Language is critical to human existence. From signed speech to spoken words, language shapes our lives by providing us with the ability to share ideas. Equally critical to our existence is the environment we live in. Often, speech and our world can be taken for granted, making it interesting to question how necessary human speech is and how important nature is to us. These questions were recently explored in the film world with the release of the animated movie Flow. Flow is like any other animated film, complete with adorable animals and stunning visuals, yet with one notable exception. With a runtime of 1 hour and 25 minutes, set in a luxuriously green world, Flow contains not one second of human speech.
Nominated for Best Animated Feature Film and Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards, the Latvian film followsthe adventures of a displaced cat. The cat’s home is destroyed by rising waters, an event that drastically alters the environment of the world the cat inhabits. While struggling to survive, the cat meets a capybara, a lemur, a dog and a bird, the five of whom bond together while traveling on a boat. Yet, while the movie centers heavily on various instances of conflict throughout the animals’ journey, these conflicts are all solved without the use of dialogue. Flow's only source of sound is the respective animals’ vocalizations and the sounds of the natural world they find themselves in.
From an audience’s point of view, Flow becomes an emotional and mental challenge. Without human speech, viewers have to rely entirely upon reading body language and meows to understand the complexities of the plot. This requires an engaged audience, creating investment in the film. Movies unlike Flow, which feature human language, can be shoved to the background, with only the sound to be relied on. However, without that crutch, those who watch Flow have to immerse themselves in the world the movie creates. When the cat comes precariously close to falling into the deep, dark waves, we tense up in worry. When the dog barks joyfully upon seeing its friends, we smile, too. In this way, Flow, for only as long as the screen stays on, captures our senses and forces us to find a new way to experience film. Additionally, drawing notice to the loss of an aspect of our humanity (speech) generates a new gratefulness for its continuance. Seeing a bird and cat care for each other and grow in friendship through the course of Flow without any shared language makes you leave the theater happy to be able to communicate your feelings and thoughts to the people around you.
Yet besides an audience’s reaction to the auditory landscape of Flow, there is more to explore within a simply animated motion picture about a cute cat, and therein lies the beauty of Flow. On the surface, Flow can be fully enjoyed as an adorable adventure story about five animal friends. There is nothing wrong with taking that perspective, as Flow is a masterfully crafted story with soothing visuals. Delving deeper, however, Flow can also be thoroughly enjoyed as an unmasking of humanity’s interactions with communication and the environment. Throughout the film, the only moments when the presence of humans is hinted at are when architecture is shown. Whether it be sculptures of a beloved cat or grand cities, the fact that humans, at one point, lived in the world of Flow is hard to miss. Yet, humans never take an active part in the movie. They are relegated to the sidelines… or are they? Just because human beings are never shown, and language is never used, does not mean we do not have a sizable impact on the world of Flow. In the movie, the environment has become a deadly force that mirrors our real environment's reaction to human influence. Flow’s plot is driven by the rising waters and terrible storms that shake the world the main creatures have to live in, making the audience wonder about how humans factored into these drastic changes. Flow almost seems to imply that we made the world the way it is and then left it to the detriment of the flora and fauna who live within it. Furthermore, the absence of our language stresses the presence of our architecture. The words we use are gone, but the changes we made to the world around us, the concrete structures we placed into the ground and built from the materials of the earth, stay. An attentive audience for Flow cannot help but think about how our choices will affect our planet's future. At the end of the day, it’s possible Flow might just be about a cat, a capybara, dog, bird and lemur trying to survive together. However, when faced with the underlying elements of the movie, it gets more and more difficult to deny Flow’s message to our current age. Those parts of life that we take most for granted — speech and the environment - are those that we cannot afford to lose and are those that are only within our power to maintain. Without a healthy environment, we lose life; without speech, we lose the opportunity to share life with others.
Jane Locke is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at jal562@cornell.edu.
