This is one of the best adventure
films that I have seen in a while. Think of Waterworld, but for animals.
And better. Very humanistic but without humans. Which these days makes sense.
It is an animated film from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis and has won
all sorts of animated awards including the Academy Award. The animation was
created on a software called Blender - free and open source - so I guess
we all could make a film like this. Though it took them five years. I will
go into my usual complaint - I hate American animation and don't understand
why they feel so uninteresting in comparison to the animation coming out
of Europe and Japan. Hell, I even saw a Pakistani animation recently that
looked better. Hand drawn is always my preference but that gets more and
more expensive and more and more rare. How ever this was done - and I know
exactly zero about how Blender works - it has an amazing look to it. I have
to expect AI will make animation easier and easier - and animation skills
will begin to disappear.
The thing about this film that I loved is
the setting. In a world where it feels as if there has been a gigantic flood
- Noah's flood? - wiping out the people and animals who didn't make it onto
the Ark. It is hard to place the time but there are ancient ruins as well
as a more modern house. But it is devoid of humans and therefore dialogue.
A terrific soundtrack though composed by the director. A film that I think
can be shown to children. It gets a bit tense at times though.
Our hero is a cat. No name. Black with shining
green eyes. He is a loner - living in a pastoral land and sleeping at night
in a deserted house on a comfy bed. He has the occasional scare from a pack
of dogs that chase it. He (or she) seems to have no other cats for company.
Then comes the flood forewarned by a stampede of elks and deer. An epic flood.
From a dam or a natural disaster, we never find out, but our cat goes to
higher ground. In a land that has gigantic statues of cats. Then higher until
he is at the top of the highest pinnacle in the land. With nowhere to go.
But he spots a sailboat passing and swims to it. It is deserted except for
a solitary Capybara who sleeps much of the time.
And I had no idea what a Capybara was either
- but it is considered the largest species of rodent in the world and is
native to South America. The flow of the water takes the boat along and on
the journey they are joined by a large dog, a lemur and a Secretarybird.
Ya, I didn't know what that was either. Clearly, my knowledge of animals
needs some work. The Secretarybird which is native to Africa is a predator,
stands four feet high and has a huge wingspan. These intrepid souls manage
to get along fine, survive storms, near drowning, a giant mythical whale
and eventually band together to save each other. Quite lovely.
