Letterboxd
I was surprised to be somewhat underwhelmed by this film. I was particularly tired that evening and wonder if maybe I wasn't cogent enough to get it?
Stream of thoughts as I watched this:
- Where are they? Madagascar? South America? Nepal?
- Where did humanity go?
- It appears that humanity only recently left, as paper things are still present.
- Why is there a giant status of a human being? Why an even bigger one for a cat? The scaffolds around construction seem like the scaffold that a man would build (as opposed to, for instance, a golden retriever), what was their purpose?
- Are the bird and the cat long lost lovers or something? The bird keeps going out of its way to help the cat? Should I be reading into this?
- Is the cat the audience and the other animals are the seven deadly sins? Let's see, the capybara is sloth, the lemur is greed, the bird is pride... wait what is the golden retriever?
- Is this the afterlife and this whole thing some sort of transition you take between life and death?
- Wait, are the animals animals in their temperaments but human in their intelligence? I guess if a orangutan can pilot a go cart maybe a cat/capybera/bird can rudder a boat? Is that human level intelligence?
- Why did the bird ascend? Was it because of their earlier empathy to the cat?
- Is this supposed to be somehow related to the story of Babel? Are we supposed to judge each other by our deeds and not our words (assuming animals can't cross species talk)?
I eventually just got a little tired of trying to make sense of it. I still enjoyed the animation and the music, but I found the actual journey a little dull.
I suppose the end message was that a solitary animal (cat) chose to form a pack with a bunch of social animals, and by doing so let go of some of their natural fear and anxiety? I'm not sure.