'Flowers' - An Afro-Futuristic Fairytale
Dumas Haddad’s directorial effort for Flowers is a luscious form of cinematic storytelling that maximizes its visual flair to paint a vivid piece of classic fairytales from an Afro-futuristic perspective. A captivating piece that challenges the viewer to reflect on their preconceived notions of the well-known fairytales they were accustomed to seeing, Flowers showcases a world where the themes of love and family are prevalent throughout a black familial unit. To me, a film is truly cinematic when it takes advantage of all aspects of filmmaking, such as in acting, costume design, cinematography, sound design, score, etc. And Haddad’s efforts along with the rest of the cast and crew cannot go unnoticed as they make the most of every opportunity to add depth to classic stories and tropes in a modern coming-of-age tale.
This narrative landscape is vibrant in its art direction, costume, and production design that creating a sense of wanderlust that invites the viewer to get lost in this world. Olan Collardy’s cinematography uses each scene as a vignette that is its own introspection of the characters that inhabit these frames, with all the shots being static and invoking essences of paintings or photographs that you’d see hanging up in a museum.
The story itself revolves around the ceremony of a mother letting her son go in search of his beloved, a simple premise that uses simple techniques to get its point across. The small cast of the mother, Prince, Brother, and Princess are all silent characters who are driven by the comforting narration that doesn’t get tired or expository, as it goes the route of hearing this fairytale being read to you from a children’s book. The actors themselves come alive through their expressions and contrasting colors, with everyone standing out and feeling fleshed out with their internal thoughts being conveyed externally through their costumes and color symbolism.
Speaking of which, the colors and their symbolism is what spoke to me the most. In a story where none of the characters are talking and were accompanied by the narration and sound design, the use of warm and vibrant primary colors is juxtaposed beautifully well against their environments. From the comfortable tranquility of the home where the family resides where the sunlight warms the ebony skin of its inhabitants, to the cold and foggy harshness of the forest area where the Prince is lost and afraid. This contrast illuminates a world where our hero ventures out into the unknown in search of his Princess.
As Haddad puts it himself, “the film reclaims the magic of that time we are all so familiar with: imagining what a black fairy-tale would look and feel like, by inverting and adapting age-old themes of fairy-tale lore.” From that, you can’t help but ponder all the stories we’ve heard of before that are so ingrained within our culture as they majorly hail from a Eurocentric background. Yet seeing this film as it challenges those very standards of storytelling, showing that any person of color can fit in these feelings. And shouldn’t they? These stories and their themes are meant to be universal, as love and family are not exclusive to one background.
What Dumas Haddad achieves here is a great case of world-building and his visionary capabilities in adapting fairytales in a contemporary world that reflects the current people that live in it. Credit must be given to how well translated this piece is and its influences are done so well that I would believe that this story is laying in some old children’s book from a long time ago.