‘Flow’ review: master animator Gints Zilbalodis demonstrates his enormous talent as a visual storyteller
Director: Zilbalodis Gins | Script: Matiss Kaza, Gints Zilbalodis | Playing time: 84 minutes | Year: 2024
Noah’s Ark is probably floating somewhere and Jonah is safe in the whale’s belly in the parallel version of our Earth that Flow gifts. It’s a world of cat statues, treetops, and mountain peaks rising just above the water. Here on the same continent live capybaras and ring-tailed lemurs, Leviathan lives, and snow-white secretary birds rise above them all. A small black cat rents a sailboat, gathers around him a group of fellow sufferers and lives a series of adventures that make the viewer think about what it means to be human.
The people and their speech, by the way, are completely absent. Flowalthough the signs of “civilization” are visible. Cat statues, flooded cities, crystal balls, and other artifacts indicate that the daughters of Eve once inhabited the earth. It’s not that they miss them. After a brief prologue, it quickly becomes clear that animals can play the human role too. These are anthropomorphic creatures: they look like dogs and cats, but their interactions, feelings and facial expressions are those of Cain, Abel, Midas and Machiavelli. Echoes of films like water boat down, animal farm in The Lion King resonate.
the narrative of Flow It’s much simpler and metaphorical than in those movies. The kitten’s journey makes you think, but initially it is an experience that you must live: getting lost in the current. This is facilitated by the beautiful computer animation that gives the film a combination of hand-painting and realism. The water effects are especially impressive. The only thing that sometimes takes the viewer out of immersion is the animation of the animals themselves, which sometimes looks too much like “paint by numbers”.
The biblical and post-apocalyptic themes provide an interesting narrative setting, in which events have profound psychological and social implications. Sometimes the parallels and allegories are too obvious, for example in a group of people who start collecting jewelry and become captivated by a mirror, but in many cases the essence of humanity and society is represented in surprising ways.
When a new clan of animals enters the sailboat and wants to take the mirror from its ‘owner’, the kitten looks at one of his own who was actually on the ‘good’ side of the conflict and has been since the beginning of the conflict. the journey is on board. A friend suddenly becomes an enemy just because of his DNA. That’s unfair, right? When looking Flow We find that many ethical positions are ingrained in the brain: ideas about the distribution of goods, discrimination, tolerance and property.
Why do we categorize everything by appearance and that’s a bad thing? Why does the animal that first found the mirror have the right to claim it as its own? Flow It does not provide direct answers to these questions, but allows the viewer to reflect on them while enjoying the beauty of the flooded world. Memorable moments of beauty, happiness and hope are backed by a compelling soundtrack. Make sure you stay seated until after the credits, because the movie ends in a major key.
Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis has already caused a sensation with the animated film produced in his attic Far (also an odyssey through an enchanting world) and has been on the radar of film lovers around the world ever since. Flow It was filmed in Cannes and won the Audience Award at the prestigious Annecy International Animated Film Festival. A strong Oscar campaign is planned for the fall. maybe you can Flow To give Zilbalodis the fame before the general public that Miyazaki received after his golden statue Spirited Away. The young master animator and storyteller deserves it.