"FLOW" - Movie Review

Through a fantasy-adventure tale set in the animal kingdom, “FLOW” teaches countless lessons that we humans struggle to articulate, all without the utterance of a single syllable.  The movie has been steadily gaining buzz and just won the Academy Award for best animated feature.  I clicked on it a few weeks ago when it flashed across my Max home screen with the “Oscar Nominee” tag and the face of a cartoon black cat – with giant yellow eyes that are purposely drawn to be both exaggerated and expressive.

I love cats, and I don’t believe there has been a movie about animal friendship that I HAVEN’T enjoyed.  I had some free time, so I clicked to start “FLOW” and ended up on an unexpected journey through watching this unique and mesmerizing film.  There isn’t a single line of dialogue or narration, just ambient noise (lots of water flowing) and nature/animal sounds.  The filmmakers obviously did their research regarding how the species that were featured move and sound. The movie opens with the confusion of animals and birds seeming to rush inland, which we soon find out was due to an approaching tsunami.  

The cat narrowly avoids getting trampled by a running herd of deer and gets a little bit ahead of the approaching water to find “home,” which actually has several giant cat statues directly outside.  It’s not entirely clear whether these are truly carvings done by an owner who is obsessed with his/her pet, or rather just projections from the mind of the character. After an exhausting day of being chased by dogs and outrunning more floodwater, our protagonist curls up safely in bed.

The cat wakes up in a room that would likely be its regular sleeping location – an attic sunroom with a bed and a drawing of the cat nearby, where one can assume that the owner would have been waking up next to the cat if the owner had been home.  The ambiguity is one of the beautiful things about the film.  Without a single human in sight, and without providing any backstory about how the world ended up in the impending flood-ravaged apocalyptic state, the viewer is left to be truly immersed in the journey of the main character, whom I will continue to refer to alternatively as both “the protagonist,” and the “the cat,” since we don’t know its gender.

One of the great parts of watching “FLOW” is that the ambient and nature sounds relax the mind. I briefly wondered if we would get to find out why the owner wasn’t home or shown (on a business trip or vacation, or perhaps ran to escape the tsunami and couldn’t find the cat?)  However, I soon forgot all about this and settled into the relaxing rhythm of the rushing water and the story unfolding on the screen.  At its core, “FLOW” is a story of unlikely friendships between different species who band together to survive on a boat that has washed ashore, and this twist of fate is foreshadowed by the fact that the dog who was chasing the cat the day before is the same dog that barks at sunrise to warn our protagonist that there is more water coming.

The animation is rudimentary by today’s CGI-filled standards, but this is absolutely part of the charm of the movie.  The focus remains on the animals’ interactions with one another and their environment – not on whether every hair looks smooth.  One of the best parts of settling into this movie is that it will keep you guessing.  Our protagonist constantly experiences the intensity of trying to avoid drowning and not knowing which fellow species can be trusted, especially once the cat boards a ship that is floating by, thanks to the tsunami bringing in debris from the ocean. The adventure really begins when the cat jumps onto the boat and finds a sleeping capybara on board. While both are initially startled, the two quickly begin to trust one another and understand that they have a common goal of surviving the flood.

A very large “secretary bird,” something I had never heard of before watching this film, almost snatches the cat off the ship and carries it off to what would be a sad conclusion.  Our protagonist does end up in the claws of one of these large white birds, but luckily the flock is in a state of agitation due to the tsunami and drops the cat back onto the ship.  As they awaken from a nap, the cat and the capybara realize that there is a lemur aboard the ship with them. They don’t quite trust the lemur at first, but all 3 mammals soon realize – in a way that is somehow conveyed through only the body language and eyes of the characters – that they are “in this together.”

Three animals become four when they take on one of the secretary birds that had its wing damaged and can’t fly with the rest of the flock.  There is apprehension in the eyes of our protagonist as the capybara steers the ship toward some stranded dogs, including the one who had first antagonized the cat but ultimately assisted in its survival thanks to the warning barks.  The dogs easily board the ship since the water is no longer rushing, but all are in need of some sustenance after a few days of floating.  This is the point at which our protagonist faces a fear of water to catch fish for the group, constantly diving under the surface and bringing back fish in the middle of a rainstorm.

When they finally reach dry land and get off of the boat for a short time, the secretary bird flies up toward the sky in a vortex of evaporating water in a whimsical sequence in which the cat meows a longing goodbye to an unlikely friend.  Our protagonist re-boards the ship as the water begins to recede, and the animals end up in the same forested area in which the movie opened.  There is a poignant scene with a beached whale struggling to breathe and unlikely to survive much longer.  The cat senses this and curls up against its face while purring as the others (the lemur, the capybara, and the main dog) look on wistfully.  The film closes with those three and our protagonist staring at their reflections in a river, undoubtedly reflecting upon their unlikely friendship.

This movie can only be truly enjoyed with devices put away so that the viewer can come along with the cat on an immersive journey of survival and friendship. Bravo to the filmmakers for creating a movie so captivating that viewers are willing to take a break from their phones for almost two hours. In a world where there are more external distractions competing for our attention every millisecond, this wordless wonder of a film just may be the peaceful escape that we had no idea we needed.