There’s plenty that’s mighty impressive about the new Oscar-nominated animated feature Flow. Hailing from the country of Latvia, Flow concerns a black cat and other misfit animals (such as a lemur, a capybara, a dog, etc.) all working together to survive on a small boat during a flood. It’s a mesmerizingly sweeping tale, one told without dialogue. The primary critters are also deeply realistic and aren’t anthropomorphized in the slightest. It’s a bold vision that could’ve just alienated people and left audiences bored. Instead, Flow is a project that leaves you glued to the screen. No wonder it’s sharing the Best Animated Feature category with Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot.
Videos by ComicBook.com
There are lots of important things animation filmmakers and directors writ large need to take away from Flow. Committing to bold original ideas is one thing. Realizing that great animated cinema can come from anywhere (including a small crew working with Blender in Latvia) is another. However, Flow also reflects how the visual-oriented animation medium doesn’t need dialogue to thrive. Let’s get more silent animated movies in the pipeline that build on Flow’s artistic accomplishments.
The Prevention of Other Silent Animated Movies
Not every film has been as lucky as Flow and arrived in theaters with no dialogue. In the past, several high-profile animated movies have had their silent cinema ambitions thwarted by marketing concerns. Specifically, The Land Before Time and Dinosaur both were intended to be either entirely or largely dialogue-free before executives intervened and forced them both to have chatty prehistoric critters. All the exciting visual possibilities were curbed because executives got nervous that kids couldn’t sit still if the on-screen leads weren’t constantly conversing. This phenomenon reflects the unfortunate dialogue-driven nature of most theatrical feature-length animation.
This typically manifests in an overdose of comedic lines and yelling. Comedians like Patton Oswalt have constantly talked about how they’ve been hired for various gigs where their job is to write new quips for off-screen animated characters that can be hastily added in post-production. This trend reflects how reliant modern Western animation is on constant jokes. There can’t be any moments of silence or introspection. Audiences must constantly be hit with jokey one-liners, even if they’re being delivered by characters out of frame. That’s the focus of these films, not luscious imagery.
This is how you end up with productions like Illumination’s Despicable Me movies, full of Minions screaming at each other and Gru making outdated references to “honey badger don’t care” against generic backdrops. Even once-promising and audacious independent animated productions are not immune to the norm of slathering animated features in dialogue. The uncompleted Richard Williams movie The Thief and the Cobbler originally featured two principal silent characters in the form of Tack the Cobbler and The Thief. Once the film was taken away from Williams and made into a more conventional enterprise, Matthew Broderick and Jonathan Winters (respectively) took over those roles now full of quippy dialogue.
[RELATED: Surprising Animated Movie Quickly Becoming Highest-Grossing of All Time]
Flow Opened Up the Floodgates
The ubiquity of studios (both big and small) refusing to let major Western animated movies breathe with dialogue-free sequences meant there were few counter-examples to this trend in the marketplaces. Incessant dialogue in animated cinema was so common that many assumed it was the only way things could be done. Flow, however, immediately undercuts that perception. It exists as a proudly dialogue-free creation and one that’s garnered universal acclaim to boot. A new standard for what Western animation can look like has suddenly appeared.
Now there’s a mold for dialogue-free animated cinema that filmmakers can point to when trying to sell new visual-oriented projects. Flow and its reliance on just animal behavior and captivating imagery show that something truly unorthodox can keep an audience’s attention. You don’t need to bombard people with endless jokes and quips to keep their eyeballs on the screen. Gorgeous visuals and lovely backgrounds can do the trick, both of which thrive in the world of animation.
It’s doubtful a tiny indie like Flow will suddenly change how every single DreamWorks Animation or Illumination title is made. However, perhaps this feature will inspire more executives to let animated movies breathe and not always be so reliant on dialogue. Superior versions of Dinosaur, The Land Before Time, and countless other animated features were never realized because of the notion that only dialogue-heavy filmmaking can thrive with audiences. Flow excitingly disproves that notion and paves the way for a fresh new era of visual-centric animated cinema.
Flow is now streaming on Max.
What did you think of Flow? Let us know in the comments below!
