“Wild Inside” is an enchanting movie, and a haunting one too. It’s a documentary about Flaco, the owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo and spent a year living in the wilds of New York City. Since that story was widely covered when it happened in 2023, turning Flaco into an international media sensation, you might think: Why do I need to see a documentary about it?
The answer is that Penny Lane, the gifted director of “Wild Inside,” has told this tale in a revelatory way, building it like an imagistic storybook from the ground up. From the moment that Flaco, on the evening of Feb. 2, 2023, first appeared on a sidewalk near the corner of 50th St. and 5th Ave., standing there as still as a statue, he was surrounded by people who were filming and photographing him — civilians on their phones, then nature photographers, both amateur and professional. Working with the editor Hannah Buck, Lane uses their endless archive of images to craft a true-life nature fairy tale. “Wild Inside” feels like the vérité version of the greatest children’s novel E.B. White never wrote.
As you watch the movie, Flaco becomes a true character, though there’s nothing cute about him, and the film has a philosophical ambiguity that takes you by surprise. It’s a movie about freedom and captivity, but it doesn’t have a simple or reductive message. Flaco, who lived in the Central Park Zoo for 13 years, escaped when someone cut the wire mesh on his cage. He was a Eurasian eagle owl, a species that doesn’t exist in America, and when you look at him, he really is the living incarnation of the classic, mythological…owl. He’s stunningly beautiful, with big orange eyes set inside a regal head, and a body of tan and black and orange feathers that makes it appear that he’s wrapped inside the most luxurious comforter on earth. His wingspan is awesome (nearly six feet wide), but when Flaco is just standing there, which is most of the time, he does indeed look wise and inscrutable. To know what’s going on in that head, you have to read his actions.
