If there’s one thing the Internet has no conceivable shortage of, it’s cat videos. And if that endless supply of cat content has taught us anything, it’s that our feline friends are perhaps the most photogenic creatures on the planet. In creating Flow, which premiered at Cannes earlier this year, Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis and his animation partner Léo Silly-Pélissier add to that library with the most photographically stunning entry yet. Inspired by the endless appeal of their idiosyncratic behavior, personality, and movement, Zilbalodis tugs at our heartstrings with Cat, our nameless protagonist that we follow with a video game-like camera perspective.
With his second feature, the process started simply by reflecting on a personal journey in his studio’s philosophy of transitioning from standalone creativity to collaborative work in an expanded feature format. The creative solution? A cat learning to trust others for mutual survival. This sentiment on the surface is simple and elegant enough for a semi-compelling kid’s movie, but it’s the elevated artistry, meticulous attention to anthropomorphic detail, and soulful storytelling that takes Flow from an everyday moggy to a purebred best in show.
Cat lives in a human-less environment populated only by wildlife and the remnants of an abandoned civilization. In building out the world, hints are present that humans once inhabited this landscape–Cat’s home is full of manmade mementos ranging in scale from sketches to monuments, but no cause of abandonment is revealed as there’s no dialogue to tell us. The world is desolate yet breathtakingly rendered, leaving viewers to ponder humanity’s role in its own extinction and the natural world’s quiet resilience.
Although it’s hard to imagine that someone who builds a life-like mega-sculpture of their pet would leave them behind in any extreme scenario, it’s as if Cat’s owner simply disappeared with the rest of civilization. This disappearance is not without good reason as the tides begin to rush in at Biblical proportions. With the onset of a great flood invading their habitats, animals of various species are forced from their homes to find refuge on a boat–dogs scramble for safety, deer flee the not-so-distant rush, and Cat scurries between them all, more afraid of its competing genuses than any threat of an impending natural disaster. Tenuous alliances are formed and expressed with simple cues, a paw extended in trepidation, a flick of the tail in frustration, the soulful gaze of a kingdom on the brink of collapse.
This year has witnessed a wide variety of dystopian-set stories with their larger-than-life heroes and antagonists navigating the depths of various environmental and sociopolitical hellscapes–Furiosa vs. Dementus in a resource-stripped Australia, Noa vs. Proximus Caesar in a future world run by apes, and multiple bands of misfits against their war-torn worlds (see Zack Snyder and Eli Roth for details). It may come as a surprise that its most resilient survivor is a small black cat. Despite the perils of the ensuing adventure and an endless amount of falls off the edge of the boat, Cat always manages to get back on either with the help of its unlikely allies or sheer will.
What begins as a simple metaphor for embracing collaboration expands into a wider environmental parable. In following Cat, its fears, failures, and triumphs, Zilbalodis reveals our deeper subconscious concerns about uncertain climate futures. With extreme climate events like this flood occurring with increasing frequency and ferocity, our planet, and livelihood, are in undisputed danger. Flow traverses this fact through the animated expression of emotion.
Choice after choice in Zilbalodis’ toolkit is a means to this end. The hand-drawn fuzziness of the image adds a sentimental human touch that personalizes the audience’s connection to Cat’s plight. The lack of dialogue generates a broad appeal, perhaps claiming that expression and body language are the most universal languages. The spirituality of the film’s climax briefly stretches realit
y into a surreal, heavenly ascent. In response to these decisions, we have no choice but to perceive a connection to our collective climate mortality.
This isn’t just a story about survival; it’s about mutuality, resilience, and the unspoken bonds that form in times of crisis. An astonishing feat of visual storytelling that stems from the human fascination with recording our pets, Flow expands to contain multitudes of intersectional storytelling richness.
The most accomplished animated film of the year, Flow functions as a parable for collective action in the face of existential threats. It’s a reminder that even in the face of tremendous hazards, beauty, connection, and hope can thrive. If Cat can learn to cooperate with the likes of a lazy capybara, hyper-fixated lemur, and stubborn rudder-steering secretary bird, then maybe we can also overcome our differences in the spirit of joint survival. Our planet doesn’t have nine lives after all.
Review Courtesy of Danny Jarabek
Image Credit to UFO Distribution via IndieWire