******MANY SPECIES OF SPOILERS!******

From the mind of 30-year old Latvian filmmaker (and composer) Gints Zilbalodis and cowritten by Matīss Kaža, “Flow” (aka “Straume”) is a genuine passion project. Made using free online Blender software, the movie has an expensive, rotoscoped look to it. With no dialogue–let alone humans–“Flow” has a unique soundscape of real animal vocalizations (no Disneyfied talking animals), accompanied by original music composed by Zilbalodis; who whittled his soundtrack down from 7 hours to a mere 50 minutes for his 85-minute film.

Made over five years, the projected by completed and polished with using postproduction facilities in Belgium and France, making this an international coproduction. In addition to receiving a number of award nominations, including a Golden Globe, “Flow” has also been selected to represent Latvia for the Best Foreign Film Oscar at this year’s 97th Annual Academy Awards.

On the advice of my art/animation teacher spouse, I recently saw “Flow” digitally projected in HD at home on our 7 ft/2-meter pullout screen, and I can safely say that this film would absolutely have my vote, if I were a voting member of the Academy…

“Flow” (“Straume”)

The movie opens with a cat in a world curiously and mysteriously free of humans, though still dominated by decaying human architecture. Now overgrown with vegetation, this world (our Earth, or a very close cousin) is also subject to flooding due to rising sea levels (sound familiar?). Unable to retreat back to its deserted suburban cabin, the cat wanders past large statuary of various felines, as it goes to a nearby river to forage for food.

Stealing a fish from a pack of fighting dogs, the cat is soon the subject of a fevered pursuit by its canine nemeses. A tsunami soon floods the area, as both the cat and the dogs race to higher ground. A Labrador Retriever is the least aggressive of the pack, and it curiously follows the cat, until the rapid flooding forces it to jump into a nearby drifting boat filled with the others of its pack.

Note: It’s up to the viewer exactly when and where the movie is set. It appears to be Earth, with familiar flora and fauna, but completely free of people. Given the sudden flooding, it’s safe to assume this Earth (or parallel-Earth) is subject to the same rising sea levels as ours. However, the architecture is a deliberately nonspecific blending of South American, Asian and Mediterranean; all within easy reach of each other. Like the architecture, the animals are also from all over the world, and not typically clustered in one geographic locale.

Retreating back to its safe house only to find it flooded, the cat climbs one of the massive statues as the waters rapidly rise. With the statue completely submerged by the rushing tsunami, the cat jumps into a nearby sailboat, with one harmless but smelly capybara occupant aboard. After a few curious sniffs of each other, the cat finds the capybara to be good enough company in desperate times. Accidentally pushing against the boat’s tiller, the cat realizes it can navigate their human-made vessel; clumsily at first, but eventually it gains some mastery at steering…

Note: Clearly there were humans on this world, as evidenced by the human-necessitated architecture, but the animal statues (clearly of human manufacture) are yet another enigma for audience speculation; are they objects of pagan worship, like the bronze sphinx of “The Time Machine” (1960), or were they something else entirely?

After a rainy night spent together on the boat, the cat and the capybara sail though a submerged woodlands area, and the hungry cat looks to the surrounding waters for tasty fish; which requires he cat to get wet–something any cat owner knows is anathema to felines. Before the cat can decide to act on its hunger, it is tossed overboard trying to avoid a swooping secretarybird. As the terrified cat is in danger of drowning, a majestic whale lifts it from the watery depths, as the secretarybird swoops in to complete the cat’s rescue. Freeing itself from the bird’s grip, the cat falls back to the deck of its commandeered boat.

Note: While the creature characters of “Flow” are far from the anthropomorphized, upright-walking and talking animals seen in traditional cartoons, there are still a few ‘asks’ of the audience; such as accepting that a cat could somehow use the tiller of a sailboat. Other than a few minor fantasy concessions, the animals act and move more or less authentically, which is a a refreshing change of pace. They don’t even have actor voiceovers, or any other humanizing gimmicks. These are animals, first and foremost.

