FLOW - Mark Reviews Movies

Flow, Sideshow / Janus Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 21, 2024

The time of humanity seems to be finished in Flow, an animated adventure in which a group of unlikely animal companions team up to survive a great flood. Watching co-writer/director Gints Zilbalodis' film, one might think of how people often consider the inevitable end of human life on this planet to be the end of the world. Earth was fine enough on its own for billions of years before humanity emerged, and here's a reminder that the planet and other life on it will be fine—maybe even better—after we're all gone.

The absence of humans certainly doesn't bother the cat at the center of this story. It's perfectly content—contemplating its reflection in a puddle when we first meet the feline, wandering a forest somewhere in South America, hunting for food, outwitting and outmaneuvering a pack of wild dogs of assorted breeds.

The only good things humanity has left behind for the cat are a series of statues of cats, which our protagonist notes and occasionally rubs against, and a nice, comfy bed on the second floor of a cabin in the jungle. It once belonged to the sculptor of those monuments, and maybe the cat did, too, at one point—well, as much as any cat can belong to anything or anyone. They're generally independent little creatures, and this one, left mostly alone with only the irregular irritation and the freedom to do whatever it wants, doesn't need anything more.

There's a lot of time to contemplate the cat, the friends it makes on its forthcoming adventures, and the state of the world in which these creatures find themselves. Unlike so many other animated movies with a cast made up of animals, none of the characters here speak.

They meow and grunt and hiss and squawk and bark and purr, to be sure, but not a single sentence, phrase, or even word of a human language emerges from their mouths or is heard from within their minds. They're anthropomorphized to a certain degree, as the group figures out how to control the rudder of a sailboat in which they take shelter, a hoarding lemur stares into a mirror with the distant look some people have while staring into a reflective screen, and they seem to care for and protect each other in ways that likely go against their instincts for survival.

They look, move, and sound like real animals, though, rendered using a cel shading technique that gives these computer models the appearance and texture of traditional hand-drawn animation. It's a striking style, especially with these characters moving through and interacting with near-photorealistic backdrops, props, and, most importantly for a long stretch of the story, water.

It's a gorgeous piece of work, made with much attention to detail, a firm sense of style, and as much craft as any larger, more well-known animation studio. Technology can be the great equalizer in the modern realm of filmmaking, and here, one man—credited as director, co-writer, cinematographer, editor, art director, and co-composer—and a relatively small team of animators—compared to those bigger animation houses—have pulled off what a lot of major studios simply will not. They assume kids need flashy things, lots of jokes, and animal characters that speak, hopefully with the voices of big-name actors to help convince the adults to show up. Zilbalodis and his team prove all of that wrong. That alone makes this film something special.

It is beyond the pure concept of the piece, too, because here is a simple story, given plenty of life by way of its animal characters, simply behaving as animals, and a surprising amount of thought, with its presumably post-apocalyptic backdrop and the ways in which these characters do seemingly break from their natures. It's unlikely that a cat, a dog, a giant rodent, a carnivorous bird, and a lemur would get along as easily as they do in this story—or at all, for that matter. They do here, though, because their collective survival depends on it. That it's likely humanity couldn't figure out that notion before whatever happened to them before the start of this story should give us pause and a lot of thinking to do.

Again, the story, written by Zilbalodis and co-screenwriter Matīss Kaža, isn't much in terms of what happens. After meeting the cat during its usual routine, its way of life is upended by a sudden, massive wave of water. It sends a herd of deer racing past the cat, forces the feline to swim to various points of dry safety, floods the entirety of the forest, and keeps rising. The cat finds its way to higher and higher perches, but atop a giant statue of one its own species, the feline's luck seems to run out.

That's when it spots a sailboat, and with no other option left, the cat swims to it, climbs in, and finds a strange passenger aboard. It's a capybara, a large and friendly rodent, and soon enough, the boat also becomes a home to those other creatures—one member of the pack of dogs that chases the cat, a big flying bird that defends the feline from its hungry ilk, a lemur that's trying to save the best and shiniest of its possessions from the climbing waters. In its own way, the primate almost seems to have adopted some of the quirks of its absent evolutionary kin.

The plot basically amounts to a series of adventures, as the cat tries to get—not to mention trying to avoid becoming—food, the bird steers the boat through the ruins of civilization, and assorted visitors disrupt the balance of the group's sometimes tentative but necessary bond. It's exciting, surprisingly frightening (The cat really does grow on us almost instantly, because its behavior and personality are so recognizably, well, cat-like), and only possible within the medium of animation.

That's a matter of practicality, because of the logistics of an animal cast and the level of spectacle on display, but it's also one of intent. Flow is, after all, a fable in that timeless tradition of storytelling. This tale has something to say about humanity, even if and, on a fundamental level, because we are absent from it.

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