After seeing ‘Flow,’ it became very, very clear to me why it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature over the intelligent and heart-warming ‘Inside Out 2’ and the surprisingly charming ‘Wild Robot.’ The two latter films, while very well-made and will undoubtedly be classics, they do not have the sense of wonder and magic that ‘Flow’ has. The two mainstream animated features are very accommodating, and its narratives are written to ensure that everyone understands what it is they are trying to say. Not ‘Flow.’ The Academy Award winning movie gives us a sort of post-apocalyptic adventure with animals and not a single bit of dialogue. Nothing is explained and every scene, every image is given to us like a metaphor but without any indication of what they had intended it to be a symbol for.

In a way, ‘Flow’ acts as an allegory, but an allegory to what? They left that to us.

‘Flow’ is the story of a dark gray cat who is out in the woods. He lives in an empty house with cat sculptures set up in the lawn. No sign of the owner. Suddenly, out of the blue, a great flood strikes and submerges every bit of land under water. The cat finds a boat with a capybara and the two sail towards distant towers that jut out of the water. Along the way they meet other animals – a lemur, dogs, a secretarybird, and an odd-looking whale – and they journey towards the towers and try to survive as the water level keeps rising and there’s no land at all in sight but the towers.

Throughout the film’s runtime, the animals relatively behave like animals, and they don’t talk at all. So, it’s all about behaviour. The way a dog would react to a cat or to a lemur. The way the capybara seems to be friendly with almost every other animal as you can see from various posts on social media about the relative chill quality of the capybara. There are some actions that lean towards human-like, but they are so infrequent that it doesn’t break the spell.

So, while these animals have very little control over what’s happening, the film finds a way to create a thematic structure that gives us a story that we can hold on to and that carries from the story’s beginning to its end. It does this completely with vibrant imagery that we can make for ourselves what we feel this movie is a symbol of. The great flood that puts our characters in danger in the first place can be connected to a biblical flood, but you could also talk about climate change. The animal composition and how they got on that boat together could be a metaphor and it can be interpreted in so many ways.

In terms of profundity, it would be cheating but it’s not because it can also survive as just a story about a few animals trying to survive a fantastical flood. It doesn’t have to get any deeper than that. ‘Flow’ is just so excellently thought out and so wonderfully animated that it becomes second-nature for us to instill into it meaning. 

There is no explanation for the flood or for any of the things that happen in the movie – and there are unexplainable – and while it makes us ask questions, it also adds a sense of wonder and mystery to the whole narrative that elevates it into something magical, mythical. Even the way they decided to imagine the whale brings us to a different world entirely. It’s not afraid to be not grounded in anything real but the fact that the animals, our main characters, are just animals and not some anthropomorphic metaphor for humans makes ‘Flow’ such an interesting work.

Everyone in the cinema that I was watching it in were reacting to every little thing. Some of the children seated behind me was filling out all the details out loud. They couldn’t help themselves. It’s such a magical story and how it was told that it made me want the film to last forever. Again, I am so happy that it won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars and that it is showing in the cinemas. Watch it in the biggest screen you can. It’s magical.

My Rating:

Flow is now showing in cinemas. Check showtimes and buy your tickets here.