Following a grey cat through a surreal world a lot like our own, the winner of Best Animated Movie at this year’s Oscars is a majestic experience. “It’s the mood, the ambience, the feeling that will stay with you,” says Luke Buckmaster.
There’s a paradox in animated productions that celebrate the natural world, in the sense they’re entirely artificial—nothing remotely natural in the painstaking processes required to construct them. From another perspective, computer-engineered films like Gints Zilbalodis’ Oscar-winning Flow are modern extensions of ancient practices: ochre on rock, pencil on paper, paint on canvas. Using the free open-source software Blender, Zilbalodis (also the cinematographer, editor, co-writer, co-producer, and co-composer) conjures the kind of divine visions that never tire: creamy skylines, sun-dappled trees, reflections in water.
This wonderful experience feels like it was conjured not in a dark studio, by illustrators hunched over their keyboards, but atop a beautiful grassy hill in summer light. It has, thank Christ, no talking or singing animals; no cheesy songs or dance routines. In fact, it’s dialogue-free. The film follows a grey cat through a lush forest-like place that looks like earth, with human-like ruins and structures, though things don’t quite match up to reality—even before the emergence of a mutated (but nevertheless spectacular) whale. It could be a parallel dimension or some other place on the cosmic plane. It’s probably the future, but it might be an alternate past.
We do know this world is in a profound state of upheaval, brought upon by a biblical flood that makes it clear nothing can be the same. Creatures that have long existed separately are now forced to share the same spaces; there’s a new dynamic to the order of things. When the cat and a dog are forced, early on, to share a log floating in the water, I briefly pondered whether this might evolve into a Milo and Otis-esque adventure—a story of best buds bridging conventional divides. But Zilbalodis avoids cushy formula and narrative expectations in general, crafting a beautifully layered sense of wonder and largesse. You can feel the film was made with deep thought, and yet it requires no thought at all to enjoy.
The feeling that the universe’s rules are being rewritten corresponds to the present moment, with so many profound transformations occurring all at once. But getting more specific, dropping in examples to demonstrate my point, perhaps something ripped from the headlines, seems almost a sin against the film, sullying its otherworldly beauty with the stink of reality.
Zilbalodis builds on the end-of-the-era vibes evoked through the flood, contrasting the old world with the state of a radically transformed present. In some scenes we follow, for instance, animals on a boat as it drifts through what appears to be the ruins of a majestic civilisation, fitted out with grandly imposing, mustard-coloured edifices, piercing the air like pyramids. Aesthetically comparing the state of what is, versus what was, can be a powerful way to depict decay and renewal. We saw this memorably infused into the fabric of The Last of Us, both the video game and its recent TV adaptation, which are set in a post-apocalyptic world where human societies have crumbled but nature is bouncing back, reclaiming the space.
In Flow, the mood is optimistic. There’s a feeling that in the rubble of the old world, and during the first breaths of the new one, lies an opportunity for positive change; a chance to start again. In one sense the film doesn’t do much to create this, in that this point doesn’t need to be underlined or expressed in words. But then again, it could hardly do more: the message is infused into everything—it’s everywhere, at all times.
Unfolding in long explorative shots and illustrated with a globby look—as if it was part painted, part smeared, part sculpted—it’s a class act aesthetically. But it’s the mood, the ambience, the feeling that will stay with you. The film feels like it’s reaching up, towards the heavens, remembering the old and dreaming of the new. It has a richness of spirit, a sheer life and vitality that leaves most animated animal moves for dead.