As the rising waters drown another nearby abandoned city, the capybara adjusts their boat’s course to aid a lemur, who is frantically trying to hold onto a basket of useless trinkets while avoiding the rapidly rising water. Upon rescuing the lemur, who insists on dragging along its useless collection of junk, the de facto ‘crew’ of the boat soon come ashore. There, they find the benign Labrador Retriever the cat encountered earlier, who has somehow separated from its pack. The eager-to-please dog then joins the crew.

Note: There is much social commentary in “Flow,” despite its lack of human characters or dialogue. The lemur, our closest genetic relative aboard the boat, also has the worst human traits of materialism and vanity; holding onto a useless basket of odds and ends, while also spending every available moment it has gazing upon its reflection in a handheld mirror. By contrast, the dog pack represents the ‘angry mob’ mentality of humans, with the lone Labrador showing how individuals can foster empathy and altruism, once removed from the peer aggression of tribalism. Meanwhile, the capybara shows a benign indifference, as many of us do when meeting strangers.

These makeshift sailors soon encounters a hostile flock of secretarybirds, which intimidate the cat. The secretarybird who rescued the cat pleads with the flock leader to spare the cat’s life, and for its mercy, the heroic bird’s wing is broken, before it’s ostracized by the flock. With nowhere else to go, the now flightless bird joins the cat, the dog, the capybara and the lemur as a member of the crew.

Note: Prepare for some “Bambi”-sized tears as the proud secretarybird has its wings broken by the flock leader; of the animal crew, the secretarybird shows that rare quality of self-sacrifice, as it allows its wing to be broken, to stand by its choice to help save the cat.

Despite its lack of flight, the secretarybird makes an excellent navigator for the boat, replacing the cat at the helm while standing on one leg. They soon set course for a submerged city ahead; a city rendered in a mixture of architectural styles that could almost pass for the ancient library at Alexandria, or South America, or somewhere in the Mediterranean, for all we know. They sail through the buildings and bridges of the deserted city, like the canals of Venice. There is also a series of large pillared statuary on the distant horizon…

Note: The city is another one of those reminders that this may not be our Earth, despite the familiar fauna and flora; the architecture is a mix of all styles seen on Earth, in both the ancient and modern worlds. While the rising sea level certainly indicates extreme climate change, there is also the strange whale-like creature seen earlier; which has the properties of an air-breathing whale, but almost looks like a dinosaur. Once again, past collides with the present in this mysterious world; and no easy explanations are offered in the film (which doesn’t even have narration; unlike “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” for example). The movie’s opacity is deliberate, and adds to the overall universality of its story.

During this relatively tranquil part of their voyage, the cat learns to deliberately dive into the ocean for fish, courtesy of the capybara’s tutelage. Soon, the cat no longer fears diving into water, and returns from each dive with fish for the crew to eat, in gratitude for their assistance. As they press on through the submerged city, the crew spots the aggressive dog pack stranded in a bell tower. The secretarybird has no intention of helping the dogs, but the cat–a dog’s supposed natural ‘enemy’–gives its approval as the unofficial ‘captain’ of the boat, and the secretarybird allows the capybara to take the tiller to change course…

Note: Once again, we see many flashes of recognizable traits in these creatures, such as self-sacrifice, teamwork and loyalty. I believe all animals (including humans) have the same basic emotions package; how those emotions are conveyed or acted upon can be universal (such as grief or anger) or they can be specific to a given species, depending on its biology and culture. What we perceive as a lack of emotions from some animals may simply be our own inability to interpret them. A book I highly recommend on this topic is Nick Abadzis’ 2007 Eisner Award-winning graphic novel “Laika,” a fictionalized accounting of the first dog to fly in space, back in November of 1957.

