As dispiriting as it has been to see the box office dominance of half-baked sequels like Moana 2 and Kung Fu Panda 4, 2024 was a relatively strong year for animated films. Adam Elliot of Mary and Max fame crafted a stunning tragicomedy in the R-rated stop motion film Memoir of a Snail, and documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville made the music documentary genre feel fresh again with his Pharell Williams study Piece by Piece. Dreamworks Animation was able to dodge concerns that it was a “lesser” studio with the visually dazzling adaptation of the children’s novel The Wild Robot, and despite grossing over $1.6 billion at the global box office, Pixar’s Inside Out 2 was an earnest examination of the anxieties faced by today’s youth.
But it’s a small Latvian independent film that’s 2024’s best animated title. Flow was a project for Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža, whose film became one of only three in history to earn Academy Award nominations for both Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature Film. The rags-to-riches story of Flow is more impressive when the technology used by its production team is taken into consideration; unlike the artists at Pixar or Dreamworks that are given seemingly unlimited resources to develop and render their films, Flow was entirely created and conceived using the free, open-source software Blender.
Ever since the Oscars introduced the Best Animated Feature film at the 74th Academy Awards (and memorably gave it to Shrek over the more acclaimed Monsters Inc.), there’s been discussion on why animated titles are relegated to their own category instead of considered for other trophies. Cynics have suspected that a majority of Oscar voters still hold a bias against a genre that’s typically aimed at families. Judging by the last two decades, it wouldn’t be an inaccurate assessment, as only three animated films have ever been nominated for Best Picture. However, a more generous reading suggests that the creation of an animated category is designed to honor an art form that deserves recognition for its exclusivity. Any film student with an iPhone and basic editing software can churn out a 90-minute mumblecore feature; comparatively, even the most basic of animation requires a degree of artistic background and technical prowess.
Flow may have benefitted from the perception that it’s an underdog, but there’s nothing about the end product that feels meager. Set in an ambiguous version of the distant future, the film’s centered around a gray cat in the midst of a horrific flood that consumes the surrounding forest. It’s a survival story at its most primal, but the presence of various charming animals that also vie for survival may endear Flow to a younger set of viewers. Although none of the characters are overtly-stylized or cute, the rougher edges of wild animals are sanded off to establish the cat as the protagonist of the story.
Flow exists between fantasy and myth, as it doesn’t directly imply an unusual level of consciousness to the non-human characters. The film’s devoid of dialogue, with the only suggestion that the animals possess humanlike qualities being their general intuitiveness and creativity. Jack London didn’t write The Call of the Wild to ascribe superior intellect to a dog, but it did succeed in the implication that the divide between humans and animals is less drastic than imagined. Flow goes one step further thanks to the removal of humans from the story entirely; when left to their own devices, animals are willing to work together and come up with novel solutions as they fight for survival.
The most radical aspect of Flow is its success in the execution of basic storytelling mechanics, a quality that’s lost in a medium dominated by The Garfield Movie and Despicable Me 4. It doesn’t require a flashback or exposition for a protagonist that has no other goal but to persevere, even if a community of friends is built along the way. Each set piece bleeds into the other, as Flow is more interested in having each deterrent compound upon another than the establishment of an overarching antagonist. Perhaps this strips the film of complexity, but there’s no shame in the construction of a narrative that doesn’t require firm context. The same could be said of many great films by Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin.
There isn’t a traditional conflict because the film has sought to acknowledge that the flood isn’t a malicious entity, but a natural occurrence that should be protected. Those that seek to construe an analogy to climate change or an allusion to Biblical stories may find evidence to support their claims, but the gradual manner in which the Earth had made way for the sea in Flow is oddly peaceful. The question that the cat, dogs, deer, capybara, lemur, and bird of Flow are left to ask is whether they’re suited to survive within the new version of the world that’s in the midst of its inception.