Max, the proprietary streamer for HBO and Discovery, has a ton of great films available to watch on the platform … but right now, an animated movie without any dialogue is one of its most-watched movies.
Directed and conceived by Gints Zilbalodis, “Flow,” an animated film that premiered at the Annecy Film Festival last summer and serves as a warning about the dangers of climate change, is an Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature, and it’s also one of the most popular movies on Max at the moment (per FlixPatrol). While people might be seeking out the computer-animated, dreamy, and sometimes surreal film thanks to its Oscar nod, they’re probably pleasantly surprised by just how good it is. So, what is “Flow” (which Zilbalodis wrote alongside Matīss Kaža) about, and why doesn’t it have any dialogue?
Well, the simple and relatively flip answer about the dialogue thing is that animals can’t talk; obviously, a lot of animated movies ignore this real-life aspect, but “Flow” makes the interesting choice to keep its entirely non-human “cast” silent. The first character we meet is a black cat who encounters a pack of dogs fighting over fish in a forest stream, and after the area floods, the cat and a Labrador Retriever manage to escape and eventually end up on a boat with a capybara. A lemur joins them not long after and while they all try to move throughout a flooded world and rescue any other living beings they see, the animals unexpectedly bond. So, what do critics think of this innovative and aesthetically gorgeous film, and how has it already earned its place in movie history?