Furry road
Indignity Vol. 4, No. 223
REVIEW DEP’T.
In Flow, Animal Life Finds a Way
Flow
Directed by Gints Zilbalodis
THE HERO OF this mesmerizing and touching animated fantasy feature is a little black cat who lives a peaceful solitary life in what appears to be the ruins of a recently abandoned civilization being overtaken by nature. There are no explanations. The cat is thrown together with a random assortment of other animals, real and somewhat fantastical, and they go on a journey, destination unknown, as their environment undergoes dramatic changes.
If you told me I would sit still for an hour and 25 minutes of a no-dialogue cartoon with a capybara and a lemur in a sailboat, I would have told you I would not even for 10 minutes have the patience without the aid of controlled substances, but this film is absorbing, mysterious, and well-paced, with dreamy, trippy interludes, immersive sound design, with absorbing sequences of slightly surreal visual wonder, beauty, and a little sadness. It never gets cute or corny.
If you saw Dumbo, you already believe an elephant can fly, so if you see Flow, you’ll believe a giant bird can steer a sailboat. There are stressful scenes with the cat and other animals struggling to survive, so it might not be right for small children who are on that line of being able to sit still for a movie and not get freaked out by a movie, but it’s ultimately an uplifting tale of survival, maybe. I definitely felt some kinda way at the end, and I think the real stress of the movie for me was being nervous about when People would show up and ruin everything.
YEAR-END SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
WHILE WE WERE still getting around to reminding ourselves to work on Indignity's own roundup of things we published this year, New York Magazine* published its list of its most-read stories in 2024.
The Editors
Up at No. 3, right behind the first-person story of the financial-advice columnist who handed a shoebox full of cash to a scammer, was my January essay for the magazine about how my body had fallen apart out from under me over the course of 2023. It seems like it was longer ago than that; through the intervening months, medications and extremely halfassed rehab work have brought me around to a condition that mostly feels normal. I shaved off my distress beard and wound down the steroids-based part of the treatment, and my once-puffy jawline returned to something like its original shape, till the face in the mirror resumed looking more or less like the one I was used to. I can't eat raw oysters, and there's lingering scar tissue grinding around in my joints, especially in the shoulders, and the weight I lost from my vocal cords still hasn't come back, but as the listeners of the Indignity Morning Podcast may have noticed, there are some voice exercises that help me work around that. The grim journalistic employment situation that also figured in the article, on the other hand, stayed grim all year—but paid subscription growth from you, the readers, helped make things meaningfully more survivable. Thanks for reading and supporting Indignity, and if you enjoy what we do, please tell your friends and/or social media followers. Bluesky is good for sharing links! — Tom
*Before now, I always referred to the magazine in print as "New York magazine," because "New York" is what the cover of the magazine says. But the magazine's copy chief, Carl Rosen, writes an intermittent email newsletter called "Queries" (which is not archived on the web), and in the October 30 edition, he explained that although the magazine's cover logo reads New York, its full legal title is New York Magazine, with a capital M, and the magazine's own stylistic preference is italicize New York while putting Magazine in roman type with a capital M.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, December 17, 2024
★★★ The branches of the honeylocust glimmered lunar green with lichen in the gray light of morning. That gray lingered and lingered and then it was gone; the branches were now a study in the contrast of sun and shadow. A blue jay landed on a rooftop pipe and showed off its crest. The temperature was wrong yet not disturbingly so, still cool rather than sultry. The pink of bricks showed out through the drab paint and descending black stains high on the side wall of a building. A white pigeon perched at the top. The jacket still did need to be buttoned against the breeze. All the color was now stripped from the trees by the Pool, and bleached-out willow leaves schooled at the top of the waterfall. The sun picked out a piece of monofilament hanging taut in the trees over the water. The humidity had dropped, but the uphill path was still damp and the smell of damp things lay over it.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
GOT SOMETHING YOU need to justify to yourself, or to the world at large? Other columnists are here to judge you, but The Sophist is here to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Hygienic Cook Book: A Collection of Choice Recipes Carefully Tested, by Jacob Arnbrecht, published in 1914 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
HONEY AND NUT SANDWICHES
1/2 cup honey
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 cup finely chopped nuts
Mix all together to make a stiff paste. Spread on thin slices of buttered bread, place two together and cut into any shape desired.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
