Film Name: 神奇飞书 / The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
This is the 2011 Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short Film. Its name is “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.” When you watch this film, you’ll undoubtedly be filled with a sense of wonder and longing. It encompasses both bitterness and beauty, pain and hope. No matter which day you revisit this film, it will offer you one of the most poignant 15 minutes of that day.
Many interpret this film as a tribute to books. Undoubtedly, books enrich our lives with color and offer solace during hardship. Yet celebrating books is not the film’s sole purpose—indeed, I believe it misses the core message. Three elements are equally vital: books, people, and the hurricane. When a hurricane leaves the world in ruins, it is humanity’s inherent optimism and resilience that truly shine. Books merely ignite the conviction that, no matter the adversity, one must steadfastly fulfill life’s purpose.
Let us first examine the hurricane. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the United States, destroying New Orleans, the hometown of director William Joyce. When he returned, the landscape was a desolate wasteland—homes gone, furniture vanished, faces etched with anguish. The hurricane depicted in “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” is, in essence, the memory of Katrina imprinted on Jossie. The world had completely lost its color, turning both people and the landscape gray.
Formally, Lessmore does borrow from The Wizard of Oz, having his protagonist swept up by a hurricane and transported to another world with his house. The tornado that carried Dorothy to Oz served as a gateway between worlds—not a catastrophe, nor did it cast any psychological shadow on Dorothy. Her subsequent adventures in Oz were merely a quest to return home. But the hurricane in “The Magic Flying Book” is an unmitigated disaster. Everyone is filled with loss, the world instantly loses its color, and those who arrive here cannot return to their original world. They can only rely on their own strength to stand up again, start life anew, and build a new world.
The interdependence between people and books after the catastrophe is the film’s central theme and creative core—creativity here referring to both innovation and its significance. When the woman flying through the sky left her book behind to accompany Lesmo, color returned to his surroundings. Later, Lesmo distributed many books to those in need. You see the elderly woman, the child, and the cyclist—books bringing color back to their lives. These individuals had all briefly appeared in the film before and during the disaster.
Books truly bring hope to people, especially those recovering from disasters. Just as Josie did after Hurricane Katrina, sifting through the ruins of her hometown to gather stacks of books and gift them to children living in temporary shelters. Televisions and computers—these high-tech products of modern civilization—were destroyed by the hurricane, leaving the children with only books. Indeed, books soothed the children’s wounded hearts. Yet, as I mentioned at the beginning, the film does not stop at celebrating books as a medium that carries human knowledge, civilization, and even spirit. It goes a step further, celebrating the self-reliant human spirit itself.
For while we witness humanity’s dependence on books, we also see books’ dependence on humanity. Mr. Lesmo rises each morning to feed certain books and even saves an old book’s life like a doctor—though these scenes seem fantastical, they carry profound meaning in this context: humans do not merely passively receive care from books; they also fulfill their duties and navigate their own lives through their own strength. By saving the old book, Lesmo also experiences thrills and joy through its pages—a testament to the mutual dependence between humans and books. When both Lesmo and the girl ultimately transform their experiences into books for eternal preservation, humanity and literature achieve perfect unity. All earlier praise for books thus culminates in praise for humanity itself.
William Joyce previously worked at Pixar, contributing to the design of animated films like “Toy Story” and “A Bug’s Life.” In 2010, he co-founded MOONBOT Studios with Brandon Odenberg. Their directorial debut was “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.” As Joyce put it, they aimed to prove through this film that they possessed the capability to create exceptional cinema. They succeeded.
Formally, the film is innovative. It isn’t a conventional 3D animation but a hybrid integrating 3D, 2D, and stop-motion techniques. Characters like Lessmore are created with CG, while the little people on the book left by the girl are standard 2D animation. Many scenes also experiment with live-action sets. By seamlessly blending these disparate visual techniques without any jarring dissonance, Jossi demonstrates his mastery across diverse film genres.
Narratively, the film brims with the rich, intricate details that define classic cinema. Each viewing reveals previously unnoticed nuances. Beyond the iconic wall photographs, did you notice how the background music shifts when the old book appears? Did you notice the passersby on the street? Or the television set that flashes across the screen as the hurricane strikes? Each element either echoes another or carries unique symbolic meaning. Beyond its rich details, the film brims with imagination. Whether it’s letters whirling through the hurricane or Morris Lessmore drifting off to sleep atop a giant book, every frame pulses with animation’s essence.
Silent film stands as one of the most significant keywords this year’s Oscars bequeathed to the world, and it is also the artistic form chosen for “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.” For animated shorts, even narrative works, silent film remains the optimal medium. For only when you possess the ability to tell a story through visuals, camera work, and music—rather than advancing the plot through dialogue—do you truly become an animation director.
The protagonist of the film, Mr. Lesmo, bears a striking resemblance to the famous silent film actor Buster Keaton in both appearance and expression. Both wear a fringed straw hat, further reinforcing the belief that this similarity is no coincidence. Buster Keaton’s signature style involved conveying humor through rich physical gestures, while his almost unchanging expression earned him the moniker “The Great Stone Face.” In The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, Lessmore’s deliberate, stoic expressions share a remarkable kinship with this stone face.
As contemporary animated shorts cycle through the vortex of obscure expression and stylized presentation, the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film once again reaffirms its guiding principle: storytelling. Whether it’s “The Lost Thing,” “Tsumiki no ie,” or this year’s “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” these award-winning films all tell the same story: a bittersweet tale about love.
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