Academy Award Winner Flow has finally landed an audio description track here in the United States, courtesy of WBD. Flow streams on MAX, and while I don’t have direct proof as to who paid for the track, my options appear to be WBD, Sideshow/Janus, or Criterion. While Criterion has released a handful of physical discs with audio description, I don’t believe they have ever bothered to create a track. their service is highly inaccessible and features no audio description. I think WBD, which also landed the streaming debut rights to The Boy And The Heron and Drive My Car, two other International titles that also landed theatrical runs with no audio description,but through an Oscar win ended up with audio description on MAX.
This is an excellent achievement, because now it means that Documentary Feature Winner No Other Land is the only non-short Oscar winner without audio description from last year. We’re almost at a full deck. Flow is the David in the versus Goliath story, as it was Latvia’s first appearance at the Oscar’s in any category, and it managed both an Animated Feature nomination and International Feature nomination. It had to topple works from animation powerhouses like Dreamworks Animation, Pixar, and Aardman, all who have previously been nominated i this category, and are regulars at the Oscars. How did this do it, and is the audio description bold enough to take a film with no dialog off the screen?
The answer to that last question is Yes. as a blind critic, my experience with Flow involved my brain using the description of the images of the animals on screen. These animals don’t have names. They are reduced to Cat, Capybara, Lemur, Bird, and Dog. Inn cases where there are other animals, they get new names, like Brown Dog or Red Dog, to indicate there are new dogs. but with the introduction of each of the main animals, giving us an idea of their eyes, their fur, their behavioral traits. There’s even a sea monster, whose appearance is brief, but the description is so rich in what is ultimately a matter of seconds.
The adventure these animals are on is somewhat vague. They can’t tell us, and we don’t get exposition. We are just shown a world, where there are clearly structures made by humans at some point in time, but none are found anywhere. the water is rising, and the animals are seeking the highest ground possible, or in the case of our intrepid pack, a boat. Over the course of under 90 minutes, they face an uncertain world, hostile animals, and each other. These are animals that aren’t necessarily designed to mix well together, yet they all seem to know they need each other to survive.
considering this was made by an independent studio, i thought it was pretty impressive. There’s a touch of theology in here, I think, but it is implied so cautiously that it could also be aliens. They could be on another planet. They could be in the future or the past. There isn’t a strong definition of time, like a lot of evolved technology, or modern structures. The structures that remain are the ones that were built in stone, the kinds they carved thousands of years ago.
Will you love Flow? possibly. I think cat people will be into this movie the most. While many have taken to calling the cat in the film Flow, he actually doesn’t have a name. but, people want him to have a name because he’s the heart and soul of this film. Roz had a name in the Wild Robot. We like to name the things we love. It might be what makes us the most human of all, the ability to know something is a cat, and know it won’t understand its name, but we still give it a name just for our own purposes.
I’m just amazed at what Liz Gutman and International Digital Center pulled off. Like Emilia Perez, this had to be rushed. Flow has been on MAX for weeks without audio description.It landed on VOD without audio description. It did an entire theatrical run without ever caring about the blind population. Yet, it is possibly one of the biggest films of 2024 that must have it. there’s zero dialogue, just a really immersive sound design. Liz wrote a script that takes a purely visual experience, and made it a wonderful journey for blind and low vision moviegoers to enjoy. I don’t always like to give my audio description of the year award to the film with simply the most audio description, which is why Sasquatch Sunset was my runner up to my winner of The Substance. I easily would have included Flow in my Best Audio Description tracks of 2024, had anyone bothered to consider blind and low vision viewers along the way.
Sean baker talks about “returning to cinema”, but he doesn’t actually know what that means for people like me. often we face a theater that has movies that don’t have audio description. or, the equipment isn’t working. I think about all these film festivals, and all of these voting bodies, and how every FYC campaign doesn’t include accessibility. Like the idea that people who require accessibility aren’t voters for the Annie Awards. So, I could never vote for Flow. While it apparently doesn’t need my support, another film might. I would have nominated Flow for Best Animated Feature, I just would have voted for The Wild Robot to win.
Fresh: Final Grade: A-, Audio description: A
