Straume
Gints Zilbalodis (2024)
U certificate – ‘very mild threat’. Very mild?? In the Latvian animated film Flow, the threat is nearly continuous, often life-endangering. It starts in a forest landscape: a variety of animals, trying to escape rapidly rising flood waters, hurtle or scrabble towards higher ground. In the struggle for survival that follows, the central character is a cat; the main supporting cast comprises a Labrador, a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur and a secretary bird. The BBFC clearly takes the view that, if there are no human beings on the receiving end of a threat, it can’t amount to much.
The line-up does mean, though, that Gints Zilbalodis’s film is my kind of animation film – one featuring animals rather than people. Better still, these animals aren’t required to speak human dialogue. I talked all the time to our cats and liked to think we had conversations but, when it comes to talking animals on screen, my literal-mindedness usually gets in the way – especially when their words are spoken by vocally recognisable actors. (The first two Paddington films are an exception, thanks to the amazing chemistry of Paul King’s bear and Ben Whishaw’s voice. I also enjoyed Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) – more for the vocal performances than the story, though the stop-motion miniatures and the overall design show Wes Anderson at his most fruitfully meticulous.) Flow is far from a silent picture, however. As proof of the threat levels, the cat repeatedly mews in alarm. I didn’t really think Zilbalodis and his co-writer, Matīss Kaža, would let their protagonist perish by drowning or falling from a great height or as prey to hostile secretary birds (the main one in the story is nicer). Even so, it’s a close shave on all three counts and the miaowing is worryingly credible. Most of the time, the anxious cat’s saucer-like eyes aren’t much different from the lemur’s.
Those feline eyes are somewhat stylised but Zilbalodis’s recreation of animal movements and attitudes is, for the most part, wonderfully well-observed – for the cat and the dogs (the Labrador has several sidekicks of other breeds), at any rate: I’ll take it on trust that the same goes for the lemur and the capybara. I especially recognised, and enjoyed, the cat’s momentary hesitation just before each of its many leaps. There’s also a whale in evidence; it saves the cat’s life more than once but eventually lies beached in the forest (or whatever the equivalent of beached is elsewhere on dry land) and the cat lies beside the great creature, rubbing the side of its head against the whale and purring. The detail of the animal animation is so engrossing that you almost take for granted Zilbalodis’s rendering of landscape but this is marvellous, too – not least the quality of light, particularly light shining through trees and water. Although the geographical setting isn’t specific, it struck me as vaguely oriental: massive cat statuary in a deserted garden; a couple of dogs with a Chinese look about them; Japanese phrases in the film’s music, composed by Zilbalodis and Rihards Zaļupe.
For much of Flow’s eighty-five minutes, the animals’ salvation takes the form of a small, unmanned boat that stays above water – a kind of mini-ark sans Noah. As suggested by the altruistic or affectionate behaviour already mentioned, the motley crew in Flow look out for each other – or learn to do so. The allegorical import of the piece isn’t too hard to work out. The diluvial effects of climate change, hostilities between different tribes of the animal kingdom – both could hardly be more salient in the narrative. Gints Zilbalodis himself probably summed up his message as well as anyone in his acceptance speech when Flow won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature last month – ‘We are all in the same boat. We must work together and try to overcome our differences.’ In the last scene, the animals sit together, all pals, and look at their reflections in the water. There are moments when the film is on the brink of sentimentality but it stays the right side. Raising the spirits, Flow does get its audience to higher ground.
25 March 2025
