Flow

2024 | Directed by Gints Zilbalodis

On the surface, Flow is an animated film about a group of animals trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where the water level rises rapidly. However, the brilliance of this simple story, completely devoid of dialogue (at least dialogue in any human language) and any clear final goal, is that it is so full of suggestion. Without a word of spoken dialogue, it manages to evoke ideas of abandonment, cooperation, and hope through imagery and the actions of its animal characters.

A cat lives alone in a human-made house surrounded by statues and drawings of itself, suggesting a human caretaker who used to worship the animal, but is now nowhere to be found. It doesn’t take long for a giant wave to flood the surrounding forest and eventually swallow the house. The cat barely escapes, managing to find its way onto a small boat occupied by a lone capybara. Already, a lot has been conveyed through the animation. There are a lot of animals in the forest, including a pack of stray dogs, and clear signs of human habitation that has been abandoned for some time. When the water comes, the viewer might draw the conclusion that the humans knew it would come and evacuated the area in advance, leaving only the animals. Or, perhaps, they fell to some more violent fate.

Where the humans have gone is never made clear, and the film wouldn’t have benefited from such explicitness. It’s not important, and the background mystery simply adds another layer to the plot, following the growing crew of animals aboard the drifting boat. The film moves at a constant, comfortable pace, while the water flows toward an unknown destination, taking drifting boats carrying animals and schools of colorful fish with it. Where in the world, if even in our world, these events take place is never made clear. There are animals from all over the world present, exotic fruit and auroras exist side by side, perhaps because of global warming and human interference, or perhaps because this story exists outside our understanding of time and place.

The animation captures the beauty, mystery, and melancholy of this world, showcasing the recently abandoned ruins of human civilization, nature regaining lost territory, and the sheer mystery of the water and the world itself. And there’s a lot of mystery in Flow, regarding the fate of the world and what’s going to happen once the flowing water reaches its final destination. Then there’s the beauty of the animals (most of them) overcoming their differences and cooperating. They are, after all, literally in the same boat. There are a lot of parallels to draw from this, but I’ll leave that up to you.

I thoroughly recommend Flow to anyone looking for a journey into a strange yet familiar world full of questions that you are allowed to answer yourself. Or to anyone looking for a movie with both cute animals and a story that respects its viewers.