything in Morris Lessmore’s life, including his own story, is scattered to the winds.
But the power of story will save the day.

(http://books.simonandschuster.com/Fantastic-Flying-Books-of-Mr-Morris-Lessmore/William-Joyce/9781442457027)

(A Life in Books)

(Filmofilia)