Flow - What a great merit!

_{Wowooooo... 🤔}

I'm not a counsellor but if I were and you're knocking on my door today looking for something... I'd tell you to stop self-sabotaging yourself. I'm writing this and I imagine myself knocking on my own door, wondering what important thing I should know before this weekend is over. That! I've got it. The answer comes after the day's almost complete blur; first down the soft, cool morning paths and then down the rough, sweltering platforms in the afternoon. But I'll unwind this whole skein of emotions a little so that you understand me. It's not just a question of writing beautifully, but that what I write has a meaning, although we all know that everyone is free to interpret as they please.

A few days ago I planned to write a few lines about Flow, the animated film that has some people wondering about its meaning. There are quite a few explanatory videos about it, and people, from their different fields of knowledge, have been trying to explain what may be inexplicable. Everyone is going to see something different there. What a great merit!

Hi @seki1, here I am, finally.

_{seki1 also wrote a review and I was looking forward to see the film, after reading it I was even more eager to see it. Here it is in case you want to check it out.}

We all have two opposites always whispering in our ear, but it is simply up to us to choose who to listen to.

With this Latvian film, directed by Gints Zilbalodis, it happened to me at a slow pace until I started to feel that I needed to give up... From the very beginning I wanted to understand everything, because the mind demands understanding, and 83 minutes were waiting for me in front of the screen. As they went on, my soul seemed to scream: live them!

I've spent the whole morning self-sabotaging myself. Thinking I wouldn't be able to say anything about Flow. And here I am finally busy sharing with you some of what I experienced.

I'm not here to say for the sake of saying, I always look to the act of writing as an outlet, a release exercise or a little chat to help me move forward in this process of acceptance and self-discovery. I need to be able to open myself to that other dimension but without forcing anything, I want it to happen in a perfect alignment between what I think, what I feel, what I say and what I do.

I have been seeing how situations emerge in my daily life that I have begun to see as tests, whose purpose is to verify if I have really learned something since I decided to improve myself. These are situations that I have to observe because if I look at them over time, they are nothing more than repetitions with different scenarios and people. It seems like something orchestrated to make me react and that's specifically what the challenge is about. I'm expected not to keep reacting the same way. And of course the triggers are deep and painful wounds that I am supposed to have healed or be in the process of healing.

_{meow miau 🤐}

There's a lot of that throughout Zilbalodis and Matiss Kaza's script, and the ending is the most mysterious, but I lived it according to my reality. That's why it's a marvel Flow in the sense that it has a lot of nested discourses or cyclical situations that the characters react to. I leave it to you to figure out how they do it. Although I don't rule out that before I end this post I'll share with you some of my considerations.

Instead of telling you about each character and what they embody for me, I would tell you that when you go to see this multi-award winning film you should do so with a small notebook by your side and write down what each of them makes you feel.

Today I asked myself, for example, why there are three characters that are unique: a cat, a capybara and a Leviathan. Maybe you have the same answer as me.

While watching this animation, which is actually a Latvian-Belgian-French co-production, I laughed at the things the animals did, a beautiful and innocent way of seeing myself, represented in them, I also suffered other moments... As for the cast... let me laugh again, there are several dogs but I liked that a Labrador retriever is one of the main characters. There are several lemurs with weird attitudes, but only one will be on the boat, with its weird attitudes. There are several secretary birds but only one is going to challenge what she considers to be wrong and evil in her house, even if she is defeated and brought to her knees by her equal. What's more, I love it when she reacts to inertia and it seems as if she says to herself: “this is my own life, I don't have to live someone else's”, and becomes the next crew member on the boat.

There are reindeer that run and shake the earth when something is about to happen and they also run in circles in one scene while the cat is dreaming. It seems to be a real behaviour of these animals. The film is full of images that I see as metaphors. That's why I tell you to live it, to feel it in the deepest part of your being, because every little thing will remind you of something in your life, and will show you the world in a very particular way.

Of course there are those who see an ecological sense in the film.

Water is going to be that element that will impose challenges, the house a safe zone, as later the boat will be, and then there are the attachments and those who save and those who care little about saving or being saved and there is someone who is wise enough to always be at peace, and there is the fear of the unknown and that constant desire to flee until you understand... oh, yes, you understand, the cyclical nature of things, that there is no death, but constant change and that flowing is what life is all about.

The eyes of the Leviathan in the final scene look like orbs. What do you see in that gaze? And what do you see in the gaze of those who discover that water is a mirror and that within it all fears were faced?

With these questions and waiting for more from you, I invite you to watch Flow if you haven't done so, and I hope it will be worth your time in front of the screen.