One night shortly before the Oscars ceremony, my boyfriend decided to catch up on “Flow,” the animated film from Latvia that would go on to win best animated feature. When I returned home from dinner, I found that the film had also captured the attention of another viewer — my dog Daisy, a corgi mix.
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. On a big screen, you can lose yourself in the animation, noticing the way the water ripples, succumbing to the beauty and terror of the universe this little kitty is trying to navigate. 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 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. “We don’t commonly think of pets as a potential target audience when making films, but we are glad that ‘Flow’ has proved to be a special bonding experience between viewers and their dogs and cats.”
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. He’s never really been interested in the TV at all.”
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.”
Daniel Gao, 32, posted a clip of his cat Karma, who looks strikingly similar to the feline designed by Zilbalodis. His caption? “Lol why she so locked in tho.” Gao, however, admitted to me that Karma at times walked away when the action was getting intense.
“I think she was like, ‘Whoa, I think this is too scary for me I have to look away,’” Gao said. “I felt the same way, too.”
Dogs, like Daisy, are also getting in on the action. 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, intrigued in her own way.
Still, 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.
Similarly, we believe we recognize our furry companions’ personalities, knowing full well that we are most often just projecting our own sensibilities onto them. We want to believe they think like we do, even though we know they likely do not. But when they watch “Flow” like we watch “Flow,” we grow a little bit closer.