Drifting away from the world of humans and into a forest that is both beautiful and serene (yet dangerous and perilous), this is the world where a black cat, with no name, finds itself. Flow is a 2024 animated movie that just won the Oscar ® for best animated feature, taking on the big American and well-funded studios with a movie made on open-source software from a Latvian studio.
The main character is a cat, and the cat acts like a cat. The movie goes for the creative idea of there being no dialogue. The cat meows, hisses, and makes other cat noises. He is surviving from the start of the film. He sees some dogs fighting over fish and grabs it, but the dogs give chase. He makes decisions that fit a cat, mostly distrusting of a Labrador retriever that seems friendly, or a secretary bird, and a capybara. He decides if he should fend off a proposed threat or run. As a viewer, it’s hard to figure out what a threat is too.
A flood causes havoc through the forest, and Cat has to move on to stay safe. He gets picked up by a secretary bird that seemed to be more willing to help than be a threat, and ends up on a boat with a capybara. Cat seems to be untrusting of the giant rodent and keeps his distance. A lemur joins for a while too, but again, our protagonist keeps distance. A secretary bird decides to give him an offering of a fish, and a second one shows up to steal it. Later, when Cat rolls down a hill into the group of birds, they chase him, but the one from earlier decides to block any chance of attack and gets into a fight.
We end up with a strange group of a cat, capybara, lemur, dog, and a secretary bird all on a boat. I like the characters; as while they are still mostly just non-personified, they still are interesting. Dog acts like a dog, but friendly, he wants to be loved. He wants to play, as dogs do. The moment when Cat ignores him and he whimpers and walks away shows that he wants to be a friend, and his range. The lemur wants to be helpful and cares. He goes out of his way to try and get a ball back from the water for Dog. He does seem to cause a little trouble. Capybara is the more relaxed one, but doesn’t seem to mind having some company around. The secretary bird is also a bit more brooding, understandable after what happened.
The movie goes not for the Disney style of fun animals talking and having some human traits and goes for an almost nature documentary like style feel. We see the different interactions of animals, not just Cat but how the capybara and lemur act with each other. The Labrador retriever dog acts like a friendly dog that would be someone’s pet. Cat acts like how a cat would act with a dog because a dog’s aggressive friendliness is still aggressive to him. We get an understanding for their emotions while still being normal animals. The secretary bird fight, for example, is tangible and there’s a sense of dread for the bird the defended Cat, but he gets injured and cut from his group because it’s impacted his ability to fly. It’s brutally realistic.
The sound design is amazing, I love they mostly used real animal noises for most of the animals. I say mostly, because camel noises had to be used for the capybaras. The background music is light and subtle to still allow natural sounds to make it through.
The animation is really nice looking. This movie was made on a budget of €3.5 million (about $4million) and used the open-source software, Blender. The movie shows that it’s not the budget, but the heart and hard work put into it. I like the animals’ look; they are a good balance of realistic looking, but enough to give some distinction and convey their feelings. The forest and landscape is beautiful, and the movie is well lighted and colorful but feels natural to what you’d see in real life if you saw the forest and areas the movie goes to.
I enjoyed this movie because it was captivating in sound, visuals, and story wise. I think it took a great risk in doing an 84 minute story without any dialogue and paid off what the story it wanted to tell. The other risk of having the animals act as animals but still be relatable or sympathetic was well done. The story presentation is simple, but effective. The movie is different to typical animal movie fare, but it’s worth checking out, at least once.
Currently (as of this March 2025) the movie is available for Blu-ray/DVD pre-order and can be watched on the Max Streaming Service.
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