[spoiler]

After class last Tuesday I followed my familiar path to the Garden Theatre on Nassau Street. I bought my ticket, and then I went into the theater. As I settled into my seat–three rows up two seats in, just where I like it–with my five-dollar Coke that always has too much ice, I prepared myself for what would be 85 minutes of pure animated fantasy: the Latvian movie Flow.

The movie opens on a black cat, the unnamed and solitary protagonist. The almost-watercolor animation comes to life with each frame bleeding into the next. Our feline lives within a prospering, green forest and calls a humble cottage home. Then, unexpectedly (unless you read the movie description, which I definitely did not), a flood comes gushing across the land. This fantasy world of calm and greens is torn into swirling blues as the water crashes through the forest. The flood now rising with unexpected speed, our cat seeks higher ground, eventually finding refuge on a drifting boat. There, our cat meets the first of its soon-to-be-many crew, a surprisingly unbothered capybara. I lean back in my seat and take some more sips of my drink.

So as not to make this piece a simple retelling (and to not bore you, my dear reader), I will stop my sequencing of events there. But to be entirely clear, this story was really nothing more than a cat’s survival against natural disaster. Yet even with its relatively simple plot, Flow refuses to explain itself in its perplexities. There’s not a single word of dialogue throughout the film, and the story raises more questions than it answers. The viewer is tossed into a fantastical world, experiencing in pure, cinematic richness each second of the story’s unfolding, only to leave missing necessary context entirely. I mean, throughout the entire movie I sat with the same critical questions: Where did all the humans go? What caused this Noah’s-Ark-like flood? How can a capybara casually snap off tree branches like that? I received no answer. 

I am taking a class on Kierkegaard this semester, and recently we read his essay “Repetition.” Not to eject a ton of philosophical jargon–which admittedly left me bewildered–there was one thing which particularly stuck out to me. Repetition demands continuous discovery to hold meaning. When we do something again, we cannot hope to mimic the aesthetic experience of one we’ve had before–such attempts will leave us wanting that which is unattainable. This idea is rooted furthermore in the Danish word for repetition: gentagelse–literally “to take again,” implying not a perfect copy, but a fresh taking, a renewal. Caught in time’s perpetual motion forward, we cannot perfectly preserve what was in the past; instead, we must find richness in the way repetition can fold old experiences into new, a continuous process of becoming, of flowing. 

I have been to the Garden Theatre many times before this particular trip. My routine is always the same: I buy my student-discounted ticket and overpriced Coke and sit in the same seat. I find comfort in my repetition, and I am never bored. There really isn’t anything spectacular about it either; my ritual rarely varies, but with each visit I find myself wearing a different identity, and placing myself in different cinematic universes. Like the flood waters themselves, each viewing experience flows from and into the others. My same seat holds infinite possibilities, just as the same waters that threatened our cat’s life eventually brought it a new family. I might follow familiar paths to the theater, but I can never truly see the same film twice. The magic lies not in freezing a perfect moment from last time but in letting each return reshape my experience, like water slowly carving new channels through familiar ground.

There exists another Danish word that further explains the newness cloaked in repetition–hygge. A Google search would reduce its meaning, so let me define the term for you here, or at least how I have come to understand it: it is finding warmth in presence, in surrendering yourself utterly to your surrounding. It’s about releasing the urge to control the flood of time, letting time drift you on some boat with those you hold close. Like our cat, who first scrambled frantically against rising waters only to find peace once it stopped resisting, hygge comes when we learn to trust the flow.

The film somehow concludes with the waters draining out of its world. Again, you aren’t told why or how, but that is not the point. This is where hygge must settle in; sit back and watch how our cat returns to soil and makes the decision to remain with its new companions, how the colors melt into its original green. Fall completely and utterly into this animated world, a total dissolution of self. Being caught in the details or flaws brings a stutter to experiences and their flow. Take our black cat from the movie, it wasn’t until it accepted the motion of the flood until it was able to find its footing on a stable, drifting boat. Grabbing on the branches of trees while the tide pulls our cat from under only got it hurt. This mirrors our own need for release, doesn’t it? We tend to grip too tightly to our expectations, our desire for answers, our need to understand every pedantic detail. But there’s a peculiar freedom in letting go, in allowing yourself to be carried by the current of a story. Just as the cat learned to trust the flow of its changed world, we too can find richness in surrendering. Even without a single word uttered, you can hear all that is suggested by the twitch of whiskers, the careful placement of paws, the subtle shift of weight when one creature makes space for another. There is humor, hardship, triumph, and tenderness. So when, or if, you decide to watch Flow, observe the moment and sense it all. Become the cat in its caution; become the lemur in its greed; become the capybara in its laziness; become the dog in its innocence; become the crane in its responsibility. Flow into it and be completely consumed. Don’t tug, don’t shift. 

…

Would I watch this movie again? Probably not.

The animation was incredible, the story was sweet, but there was hardly anything more notable than that. But what I will do is return to the Garden Theatre some time soon. I will buy the same overpriced drink and slurp it too quickly, so that I’ll have to pee halfway through the movie. I will enjoy my brief pilgrimage there. I don’t particularly care what is being projected on the big screen; as long as I become someone new in this repeated activity my satisfaction will be born again, infinitely.