[93/100] *Flow* is, somehow, one of the most suspenseful movies I’ve ever seen. On paper, nothing in particular is at stake. But the power of the film is that it makes a standoff between two secretarybirds, a capybara escaping from a sailboat lodged in a tree, and every time a certain dark gray cat finds itself splashing about in deep, rushing water feel like the absolute end of the world.
One of the subtle themes of the film is the power of nature. Our animal characters are battered about by what feel like epochal forces. Waters rise to unfathomable heights and remake the landscape as they recede. Ethereal beams erupt down from above and erase the normal laws of both physics and metaphysics in one fell swoop. Massive, impossible creatures swim the seas, run aground on land, and find their way to grand oceans once more.
Through all of the film’s adventures, there is an abiding sense that grander things are happening, and have happened, beyond the scope or understanding of the humble creatures we follow. The little critters making their way through this sumptuous but perilous world feel miniscule by comparison.
And yet, somehow, that just makes their ordinary, animal kingdom drama feel all the more important and meaningful against that grandiose backdrop. All these creatures have is their own lives. So much is beyond them, so far outside their control as to be the work of capricious gods. But that context makes their individual challenges -- to stay together, to look after one another, to stay alive and afloat despite everything going on around them -- feel that much more precious.
Part of that is because, despite the animals never speaking a single word, each of them has such personality. The film’s beastly stars walk the perfect line between anthropomorphized just enough to have intentions and emotions that are recognizable to the human audience, while also having behaviors and bearings that feel true to the real life animals they’re based on.
The peak of this is the film’s star, a dark gray feline who is captivating at every turn. The furry protagonist’s actions and reactions will feel instantly recognizable to any cat owner. The way it scratches, leaps, mews, bats, scampers, nuzzles, hides, and even coughs up hairballs gives the animal just enough verisimilitude to make the creature seem real and thus the life-and-death stakes feel heart-rending.
But at the same time, this cat is smarter and more perceptive, not quite crossing into the territory of a Disney animal sidekick, but evincing enough subtly human traits that the cat feels like a character on an adventure, not just the subject of a nature documentary.
The same is true for the rest of the film’s players. The labrador retriever has a goofy little brother energy that walks the line between silly dog and pestersome but good-natured sibling. The secetarybird exudes a sense of majesticness and nobility, but also a certain pride and even a bit of tragedy. The capybara is lackadaisical but capable, an able little cinnamon bun that's immediately endearing. And the lemur is a fascinated hoarder, protective of its stuff in humorous ways, but also sympathetic in the way all these other manic critters are disrupting his collection.
All of them are believable, whether they’re all clambering up some rocky structure in a way that befits their various species, or engaging in actions like steering the rudder or pulling a sailboat closer to the cliff that require a level of intelligence and industriousness most members of the animal kingdom don’t possess.
That's augmented by the movie’s stellar animation and beautiful imagery. The film uses a cell-shaded, simplified look for its animals, which calls to mind the likes of *Untitled Goose Game*. But it marries that look with an array of wonderfully-realized animalistic movements. The birds flap and swoop in recognizable ways. The gargantuan whale swells and leaps with a tremendous weight and form. The pack of dogs bound and get rowdy like real canines.
And most of all, the starring cat is a little marvel. Not only does it slink and scamper and arch its body in ways that will strike any frequent feline observer as impressively accurate. It has such an expressive face, with eyes that tell the tale of its feelings without ever having to say a line, and its little ears shooting up or laying flat or fluttering to show the mood of the animal. The kitty’s animations and expressiveness alone are worth the price of admission, and are a big part of what makes those perilous moments feel so viscerally harrowing.
But at the same time the film takes a stylized approach to its animal characters, it sets them against a stunningly real, but no less gorgeous array of settings and environments. The film’s backdrops call to mind the game *Shadow of the Colossus*, with breath-taking remnants of ancient civilizations left to ruin and in the process of being reclaimed by nature.
The movie is rife with natural beauty, in verdant forests, endless seascapes, and labyrinthian structures that tower in the distance. Aside from providing for picturesque visuals on its own, those more realistically-framed locales help make the existence of the stylized characters within them feel that much more precarious from the contrast.
They also provide a sense that nobody else is there to save our heroes. There is, admirably, never any clarity as to where the people are. Everything from a cozy little cabin to incredible monuments suggest the intervention of a human hand. And yet, whether from floods or natural disasters or destruction of our own making, the people are gone and their absence is keenly felt. It adds to the sense that our heroes are on their own, picking up the pieces we left behind and making their way through worlds not meant for them, but which are increasingly becoming theirs once more.
So it makes it all the more endearing when these animals come to depend on one another. The film takes on the same spirit as the “Town Musicians of Bremen” fairytale from the Brothers Grimm, a travelogue where one ambling animal eventually collects a crew of them that becomes their own little band, in more ways than one. Seeing the cat befriend the retriever, cross paths with the secretarybird, fall into a boat with the capybara, and run across the lemur’s hideout, until, suddenly, the lot of them have become a unit, is one of the most heartening things in the film.
Only, sometimes, it’s a little fractious. That's what makes it feel extra funny, extra relatable, and extra sentimental when things go well or poorly. These are different animals with different dispositions. The possessive lemur doesn’t like the capybara nosing around its stuff. The proud secretarybird doesn’t like the rowdy pooches rumbling around their little vessel. The independent cat doesn’t like the energetic retriever following and imitating its feline counterpart. This is an uneasy alliance of necessity, which makes the hard-won camaraderie that emerges despite the hardships feel earned.
Despite the sense in which these creatures are wiser, more human than their real life counterparts, they also come with a certain innocence and naivete. Despite their skills and survival instincts, they are often in over their heads, sometimes literally. Watching the cat nearly drown over and over again will leave your heart in your throat. Seeing it caught in a stampede of deer, snatched up by predatory birds, potentially stranded in far-flung places all keeps you gripping your chair and murmuring “Oh no!” to this fictional pile of fur and pixels.
In other words, director Gints Zilbalodis plays his audience’s emotions like a fiddle. It’s easy to feel for animals in peril as a baseline, and *Flow* certainly takes advantage of that. But it also crafts these sequences for maximum drama, with friendships tested and multiple creative ways of making you worried about the feline’s fate, despite savvy viewers rationally knowing it’s unlikely even a bold film like this one would let its furry hero perish.
Those pulse-pounding threats, the epic feeling of the journey, and the sense that our kitty protagonist is cosmically blessed to return to safety all make the eventual reunion and refuge warm the heart something fierce. You get the sense of the cat and its allies caught up in some kind of grand cycle, one that has long predated them, potentially wiped away their human counterparts, and will long outlast them. There is a rise and fall of this planet that cares not for the struggles of the living creatures that inhabit it, be they of fin, wing, or paw.
That makes it all the more precious when our motley collection of animals find a place together within it nevertheless. The recurring motif of reflections is cause to rethink and reevaluate. They don’t just see themselves; they see each other, because that's what it took to survive such grandiose forces acting upon them in ways massive and unpredictable. You feel for them, in so many little moments that seem like they could end it all for these humble but endearing creatures. And it makes it so wonderful, and instructive, when despite their differences, they come together in a time of great change and great need, and find something wholesome worth holding onto in one another.
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