A massive storm begins as they approach the stone pillars. Despite the inclement weather, the secretarybird regains its power of flight. During the rocking caused by the storm, the cat is once again tossed overboard. The cat manages to swim ashore, where it is met by the secretarybird. The stone pillars were the bird’s destination, and the reason it steered them on this course.

Note: Since its initial rescue of the cat, the secretarybird and the cat have shared a special bond, and perhaps the cat senses that the bird wants them to share a unique experience together, as we see in the following scene…

Atop one of the pillars, a serene, starry nebulosity appears overhead; and it draws both the secretarybird and the cat into its luminous splendor. Floating effortlessly towards the celestial vista above, the secretarybird ascends into the light. The cat, however, is unable to follow, as it falls to earth. The secretarybird continues its ascension, and disappears. The cat tries swimming back to the boat with the others, but it’s too far away. However, the cat manages to find a glass float in the water, and uses it for buoyancy.

Clutching onto the float, the water rapidly recedes, and the cat finds itself back on land. Soon, the wandering cat finds the lemur, gazing into its mirror (of course), which is with some other lemurs that it’s briefly left the crew to join. Soon, the lemur and the cat go off in search of the boat, which they find dangling from a buckling tree branch poised over a deep chasm–with the capybara and dog pack still aboard. The dogs, including the Labrador, manage to jump off, but the capybara is still aboard, as the branch continues to sway…

Hoping to rescue the capybara, the cat, the lemur and the dogs work as a team to pull the boat towards the cliff, but the rest of the dog pack–save for the Labrador–are distracted by a rabbit and run off in pursuit, leaving the lemur, the Labrador and the cat to rescue the capybara. And by the skin of their teeth, they succeed. After dodging a stampede of wild deer, the crew celebrates their reunion until they find the noble whale, beached upon the land and struggling to breathe. Saddened by their inability to help the massive creature, they gaze upon their reflections in a nearby pool of water…

The End.

Note: A brief post-credits scene shows the whale swimming freely in water, breathing easily again from its blowhole; no longer crushed by its own bulk.

Summing It Up

Gints Zilbalodis’ “Flow” is a breathtakingly beautiful and original work, with elements of “Life of Pi” (2012), “Watership Down” (1978) and more specifically, the recent non-verbal animated feature “The Red Turtle” (2016), from Dutch director Michaël Dudok de Wit (my wife and I attended a screening of that film in Los Angeles nine years ago, with the director in attendance).

Despite the lack of human characters or dialogue, great emotion is conveyed using real animal vocalizations (courtesy of sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas), as well as more realistic animal movements and reactions; a breath of fresh air from more conventional animated movies, which often anthropomorphize animals with human features and language. There is also the mystery of the flooded world this creature crew inhabits, which was clearly engineered for humans, and seems to be in a state of ecological collapse (as our own world is headed now). However, elements of the film also keep it in the realm of the allegorical; such the dinosaur-like whale, or the curiously nonspecific geography, which seamlessly blends areas of South America, Asia and the Mediterranean–with no architectural favoritism to any one region.

Existing both everywhere and nowhere, “Flow” leaves such nagging questions of ‘when’ and ‘where’ up to the viewer, as Zilbalodis and Kaža focus on their animal characters, who represent traits of humankind (our noblest and worst aspects) who ultimately come together for mutual aid and survival, sometimes fighting their own contrarian natures to do so, just as we must. The messages of this haunting and transportive film are manifold, but if I had to pare them down to one, it’s that giving into our baser natures at the expense of each other leaves no one at the helm.

With a brisk running time of 85 minutes, and with many aural/visual rewards for audience patience, “Flow” is a rare, beautiful and unique experience in animation not to be missed.

Where to Watch

“Flow” (“Straume”) is currently available for digital rental or purchase via Prime Video, Fandango at Home and iTunes (prices vary). The film is also still in theatrical release in some cities; a fact I discovered after my wife made the digital purchase and watched it on our digital projector at home; which adequately simulated a theatrical experience.