Of "Flee" I Sing
A Danish film about an Afghan refugee packs an animated wallop
The Nut Graf1: āFlee,ā in theaters and available for VOD rental, is an emotionally overwhelming refugeeās tale told via animation that renders it both universal and unique. (**** stars out of ****)
Why is it that animating a true story can give it more power than simply filming it? āFlee,ā one of the best films of 2021 and a likely Oscar candidate for both animation and documentary (the nominations are announced next Tuesday), is the latest in a hybrid genre that has historical precedence but that has heated up in recent years, thanks to films like āWaltz for Bashirā (2008) and āTowerā (2016). The explosion of post-āMausā graphic-novel memoirs has also fed into the movement, from Marjane Satrapiās āPersepolisā (made into a 2007 film) and Alison Bechdelās āFun Homeā (which became a 2015 Tony Award-winning musical).
āFlee,ā in theaters since January and now available as a $6 rental on Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube, and elsewhere, fits comfortably with this company while standing on its own as a heartbreaking, nerve-wracking, ultimately uplifting story of one manās odyssey to freedom. Amin Nawabi is not his real name and one of the reasons āFleeā is animated is because he didnāt want to be filmed, but the movieās hero becomes a specific man rather than a symbol as his story unfolds: An Afghan child whose airline pilot father was disappeared by the government, an adolescent refugee marooned for over a year with his family in Moscow, a survivor of human trafficking not once but twice, a solitary teenage Ć©migrĆ© in Denmark forced to deny his familyās existence. A gay man born into a culture in which he doesnāt exist.
In a blocky yet elegant animation style that turns frighteningly abstract in moments of stress, Amin tells his story to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, a friend since high school and a gently inquiring presence onscreen. Thatās Aminās voice we hear on the soundtrack, and Rasmussen depicts his subject from above, lying in close-up against a richly patterned rug: Itās a therapy session, and a confessional, too. Mixing animation and sometimes brutal archival news footage, āFleeā traces a journey from late 1980s Kabul, where the last proxy convulsions of the Cold War were playing out (and where the US was backing the mujahideen, helping to create what became the Taliban), to a post-Soviet Moscow of rapacious police thugs, to a Copenhagen of isolation and fear. The transitions from one place to another are the most agonizingly tense moments, including a harrowing nighttime crossing to Estonia and a crossing of the Gulf of Finland in an overcrowded boat. The latter sequence features an encounter with a cruise ship that places the Westās haves, their cameras flashing away on the upper deck, in damning proximity to the worldās have nots.
Rasmussen alternates these scenes with moments of Amin in his present life in Copenhagen, with a loving Danish husband, Kasper, who throughout the film is noodging him to house-hunt and settle down in the country. Amin, meanwhile, is considering relocating to Princeton, NJ, to complete his post-doctoral studies, and the partnersā differing visions of their future creates an anxiety thatās mild in comparison to the horrors of Aminās past. But thatās partly the point: Amin is uncomfortable going on house tours because he knows āhomeā is something that can be violently wrenched away. The trauma of having oneās roots yanked up by force reappears as a fear of putting down new ones.
If watching āFleeā feels like a catharsis, making it seems to have been more so. The rest of Aminās siblings ā except for his mother and one brother who remained stuck in Russia for several more years ā had found asylum in Sweden, but for two decades Amin chose to live the lie that he was an orphan, for fear that he (or they) might be deported back to Russia or, worse, Afghanistan. In telling his story to Rasmussen, heās unburdening his soul to a friend but also coming out of a different kind of closet, one built by politics and borders and Western meddling and war.
He had stealth visits to Sweden over the years, though, and āFleeā dramatizes the first reunion as one of the most emotionally powerful moments in the movie. Throughout his life, Amin had hidden his sexuality from his family, keeping his childhood crush on Jean-Claude van Damme a secret (although he imagines the martial arts star mischievously winking at him from a bedroom poster). In Stockholm, there are loving sisters and a much older brother who has become the patriarch in the wake of their fatherās death, and there is a moment of held breath as everyone pressures Amin about girlfriends. And then there is a moment that I wonāt spoil but that simply gives a viewer hope for the human race and that is worth the price of admission to āFleeā on its own.
Would the movie have worked so well as a filmed documentary rather than an animated one? I donāt think so. The graphic style ā the way Amin is cartooned ā genericizes him just enough so that his story becomes representative of the modern refugee experience while allowing him to retain his individuality as a person and honoring the specificity of what he endured. (It also makes Amin look a little like a character from the old āClutch Cargoā TV series, an observation that need only concern other gray-headed sixty-somethings.) āFleeā is a recounting of one manās life made visible to all of us lucky enough to live on the upper decks. The animation makes it go down easier ā the better to jam in our throats.
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