How do you survive the end of the world? Oscar-nominated ‘Flow’ offers an answer—through the eyes of a cat

Almost anywhere on the ground, the disaster is just a random collision of the weather patterns away from the threshold of your home. The hurricane can be torn from your roof, wildfire may burn in your life, or that the storm may overwhelm your city, and invade cars, buildings and facilities columns alike. When the worst happens, how will you respond?

The flow of animation feature asks its viewers to think about such sad questions in the exact way that the narrative films are well suited. The film follows a black cat and the small Menagerie of the animals that it meets as it sails on a masculine landscape, where they faced the survivors in the abandoned cities. While each animal relies on a wandering instinct, the story follows a few who are able to overcome the meteoritan instinct to stick to each other.

The film connects the charm of the original animal characters in a simplified 3D animation style-an extraordinary mixture of length films. No wonder that the Latvian movie, which was made by director Gentz ​​Zellpaldes with a modest budget of $ 3.7 million, was able to transfer the Hollywood model: In January, the flow of Golden Globe canceled the best animated feature, and overcoming films from Disney/Pixar, dreams, Wallace and Gromete. The movie was now nominated for the Oscars on March 2: Best Animation feature and the best international feature. No film has never been nominated for a prize before – not to mention winning.

It is rare for independent animation to be divided into the main current. Even the films of the artists nominated for the award, such as It is a beautiful day (2011) Written by Don Hertzfelt and Anomalisa (2015) by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, in the festival circles and is often very short on the workforce, budget and time. Laika, a small animation house that stops the movement responsible for known features such as Coralin (2009) and Cobo and Slaslan (2016), each on a budget of $ 60 million, was unable to win Golden Globe in the animation category until 2019, with Missing link. Foreign films face more barriers: Studio Ghibli, the famous Japanese animation studio Totoro (1988), he won the Academy Award for the best animation feature only once, Mystery In 2003, two decades later, the most recent film in the studio, Boy and construction (2023), she received the only Golden Globe nomination and the Best Animation Award.

Despite all this, Flow occupies the space of a feature film with confidence and presents the daily cat routine in a 15 -minute sequence before the flood water begins to lead the procedure, allowing the viewer to be pleased with the charming and realistic cat behaviors, and get a feeling of what will be lost soon. (Be careful: the spoilers in the future.)

Although human beings are no longer present in the world of flow, putting familiar ruins of flexible homes indicate that the flood has occurred before, and that there is a catastrophe before those who are about to swallow the remainder. The cat lives in a house that seemed to have been a human home either worship or obsessed with cats, and this is attributed to their charcoal and sculptures. Soon the rising water, the antiques, and the ultimately overwhelmed everything. It is a mirror of the power of amended natural disasters: Nothing is safe and not Even our idols.

The nature of the flood seems to roam the line between the biblical myth and the climate disaster in the real world. Within a day or so after the first strong wave, the cat is forced to climb to the longest point in the scene, which coincides with a giant cat statue. Just as our protagonist begins to wet, the boat passes with Capibara on the plane. Ultimately, the couple picks up a self -secretary of the birds, the lymphs obsessed with the ornament, and the pyberrador is keen.

The flow is not necessarily convincing because of its depiction of disasters, but because of its depiction of how these animals respond to them. in InterviewsZilbalodis said that the inspiration came from a short movie he made while he was in high school about Cats’s fear of water. “I really wanted to focus on the relationship between animals and fear of others,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “Water is basically a way to connect these other concerns.”

With the rise of water, animal reactions change – but not how you expect. The group of Flow characters does not rely on the usual human habits and personalities, exaggerated features, and movements that go beyond the top that comes with the animation area-from the dance club in King of Assad (1994) To the functional star of the rabbit ZOOTopia (2016). The amazing move as long as the animated films exist, starting from the early twentieth century with the appearance of Mickey Mouse for the first time in Steamboat Willy (1928) And the past style “Rubberhose” at the time. Ladislas Starevich, the natural world (can be said that it is the first movement skipping painter) who tears the outer structure of the beetles of his films, his topics that eat in restaurants, write messages, and carry them. A story about a military conflict in 1912.

The flow requires a different approach. Animals communicate with each other through Meows, Chitters, Woofs and Kruns as animals really do. Each moves with realistic realism and characters to a large extent for its expected biological nature. (Cats owners likely to think, “Oh, this is exactly what MISS MITTENS acts!”) By keeping animals like their counterparts in real life, Zilbalodis is able to highlight the differences in their instincts.

They are the moments when these actions are hunted that drive the story forward. When the cat eventually overcomes its fear of water from providing fish for its comrades, goodwill is quickly destroyed when a dog is self -interested in most of the width. Worse than that, the dog was on board only because of the kindness of other animals: a few minutes ago, they saved the dog and its unbridled package from the ascending water.

“I didn’t want to get this educational message about: Work together is good and to be independently a bad thing,” Zilbalodis told the Hollywood newspaper. “I wanted to show good and bad for both these two extremism.”

Even in an industry, 3D animation has become the base, visually highlighting the flow. Most of the animation studios, such as Pixar and Dreamworks, use a special program and animation for movies. However, the flow was mobile in Blender, a free 3D model engine that is common for video game developers. The low budget option does not detract from the experiment. Instead, its similarity to the scene of cutting video game keeps you in anticipation, as if the moment of decision -making may be just around the corner. One of the motivations that collides with the disability that the disaster brings: every time you almost drown the cat, you just want to communicate with it from the water.

The flood falls miraculously and reveals a fertile scene of animals to return to it. It is a comfortable matter that a fictional world gives it: When the seas regain the Earth, the Earth will not return within days, or even its life. At the end of the movie, the animals are met with another test for their companion. They are all alive, but the atmosphere becomes defeated quickly. The boat that kept them safe at the bottom of the valley, while the retreating water leaves a whale -like creature that protects the crew throughout the film on the beach and fights for breathing. It is a reminder that even at the best possible climatic results, there will be a lot of mourning.