Flow (2024) Review and Analysis

Sunday March 09th, 2025

Tags: archive, cats, movies, review

I'm not super into movies, generally. I'm not saying that to be contrarian jerk, there are just entertainment media that work better for my specific brain. My primary interest is games, and then after that, books. Then video essays, movies, comics, blogs, and finally TV. So movies are pretty high up there, they're just not my go-to.

When I do watch movies, I prefer animation over live action, and I prefer the dialogue to be sparse and naturalistic. Basically I want a movie to be as far as possible from the uncanny artifice of a stage play. What people who make movies ("Hollywood") think people want to see other people pretend to do in a movie typically holds very little interest for me. Movie dialogue is less interesting than a book, which engages my imagination. Action set pieces are duller in movies than in games, where I'm not just observing but participating in the action. What I want from a movies is naturalistic or surreal storytelling that engages me through primarily visual means.

I'm also not trying to be a jerk when I say I initially dismissed Flow as "another indie cat thing". We've seen a spate of indie games with cat protagonists recently, many of which feature a "cozy" aesthetic: The Good Life, Stray, Little Kitty Big City, Calico, Cat Quest, Catlateral Damage, etc. I don't think these games are bad, and many of them are on my "to-play" list, there's just a lot of them, there's too much new stuff all the time to keep up, and since I'm not that interested in movies, I mentally filed Flow as Another One of Those. Not out of spite or apathy, but because I'm being bombarded with information all the time, and I need heuristics lest my brain become overloaded and my head explode like some sort of zany 1980s movie robot.

Anyway, through osmosis I started learning facts about Flow that made me realize it might be exactly the kind of movie for me. The director had only made small solo films before. They don't have dialogue. He's been animating since he was 16. Flow is his first major feature-length film, and it has not only no dialogue but no human characters at all. It was animated entirely in Blender and rendered on the director's personal computer.¹ Despite all this, it won the academy award for best animated film.

Now, I put no stock whatsoever in industry awards; the gulf between what the academy cares about and what I care about is so wide you could drive two container ships through it.² But when a movie totally out of left field win a big award, it's usually a sign I'm going to like it. I'm probably the most cynical about the "best animated feature" award, because it might as well be called "the award for whatever made Disney the most money last year". Like, what movies did Disney and DreamWorks release? Those are your nominees. What was the most successful Disney movie? That's your winner. Time after time beautiful, unique, mature animated films are glossed over and often not even nominated to make room for more Disney slop. It's nauseating.

So when a movie bucks all the "Oscar movie" trends and wins, it's usually because it's so good it's impossible to ignore.³

To be honest, bringing a black cat into our family is what clinched it. Someone made a movie about Sunny? I have to see it. Gints Zilbalodis, the director, has made a point of specifying that the poster cat in Flow isn't black, it's dark gray. I don't think this is out of any kind of anti-black-cat bias,⁴ I think it's just the pragmatism of a filmmaker: if the cat was truly black, it would be too hard to see. As someone who's now taken more photos of a black cat than I've ever taken of anything, I get it. Even with my fancy new phone camera with all the HDR and low-light compensation, she can still appear to be a black hole from which no light can escape. Her facial features in particular aren't always easy to make out, and in a movie where all communication is through facial and body language, that's important.

Anyway, Flow is brilliant. The animations are incredible. It's the best-looking 3D CGI film I've seen in, well, possibly ever. It eschews the photorealism of bigger-budget 3DCG in favor of a more impressionistic look that (1) actually looks like animation, and (2) shows animals that are more lifelike and "real" than reality. The score is phenomenal. The sound design is perfect. The story is incredible, all the more so for being conveyed entirely without words. It transcends genres and cultures. It's a masterpiece.

You should watch it, and you should go in knowing nothing else about it. It's currently only streaming on HBO Max, but there are plenty of folks out there willing to lend you a digital copy. You just have to do a little soul-searching. (I intend to get the DVD once it's available.)

I'm going to give my analysis of the movie below, and spoil everything, so read on only if you've watched the film.

Sunny Interlude

Sunny fact: she's a quarter bat on her mother's side.

Analysis ⚠️Spoilers⚠️

Flow is a movie about cultures clashing in the face of ecological crisis. One of these cultural battles has already taken place: the humans have been gone for a long time. The only physical evidence remaining is the ruins, the objects, the artifacts. There are no bodies or bones to be seen. It's clear from the boats hanging from trees that the flood has happened before, and took humanity with it. It's not as clear-cut as death by drowning, however. There's something mystical happening.

