Flow, or Straume, is a 2024 Latvian animated adventure film that has also rightly been selected as the country’s entry for the Best International Feature Film for this year’s Oscars. With stylistic animation and no dialogue, the film follows a domesticated black cat in a post-apocalyptic world, where it has to coexist with a few other animals in order to survive more natural dangers. The extremely tranquil yet optimistic tone of Flow is truly unique in today’s times, and the stylistic choices it takes with regards to not anthropomorphizing the animals, unlike most films of its kind, make it a fresh and highly entertaining watch.
Spoiler Alert
What Is The Film About?
Set in an unspecified part of the Earth, and during a time period that is not made clear, Flow has a unique protagonist, in the form of a small but intelligent domesticated black cat. Despite the cat having once lived with some human masters, who evidently loved it a lot, the animal has to survive all alone now, as there are no humans around. As it goes about a normal day looking around for food, the cat sees a pack of dogs catch fish from a nearby stream and somehow manages to steal a fish for itself before the dogs take notice. A wild chase ensues through the semi-forested area, with the cat running for its life, even losing the fish, which would have been the only food it had found, seemingly in days, in the process. It manages to hide in the bushes, only to then see the pack of dogs turn tail and run from something they are scared of, and soon a herd of deer frantically runs out of the forest. Although the cat is able to avoid the dangerous hooves of the panicked deer, it quickly realizes that a much graver danger is on the horizon.
Sure enough, water gushes out of the forest in enormous quantities, flooding the whole area and rapidly sinking everything in its path. The cat has to protect itself from the rising water, and when even the highest of spots around the area are covered by the floodwater, it has to jump onto a small sailboat that comes along. However, there is already an occupant on this boat, and it happens to be a creature that the cat has never seen in life, which immediately scares it. The original occupant, a capybara, is not much bothered, though, even when the boat sails into uncharted territory (for the animals), and more members, like a ring-tailed lemur and then a secretarybird, join the party.
With the water levels constantly rising and falling, the animals have no option but to remain on the sailboat and keep themselves safe from the deadly water, with no idea where they are headed. Survival is really their only concern, although they are genuinely mesmerized, and somewhat frightened, while passing through various locations, such as a deserted and recently flooded city. A gigantic whale breaches up from time to time, becoming visible to the cat, which takes a keen interest in it, especially after the whale saves it from drowning in one instance. The story in Flow does not really take any dramatic turns or imaginative twists and instead focuses on reality, indirectly leaving us with a great tale of inspiration and hope.
Where are all the humans?
Flow does not make any direct mention of human beings, with all its characters being animals, but the presence of humans in the past can be felt. The film is seemingly set in the future, in a post-apocalyptic setting where there are no more humans, at least not anywhere we are shown. Our protagonist, the black cat, had once been a member of a very happy family, for its owner evidently doted on it. The extent of the human’s love for the pet animal is clear from the numerous stone cat statues all over the garden and then an enormous rock carving in one corner. Even the room that the cat initially lives in at the beginning of the film is filled with items, like a gramophone and a telescope, which clearly indicate that humans had been living in the house until recently.
Although Flow does not concern itself with the absence of humans, it is still fun to wonder what happened to us in this bleak future (bleak for humans, at least). While humans might still be living somewhere far off from where the entire film takes place, it seems very unlikely that the owner of the protagonist cat would have abandoned it like this. Considering the human’s clear love for cats, they would have definitely taken the cat with them wherever they went, if we are to assume that human beings moved away from this place due to impacts of climate change. The simple and genuine nature of each of the animals, which definitely become characters during the duration of the film, made me constantly feel that humans must have been responsible for their own extinction and the problems that these animals have to deal with, even though there is no such suggestion.
One of the most amazing characteristics of the film is how it poignantly manages to resonate with real-world situations and feelings despite being about non-anthropomorphic animals. While watching, viewers are bound to be reminded of the already evident effects of global warming and climate change that have been affecting Earth, all because of human beings. Thus, it is quite easy to sympathize with the animals, because it is felt that they are having to deal with the consequences of the selfish actions of human beings and escape from floods despite not even understanding the reasons.
I also found myself wondering about where exactly the location shown in the film could be, since many of the animals don’t really have much crossover when it comes to their habitats in our world. For example, capybaras are native to South America, while secretarybirds can be found only in Africa. Either the characters here had been part of some zoos or private collections in the past, or the continents and associated ecosystems do not exist anymore. Interestingly, the lean but high rocky structures, surely meant to represent mountains, also appear quite alien and unnatural, perhaps suggesting that the Earth has gone through some massive geological changes in a comparatively short time. These changes also probably make it very likely that humans have been wiped out from the planet.
