[Spoiler Alert] Okay, so if you finished watching Netflix’s The Great Flood, then you might remember the ending sequence where the mother and the kid, that is, An-na and Ja-in, respectively, were eventually reunited with each other in the water. I know this wasn’t a real scene but a part of the digital construct that the real An-na had created before dying. But the question I want to raise here is, why did An-na choose the flooded water as the last checkpoint of her simulated reality? Well, there was actually a reason for that. If you had noticed, every time An-na fell into water, a tragic incident from the past flashed before her eyes. A few months ago, An-na and her family met with a tragic accident. An-na was behind the steering wheel, while her husband was sitting on the back seat with their adopted android kid, Ja-in. Now the film didn’t reveal what exactly happened, but we found out that An-na fell into water and drowned her husband. He was trying to save their kid, Ja-in, but his legs got stuck in the car, and he wasn’t able to make it out alive. I guess An-na blamed herself for her husband’s death and might even have developed a fear of water that destroyed her perfect life. I believe this was the reason why An-na never allowed Ja-in to learn swimming or go near water. The film began with Ja-in requesting his mother to take him swimming, but An-na just ignored his wishes because she feared losing her child the same way she lost her husband. In short, water became one of the obstacles in An-na’s life that was stopping her from transforming into a better version of herself. Maybe, it unknowingly had distanced her from her child, and somewhere in the back of her head, she knew that she had to one day face her fears to become a better mother to Ja-in, which I believe convinced An-na to keep this “flooded water” as their last meeting point in the simulator.
However, other than this, the water acts as a recurring motif throughout the film. It represents nature’s fury as well as the basis of human existence. If you have a cursory knowledge of human evolution, then you know that life on planet earth originated from water. We as humans too are made of more than 70 percent water, and all living beings need water to sustain themselves. Basically, without a clean source of water, humanity is doomed. So we need water, but in the film, it was the water that marked the end of all living beings. So maybe through this motif, the film’s trying to say that the same element that can give life can also take it away. And I know that it was an asteroid that destroyed all living beings in the film, but as humans, their actions are no different. In the race to evolution, we have started to exploit the resources at our disposal, thereby creating immense pressure on the planet. Yes, we are the ones responsible for climate change, and even though we haven’t yet been hit by a meteorite in real life, our actions have raised the global temperature that is slowly melting the glaciers and increasing the sea level across the globe. Soon the entire planet will be flooded with water, and we literally will have to find a way to escape from here.
Coming back to the film, if you had noticed that the mother and the child androids were created inside a glass tank filled with a liquid, which I want to believe was water. And therefore, in the case of these synthetic humans as well, water can be seen as an element of birth, which isn’t much different than the birth of real humans. There was one brief sequence in the film where a pregnant woman’s water broke before she gave birth to her child, hinting at the association of childbirth with water. However, our lead protagonist, An-na, has never experienced water in such a way. The reason? It was because An-na didn’t give birth to Ja-in. He was created in a lab. Hence, even though An-na was a mother, she hadn’t experienced childbirth, limiting her association with water to fear, death, and destruction. But this journey to find her missing child made her realize that water can be much more than that. It is both an element of birth and destruction. This was further highlighted during the scene when Ja-in, even though he was an android, drowned in water; however, An-na brought him back to life by mixing salt (or maybe sugar) with orange juice.
So I think their virtual reunion inside the water did have a deeper meaning in the film. It was the water, that is, the great flood, that had separated them, and in the end, it was the water that brought them together. In a way, it filled the gaps in An-na’s life that she had failed to overcome while she was alive, and once she outgrew her fears, she eventually became a complete mother, who was ready to face every obstacle that tried to harm her child. Well, the question here is, will An-na’s newfound courage be helpful in the new setup? We know that by the time these androids return to Earth, almost 90 percent of the surface will be flooded with water, so are these synthetic beings prepared to adapt to a changed environment? I think the answer is a yes, and the simulation we saw throughout the movie was created just to prepare their androids to adapt to the challenges that they will face once they return to Earth. So, these are my thoughts on the symbolization of water in the film, but if you have anything to add, please do share it with me in the comments below.
