Flee (2021)

I was not aware that a nearly fully animated feature with voice actors not all playing themselves could be called a documentary, tho some have come close. Waltz with Bashir may have been the first I saw that truly qualified. Anyway, I watched Flee partly to complete another year's worth of Academy Best Animated Feature nominees and partly because, on a flight where I had trouble hearing the dialog through earbuds, subtitles came in handy.

Amin (not his real name) lives in Denmark for quite some time without telling anyone, even his fiancé (not fiancée), what his life was like before. As the trauma interferes with his conviction to marry, he finally opens up to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen about how his family of six had to get away from the rigors of wartime Afghanistan and then Soviet Russia when he was a teen. For most of the story, they were not all together.

As you might have guessed, they did not exactly migrate by safe or legal means. Sparing you the details, it's clear that things could easily have gone much worse for Amin, but they still understandably caused a relentless anxiety. I'm less clear on how his experience hinders his ability to commit to a long-term relationship, but then, I never went through nearly the same ordeal, and even if I had, grief affects people in different ways.

That's putting aside Amin's sexual orientation, which matters a good deal more here than in another 2021 nominee. Scandinavia is the only region he spends any time in to have even a remote tolerance of gay lifestyles, and I'm not sure how much of that there was when he moved in. He certainly didn't count on his blood relatives' blessing.

Near as I can tell, the only reason to animate this picture was to let Amin speak in his own voice without showing his actual face. I dunno; maybe it also made him feel better about the familial facsimile. It doesn't add colorfulness or affect the mood. No moment would be difficult to depict in live action. The portraits are pretty realistic, but with a low frame rate, it barely even passes for animation much of the time.

As high as the ratings for Flee are, I think we all knew the Academy wouldn't give it a statuette in a category dominated by kid-friendly fare. That said, I am kinda glad for its nomination, if only for getting a serious personal true story into the mainstream. Not that I can think of a sixth major competitor for the year.