What Do The Animals Symbolize?
If I am to become so self-centered as to see the animals, who have been intentionally left as non-anthropomorphic, as symbolizing human characters and traits, then it is totally possible to do so. For the most part, Flow can be seen as a story of different kinds of humans having to survive a natural disaster, only told through animal characters. In that case, each of the animals can be associated with different types of humans or how different people might react in an apocalyptic situation. The cat is an intelligent fellow who is always on its toes to react to situations, but it also remains very inquisitive and curious, as is the very nature of cats. It makes for a great protagonist, as it comes off as the sharpest and the most receptive among the animals, always intrigued by the new characters it comes across. The capybara is like a calm and level-headed person, whose biggest demerit is that it does not really care much about their situation. The capybara mostly keeps sleeping on the boat, and its talents and abilities, like that of swimming, are kept away from the rest of the animals until they are absolutely needed.
The secretarybird is a unique addition, as it symbolizes a strong and egoistic person who very strongly differentiates right from wrong, even at the expense of being hurt and abandoned by their own friends and family. This particular bird saves the cat from being attacked by the rest of its group, and this results in it becoming a pariah, who has to join the sailboat. The labrador is almost like those human characters introduced in such motley groups as the comic relief, the ones who are always fooling around and craving attention. The lemur is like the embodiment of the typical 21st century modern human, who keeps collecting wealth and treasures without even knowing whether they will be of any use to it. All its interactions with the other animals are initiated because of the treasures and trinkets it gathers, until a point in the film, and the lemur’s behavior is surely one of the easiest to associate with humans. While assigning human characteristics to these animals is quite easy, doing so with the majestic whale is not so simple a task. If we stretch our imagination, it might be possible to think of the whale as an aging side character who has all the knowledge in the world and whose presence eventually affects the life of the protagonist.
Continuing with the thought of the animals resembling human beings, the plot of Flow does ultimately culminate in the characters showing human emotions and coming together as a group. The main message in the film is about how moving beyond individual needs and coming together as a community, or a group, is what saves the day during moments of crisis. While animals of different species do come together to survive as a unit during such times, this very coming together can also be seen as resembling human emotions and learnings.
How Does The Film Turn Spiritual At Moments?
While Flow mostly stays rooted in reality, there are a couple of moments when it takes a spiritual and imaginative route. The first is when the cat is seen dreaming, while on the sailboat, of being at the center of a panic-stricken herd of deer, which just keep running in circles. While animals most definitely dream, it is safe to say that such a detailed dream, or nightmare, fueled by fear and panic, sees the film taking some creative liberties. The protagonist cat is definitely more sensitive and prone to spiritual or intellectual thoughts, if we may call them so, and it is perhaps actually quite natural that it dreams of a scary scenario based on a similar experience it had earlier in the forest.
The second instance of the film becoming spiritual is when the cat witnesses the tired and hapless secretarybird fly into a portal of colorful lights, ceasing to exist when the portal closes. This is the most unrealistic bit of the film, but it is a beautiful presentation of the terribly complex nature of death. The secretarybird basically dies at this point, perhaps because of the bitterness that had been gradually growing inside its mind, and the cat is surely moved by this, but not shocked. This reaction, or the lack of it, makes it all the more clear that the cat has an intellectual side to it, even if it is not fully aware of it.
What does the last scene mean?
There are a number of instances in Flow where the cat protagonist looks down at its own reflection in a pool of water, starting from the very beginning. Another animal in the group, the lemur, stares at its own reflection on a hand mirror as well, but the fact that the film ends with the whole group looking at their images on the surface of the water makes it quite a significant part of its message. When the animals look at their reflections and identify themselves, it is a sign of self-awareness, although in a very basic sense, this comprehension of their own selves marks the transition from an individualist perspective on life to a collective perspective.
In Flow’s ending, when the animals look at their reflections, right after having saved the capybara and the cat, it marks the very first moment that they all come together as a unit, promising each other, in their own way, to continue surviving the dangers together. In this respect, the cat really does seem to have been more intelligent and self-aware than the others from the beginning, as it was already in the habit of looking at its own image.
Flow also has a post-credits scene, in which the whale is seen swimming in the water after it was earlier seen dying when the water level had suddenly dropped. The fact that another herd of deer had run out of the forest hinted at a similar flood coming towards the cat, but it still stopped to first reunite with its friends and then also provide support to the whale. It is most likely that the animals actually survive and get out of the area before it is flooded again, which saves the whale as well, with the scene giving us one last hope that life does go on after all, whatever the difficulties and challenges it faces.