Animals are central to the cosmology of this universe. The rural culture recognized their importance, and lived lives of simple joy inspired by the animals around them. It's clear that they lived in a peaceful egalitarian society, because they had much time to devote to great works honoring the animals they lived with. In contrast, the urban culture spurned nature and lived in great cities, separate from and in defiance of the animal spirits that protect them. They started worshiping themselves, and this is reflected in the only human form seen in the entire movie: A great statue of a person, submerged except for the head and one uplifted arm, reminiscent of Ozimandias' half-sunken visage. The floods are their divine retribution.

When the movie begins, a second cultural battle is in progress, this one among the animals. Each animal species embodies one of the fatal flaws of homo sapiens: the secretary birds, whose wings give them natural dominion over the other animals, represent our lust for power and violence. The lemurs, whose cleverness and dextrous paws let them manipulate the objects left behind, represent our materialism and vanity. The capybara, who can swim well enough to weather the floods and subsist indefinitely on the plentiful fruit, represents our apathy and complacency. The dogs, who are loyal but short-sighted, represent our impulsiveness and inability to look to the future. The cat, who stands alone, represents our fear and solipsism. The deer, who are there when the floods come and when they subside, represent nature, both good and bad; the overwhelming force, the great abundance, and the indifference to creatures who get swept up in the waves. The "whales"... I have a theory about them, which I'll get to later.

Each of the central characters is an outcast in some way. The cat and the capybara are solitary by nature. The dog got separated from her pack. The peaceful secretary bird giving the cat a fish is taken as a sign of weakness, so it was cruelly beaten and cast out of the flock, its wings battered and rendered unusable. The lemur is desperate to collect trinkets and gain the acceptance of his kind, but upward mobility in a property-based hierarchy is a myth. The ones who accumulated wealth first make the rules.

It is their differences that make them come together, and it is their differences that make them the only ones who can stop the floods for good. We see in the background huge, ancient stone spires, older than any of the ruins that surround them. We see the cat dream of being in a strange stone labyrinth at the center of the spires, encircled by innumerable deer. The cat is the POV character, but I think the other animals also dream of this place. The outcasts are all drawn towards it. It's important. They don't know exactly why, but they know their survival depends on it. The other animals are too absorbed in their petty power struggles; if they dream of this place, they're unable to see its significance.

As the unlikely heroes come together, they slowly grow to trust each other, rely on each other, and learn from each other. The cat is shown kindness and learns to trust the other animals. She learns to swim by watching the capybara, and catching fish becomes key to her own and the dogs' survival. The capybara learns that they can't just drift about aimlessly, they have to take the rudder and gain control over their destinies. The lemur learns that his value isn't defined by the objects he holds, or the acceptance of the elite, but his relationship with the animals around him. The dog learns to control her impulses, and that saving her friends is more important than chasing the rabbit. The secretary bird learns that, although it was badly hurt and exiled by its own kind, it is worthy of love, and so are the animals around it.

When the bird finally reaches the labyrinth, and is drawn up into the northern lights, it showed the spirits courage, kindness and compassion above and beyond its nature. It's given back its flight, and is drawn into the other world, presumably an animal paradise. It will soar above the clouds and look over the others forevermore. Satisfied, the spirits withdraw their judgment and let the flood waters recede.

As the water drains, our heroes have one final crisis to overcome, safely navigating the plunging depths, which they do with the power of courage and teamwork. In the final scene, the animals discover the sea creature who helped them along the way, the whale or sea monster or leviathan. It's stranded, unable to get back to a body of water and not long for this earth. The animals show it respect and heart-wrenching tenderness. I'm tearing up again thinking about it.

The whales, I think, are us. That's why there are no human bodies or bones, no overflowing cemeteries and crematoria, no sign that we were in any danger whatsoever. That's why they're not just whales, but strange abominations, the only animal of supernatural origin in the film. The humans didn't die, and I don't think they simply vanished, I think they were changed. For defying nature, the humans were cursed with a form that is completely subservient to the whims of nature. They live and die by the coming and waning of the flood.

For more on humans being turned into horrendous whale monsters as divine punishment for man's hubris, see Final Fantasy X (2001)

This leviathan must have known its fate: by helping the animals on their quest, it knew it would be unable to save itself. It made the ultimate sacrifice so that the animals might live.

The final somber moments of the film are a reflection on us. We, too, are animals. We, too, can be redeemed. We have a choice: we can respect nature or we can worship ourselves. Human civilization chose the latter, and paid dearly for their egotism. But in the post-credits scene we see one of the sea creatures swimming freely in the open ocean. It's a hopeful message: there is a future for us. Whether we embrace it is up to us 🦝

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