It was probably inevitable that Flaco, the world’s most photographed bird for a year starting in the spring of 2023, was going to get the big screen treatment – as Edmund, one of the birdwatchers drawn to following the Eurasian Eagle Owl’s every move after it fled the Central Park Zoo says in “Wild Inside,” “An escaped zoo animal is like a plot from a movie, it’s too much to believe.” However, the fact that it had to happen didn’t necessarily mean it would make an interesting movie when the wonder of Flaco appearing randomly around Manhattan may not have translated to a full-length feature, yet Penny Lane, who clearly already had an advantage of filming close to home, spends as much time considering human nature as the other kind when Flaco being out and about may be a cause for excitement, but opens up the question of whether he’s safer outside after spending his first 13 years in captivity or whether he should’ve been brought up in a zoo in the first place.
The answer isn’t uniform among all those that are clearly delighted by Flaco’s great escape, with some concerned about the owl’s survival skills in the city – unlike the zoo where the bird could regularly expect to be fed, Flaco must become a predator, which doesn’t come naturally, and even if he does successfully become a hunter, there’s a fear he could eat the wrong rat as many carry various viruses. To everyone’s surprise, Flaco adapts quickly and moves about from parks to fire escapes, attracting a flock of photographers with him and Lane will cleverly insert the bird’s perspective into scenes of him being filmed, whether with drone footage as it flies or swells of bird watchers surround him, getting across both the feeling of freedom and fear that being out in the open must feel like. It is a nicely cinematic touch, but it also opens the kind of litmus test that Lane has proven herself so adept at, whether making people consider their own taste in “Listening to Kenny G” or wondering if the devil worshippers in “Hail Satan” may actually be a great bulwark against the tyranny of authoritarianism under the guise of religious extremism.
Although “Wild Inside” plays to all ages – perhaps even more enjoyable for younger viewers than “Happy and You Know It,” her most recent film on kids’ music — it can induce the same level of queasy introspection of her most confrontational work, 2018’s “The Pain of Others,” in which she offered up mostly unedited online videos of those said to be suffering from Morgellon’s disease where the viewer was put on trial since the skin condition has plenty of skeptics, raising plenty of questions over whether the malady was a physical ailment or a mental one. In the case of Flaco, it cannot be known what the bird is thinking as it’s thrust into a celebrity-paparazzi-esque dynamic, but beyond whether Flaco likes the attention or not, it is a great moral and ethical dilemma that drives the film when Flaco was raised and supported in all of its basic needs in what amounted to a gilded cage at the zoo and may have freedom but little else to survive out in the wild, all the while entertaining humans that offer little in return.
Flaco truly does feel like a gift to the city when it brings together so many who may wonder whether there’s a place for them as well in a metropolis that can feel crushing at times because of the enormous cost of living and Lane sees the phenomenon cutting across social strata in a way that appears to be the dream of so many who make it their home after moving from somewhere else. As people get Flaco tattoos and excitedly post sightings to Instagram, the genuine enthusiasm the owl brought is transferred undiluted to the screen, extending the feeling of community felt in New York that much further as the bird’s charms are simple and undeniable, though Lane honors her subject in another way with the wisdom that it’s always a little more complicated.
“Wild Inside” opens on July 31st in New York at the IFC Center and expands nationally on August 4th. A full list of theaters and dates is here.