The simple pleasures of Flow
Film Review: ‘Flow’
Review: Flow is low-key, yet everything you could want in an animated movie.
The “beast fable” genre is not new by any means. From Aesop to Zootopia, from Animal Farm to the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy, we humans have been telling stories about ourselves through animal characters for millennia. It’s both gratifying and eye-opening to see our human spats, big and small, depicted within an anthropomorphized animal kingdom.
Flow upends this mode by presenting a truly animal story, free of direct human projection. No people are seen and no dialogue is spoken; instead, the grunt of the capybara, for instance, is just as foreign to the audience as it is to the other animal characters. But somehow, in the wake of disaster, a hodgepodge of species and personalities come together for survival, and beyond that, companionship. It is within these unthinkable connections where Flow gets its joy, while its magic comes from a perfect blend of realism and touches of fantasy.
Flow’s first beauty is how it manages to suspend viewers’ disbelief. The circumstances of its world are unclear, but whatever rationalizing one tries to apply to the premise is quickly outmatched; the film refrains from fitting any natural order familiar to us. Species normally separated by continents live in close proximity, there’s some sort of whale-fish hybrid and, oh yeah, the bird gets raptured. To truly watch Flow, one must turn off their human brain and instead process the events of the plot as they happen, as an animal would.
Despite the absence of any human characters in Flow, its mysterious context uses that absence to worldbuild. People definitely lived on Flow’s Earth at some point recently, but when or why they all disappeared is left unknown. Once again, we viewers are in the same boat as the animals. When the cat goes back to their vanished owners’ rundown house, the cat might not perceive it anymore beyond animal habit, but it’s hard not to get teary-eyed. Regardless of the reason, or choice even, the humans had for leaving, this bit of backstory immediately sets the emotional stakes: the animals are left to their own devices on their confusing, flood-prone world.
Each animal in the movie has a distinct personality, which could be influenced by how people today perceive them; the cat is shy but playfully compulsive, the yellow Labrador is zealous but sweet and the whale-fish is a gentle giant. The plot moves as these animals cross species lines to interact, in the wild and free from human intervention, but under the mutual duress of natural disaster. Through the lessons they teach each other, the core set of animal characters develop impactful arcs over the course of the story.
And while I’ve made a point about no humans being in the story, the arcs these animals follow speak to a sort of collective mental evolution. By the end of Flow, the animals have moved past their primitive behaviors to a level of empathy and codependency rarely seen outside of mankind. In the animals’ bonds and emotional growth, human viewers can find their own lessons.
By gaining empathy, the animals also gain morality. Think about that – morality, existing in the natural world, a world that is based on an extremely fragile cycle of carnivorism and hierarchical strife? That’s unheard of. But maybe that morality is the answer to the harsh nature of Flow’s world.
The secretary bird character stands out in the story. They don’t really get involved with the other animals’ squabbles on their boat, instead choosing to steer the rudder. But, before joining the crew of creature sailors, they choose to defend the cat from their flocks’ unwarranted attack, sacrificing a wing in the fight. Because of this, the bird and the cat share a unique bond, and when they climb to the top of the stone pillars, the bird is lifted into the sky and disappears. Rapture?
Biblical or not, my theory is that the bird indeed gets transferred to a heaven-like plane of existence by some sort of higher power. After showing great bravery and compassion for a stranger of a different species, as well as being a benevolent caretaker of their less-appendicularly-able-to-man-the-rudder crewmates, the bird is rewarded with freedom from the flooded world. Perhaps the vanished human race demonstrated enough morality to be awarded with the same fate, and now it’s up to the animals to find that next step of consciousness too.
In a world of division, this element is simple, like the rest of Flow, but still hugely powerful. Without empathy and morality, we would be no better than animals. Nobody would be above dogs slurping up others’ food, or lemurs mesmerized by vanity. Tribalism is the foil to human utopia as animalism is the foil to natural symbiosis. So if the end of the world comes and we must drop cultural artifice for instinctual survival, it might be a good idea to understand mutual benefit.
Besides the blissfully understated but still massively enlightening story, Flow is a technical marvel. Largely masterminded by filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis and created in a free consumer 3D modeling program, it is a pure delight on the eyes and the ears. By far my favorite aspect of its production is the cinematography. Long, sweeping takes and crazy tracking shots combined with imitation handheld camerawork maximize the potential of computer animation while maintaining the grounded-ness found everywhere else in the film. Flow undoubtedly pushes the form, and it’s no wonder it won the Oscar.
If there is one word to describe Flow, it’s magical. Its simple, wordless filmmaking is effortlessly poignant. But even then, it’s an excellent and emotional adventure that will latch onto the hearts of animal lovers young and old within moments. There’s so much to love about Flow, and it’s a must-see from 2024.