Photo: Sideshow/JanusFilms.
The movie Flow is all about animals — no humans and no verbal conversation — and it seems that domestic pets are mesmerized.
I had been wanting to see the movie Flow, so at Easter, Suzanne set it up for the kids and me while she attended to Bunny work.
It was fun to figure out with the grandchildren exactly what was happening in the film and to add our own sound track. But in the end, I don’t think they liked it much. I myself have a problem with ambiguous endings, gorgeous as the animation was.
Now I am fascinated to learn what the movie has meant to a different audience: household pets. Esther Zuckerman has a report at the New York Times.
“Search on TikTok and you’ll find a number of videos of dogs and cats alike viewing Flow alongside their owners, appearing to recognize themselves in the gentle saga, which tells the tale of an adorable black kitty who must work with a motley crew of other industrious animals to survive rising sea levels in a surreal landscape. The trend is a particularly cute coda to what was already one of the feel-good stories of awards season in which the dialogue-free indie — made on open-source software and directed by Gints Zilbalodis — triumphed over studio fare like Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot, to earn Latvia its first ever Oscar.
“Watching Flow in the theater is a wonderfully immersive experience where the spectacle of the movie’s visuals are on full display. … Watching Flow at home (it is streaming on Max) with an animal is an equally delightful experience, but a different one. You may find your attention pulled in two directions as you try to contemplate what this all means to your pet as well as what it means to you.
“I, for one, tried to decipher just what was going on with [my dog] Daisy. Surely, she wasn’t understanding the climate change allegory, but her huge ears stood up straight as she gazed upon the heroic cat, and I caught her running up to the TV for a sequence in which it and its capybara ally go tumbling off their boat. Seeing — or perhaps just hearing — the characters in peril stressed her out on some level.
“Matiss Kaza, who produced and co-wrote the film, said in an email that he suspects that it’s the real animal sounds used in production that attract the attention of our domesticated friends. …
“When I spoke to social media users who posted clips of their household beasts responding to Flow, they explained that their animals aren’t usually this entranced by the screen.
“Chayse Orion, 24, had seen other TikTok posts about the film before he decided to watch it. He thought it was cute but wasn’t paying super close attention. His cat Fishbone was. ‘Fishbone was so engrossed in the movie,’ Orion said. ‘He was just so into it, which was really weird because I’ve never seen him interact with a show like that.’ …
“Orion knew it would make great internet content. Not only did he start to film Fishbone, he moved the cat’s tower closer to the TV for a better view, one that put Fishbone at eye level with his animated brethren. ‘I actually put it on again yesterday for him to watch while I was working,’ he said. ‘It’s definitely his favorite movie now, for sure.’ …
“Celine Orosco, 29, found that her dog Samson, a golden retriever, was also invested in Flow. She said it was the first movie he ever watched all the way through. He was particularly excited, she noticed, whenever the Labrador that joins the cat’s group of travelers came onscreen. ‘He really loved that dog,’ she said.
“Of course, we don’t know what any of our animals are actually thinking when they watch Flow. Did Gao’s black cat actually recognize herself? Hard to say. My boyfriend at first inferred that Daisy liked the lemur who has a basket full of trinkets, then thought perhaps she was upset by it. I know that she didn’t follow the plot — I love her, but she’s not that intuitive. She did, however, hear the so-called voices of the characters, and reacted to whatever they were conveying. …
“We love to watch our pets watching Flow for the same reason we love to watch Flow. The film understands that delicately anthropomorphizing these animals is a powerful tool. Their movements are carefully calibrated to replicate the way the creatures would behave in real life, but their actions are just human enough to make the story feel relatable.
“Would a cat, a dog, a capybara, a large bird and a lemur all team up to save one another should massive floods happen? Hard to say. But it’s a good metaphor about how empathy can be salvation.”
More at the Times, here. If you’ve already seen the movie and can bear a negative review, check Asakiyume’s reservations, here. But be warned: there are spoilers.
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