Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s mostly-animated documentary film “Flee” opens in a flurry of etches — charcoaled lines accompanied by orchestral strings. Together, they create the contours of figures running from something unknown but nonetheless terrifying. A Danish voice speaks and a quote appears: “Home is someplace safe. It’s somewhere you know you can stay, and you don’t have to move on.”
In the first minute of the film Rasmussen sets the tone, if the title doesn’t already give it away: This documentary is about running away — from political turmoil, inner turmoil and the past — and finding a place of physical and psychological refuge known as “home.”
“Flee” walks through these themes beautifully, not only in the visuals but in the sincerity of tone made possible by the animated format. It allows the real person behind the pseudonym of Amin Nawabi to tell his story. In an illustrated abstraction, Amin lays down on a tapestry and closes his eyes to reminisce on his childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan. In addition to being picturesque, this practice reflects a real radio documentary interview technique that Rasumssen employs to take his interviewees back to a particular moment.
And so we join him, at a time when home was still a simple, unsullied concept in the eyes of young Amin. A vibrant Kabul, 1984, is cheerful enough to be accompanied by a-ha’s “Take on Me,” and Amin runs through it with pink headphones over the ear and a light at the end of the tunnel: A kitchen cozied by the hearth of a mother’s voice and a gentle stroke to the hair (no one does it like her, Amin wistfully recounts).
A heartwarming setup like this in a movie called “Flee” is planted with an air of doom — only to be ripped to shreds, along with any chances of reclaiming such a simpler time. But it’s a setup necessary to paint the picture of loss that Amin goes through as he and his family hop from one corrupt regime to another in an attempt to make their way to someplace more stable in Western Europe.
Amin endures some horrors in his quest for stability: inhumane below-deck boat rides, harassment by the police and close brushes with death — either his own or others’— but the kicker here is he hasn’t been able to talk freely about any of them since his adolescence without risking his amnesty and livelihood in Denmark, the country where he eventually settles.
Amin’s rehearsed account of his family’s fate unravels quite explicitly once director Rasmussen makes a point to clarify a very important detail in Amin’s story: Are they dead or alive?
Where “Flee” sets itself apart from most documentaries is in its depiction of trauma. Hesitations in Amin’s retelling of his own story speak to the way parts of his past have been muddied and buried. These qualities of Amin’s memory pair well with the choppy, low-frame-rate animation, because the style resembles how someone would likely remember a repressed past such as his. Blurs of movement, images and sounds are seared into the mind despite one’s efforts to forget — and they come rushing back by way of a trigger or safe space.
Amin’s memories, while clouded, are nonetheless vivid. The animation provides a peek into Amin’s imagination, but the sounds are what make them feel real. Somber ambiance accompanies much of the rising action in Amin’s frenzied journey for solace, and Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo” becomes the anthem of his coming out celebration following a warm, supportive embrace by his older brother. Hand-in-hand with the score, sound designer Fredrik Jonsäter takes care to bring Amin’s voice to center stage, but doesn’t miss a beat with crisp snippets of pages turning in an old journal, camera clicks in the middle of the ocean, and background ambiance of all sorts. The most treasured of them all is perhaps the domestic shuffling (dishes clinking in the sink, a house cat meowing on the dining table, etc.) featured in Rasmussen’s interviews with Amin and his partner Kasper. They paint a picture of normalcy in Amin’s present day life that’s so heartbreakingly missing in most of his stories from the past.
Paired with the introduction of Amin’s once normal childhood in Kabul, cuts to Amin and Kasper make up the bread in the chaos sandwich that is Amin’s life thus far. Bread is bland, mostly, but at least it’s predictably bland. It holds things together, and without it the flavor of the sandwich can be overwhelming and perhaps even nauseating. Rasmussen’s choice to begin and end the film with metaphorical bread prompts us to appreciate the richness of Amin’s story in the context of the reliable blandness that much of the first world thrives on but takes for granted. Call this carby lifestyle what you want — cardboard, cookie-cutter, plain-old boring — but don’t forget the slippery essence (per bread metaphor, this would be yeast?) from which it solidifies: Home.
