PLOT
Morris Lessmore sits on a balcony in the French Quarter of New Orleans writing his memoir. Suddenly a hurricane strikes, blowing Morris’s writing out of the book and blowing him off the balcony. While Morris frantically grabs for his book, the hurricane blows away the buildings.
After the storm, Morris finds the city and its residents devastated. He walks through the streets strewn with book pages and into the countryside. There he sees a woman fly past, magically suspended by flying books which she is holding with ribbons. She sends one of the books down to Morris. The book’s pages flip back and forth to animate an illustration of Humpty Dumpty, who urges Morris to follow him.
The flying book takes Morris to a library where other flying books live. Morris finds no humans there, but notices several portraits on the wall, one of which is the woman he had seen.
Morris then becomes the proprietor of the library. He takes care of the books, even saving the life of an early French edition of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon after it suffers a catastrophic injury falling from a shelf. He also gives out books to those who visit the library from the city still suffering from the effects of the storm. Eventually Morris begins to rewrite his memoir, sharing passages with the flying books who gather around him on the grassy hill opposite the library.
Years later Morris, now an old man, finally completes the book. Satisfied with his life’s work, he closes the book and heads for the door. The flying books swirl about him and Morris becomes young again. He then flies away, carried by flying books like the woman earlier. As he departs, his book, which had earlier been a regular book, becomes a flying book like the others, and returns to the library. Just then, a young girl arrives. She sits down on the steps of the library and begins to read Morris's book as the flying books gather around. The final scene shows Morris’s portrait added to the picture wall in the library.
A very good explanation from a youtuber's view comments on the video.
or even maybe he accepts death as a consequence of life (death was show to him by the natural catastrophe, after whitch he might thouged: for what am i writing anyway, whats the purpose of life, if it all just can end from one moment to the other?) and gets that there is a purpose in writing if he can enlighten people or just make them happy by writing literature, and get by that immortal (like the unknow auther of the old book)
then after a time he gets inspired again by (a muse, the women with the flying books) and can enjoin again the little things of life (like the music), then he discovers this old book, by whitch he gets sucked in, his fate in literature is restored again, he stoptes doubt his writing skillz and starts to write again, because maybe he wants to give people that back, what the book and his unkwon auther gave him...
in my opinion its a metaphor for the life of an writer, who at one point gets an writing blocade, its like he looses the spirit of writing and inventing something, its like all his ideas are blow away (the storm) it could also be that the storm stands for a gerneral catastrophe, after witch he looses fate in writing and life...
then you dont have seen many short films my friend. watch out for harvey krumpert, the lost thing and tsumiki no Ie. this are the best short films i have seen. all have got an oscar (as this one did) but are imo way better
