After I was ushered into a personal screening of Movement, the animated Latvian journey movie created completely within the free and open-source software program, Blender, I used to be not anticipating to return out of the cinema pondering of nothing however Group Ico and Fumito Ueda. I went into the movie fully blind: all that I knew was that Movement had gained an Oscar for greatest animated function (pipping each The Wild Robotic and Inside Out 2 to the submit), and was fully dialogue-free.
Except for a barely rustic artwork path that jogs my memory of one thing between a PS2 and PS3 recreation because of Blender’s utilitarian model, there’s simply one thing about Movement that screams Group Ico. Perhaps it’s within the emotive, daring storytelling that manages to convey extra emotion than even essentially the most verbose movies, perhaps it’s within the towering structure and fantasy-meets-reality nature of the setting. However, both approach, the movie feels prefer it may very well be a companion to Ueda’s oeuvre – a cross-media homage to one in every of recreation growth’s greats.
The story follows the journey of an expressive, usually mischievous cat who’s trying to find security and stability after its house is devastated by a flood. Although there may be proof of human life on the earth, mankind is absent from the plot – solely thumbprints of man’s legacy on the world are left behind. As a substitute, our solid is comprised of a pack of canines, a reticent capybara, a ring-tailed lemur, and winged creatures with unclear motives.
Behind the anthropomorphic drama, there’s a really clear message: group will enable you survive. Perhaps the movie is about dismantling tribalism and discovering security and customary floor with folks exterior your bubble, perhaps it’s about how the one approach we will survive on a doomed planet is by placing apart our variations and dealing collectively to construct a greater world. Perhaps it’s merely a couple of cat that doesn’t like water, and the traditional blood feud between canines and felines. Who is aware of?
Both approach, the wordlessness of Movement is a part of its allure. Clocking in at 84 minutes, the movie earns (almost) each second of its on-screen time, and by no means looks like a drag – fairly spectacular given that there’s not one line of dialogue in the entire thing. Many of the communication is completed by large, expressive eyes, easily-interpreted animal physique language, and languid, reflective pictures of the waterlogged world. The movie took 5 and a half years to provide (one other unconscious hyperlink to Ueda and Group Ico’s famously lengthy gestation interval, maybe), and was discovered completely with out storyboards.
Director Gints Zilbalodis and author Matīss Kaža as an alternative opted to position the 3D fashions of the animals within the work-in-progress environments inside Blender, and “discover them with the digital camera”. It is a fairly experimental course of for an animated function, and – to my eye – reads extra like a recreation growth method than a film-making one.
The result’s emotive, uncooked, and intuitive. Our floating digital camera appears to flit between esteemed filmic cinematography, and adept online game ‘floating eye’. Our lens strikes with confidence and precision because it banks, pans, and sweeps throughout oceanic horizons, entangled ruins choked with vines, and small atolls free from the suffocating, exponentially rising water.
I can’t discover any proof of both Zilbalodis or Kaža saying they’ve performed any Group Ico video games (and I wasn’t capable of safe an interview), however to me, it appears so clear that Ueda’s affect is throughout Movement. Whether or not it’s the visible language, the mature themes, the revolutionary use of animation, the innate understanding of animal psychology, or the grounded surrealism that permeates each pore of Movement, it looks like Japan Studio’s spirit lives on on this curious, distinctive movie. I wasn’t the one individual saying this, both; after I left the screening (solely for video games business of us, granted), I heard virtually each cluster of individuals mentioning Group Ico. A cursory Google will flip up Reddit threads linking Movement and Ueda. The hyperlink is obvious for anybody with the eyes to see it.
“We’re all in the identical boat and should overcome our variations to search out methods to work collectively,” Zilbalodis emoted on the Oscars when he picked up his award. I really feel like that hits upon one thing on the core of Movement’s soul – a message of unity in a world being drowned by negativity, concern, rage, disconnection.
So, TL;DR? There’s a motive Movement gained an Oscar, of us. And anybody that has even a passing curiosity in video video games ought to test it out. In spite of everything, a rising tide lifts all ships, proper?
Movement seems in UK cinemas from March 21, 2025, and is distributed by Curzon.
