Fluke (aka When Will I See You Again?)

So, did you hear the one about the man who was reincarnated as a dog and attempting to avenge his own murder?

As a premise, it's more common than you might think. At the very least, Carlo Carlei's 1995 film Fluke wasn't the first to use this set-up. In 1980 there was Oh! Heavenly Dog in which Benjean (yes, our dear friend Benjean) played the reincarnated Chevy Chase, who was brought back in the form of a dog so that he could have a crack at deciphering who ended his life as a human. The kicker being that that was actually a variation on a 1951 film, You Never Can Tell, in which the boot was on the other foot, and a dog was restored to life in human form in order to get even with the canine butcher who bumped him off in his previous life. In 1990, the world came dangerously close to getting a TV series called Poochinski, in which Peter Boyle played a Chicago police detective killed in the line of duty who comes back as a bulldog, intending to pick up right where he left off, except the networks thought better and it never got past the pilot stage. The "man comes back as dog and attempts to get to the bottom of the circumstances of his death" subgenre is such well-trodden territory, in fact, that I'd be curious to know if there are any variations on this theme with other animal species. Is nobody curious to see how the scenario would play out if the murder victim came back as a cat?

I have a lot of sympathy for Fluke, yet another deceptively simple 1990s family film that I feel never got its fair dues. But then this oddball little mongrel was frankly always destined to be a misfit. It's too strange, and too discordant a beast to hold much mass appeal. Despite its ostensibly goofy appearance, it's not a comedy and, a smart-mouthed mutt voiced by Samuel L. Jackson notwithstanding, has very little in the way of mirth. There are a few moments of authentic horror that bare their teeth every so often without ever quite going the full mile. And while there's no shortage of endearing imagery with cuddly puppies, particularly in the early stages, these are too anxiety-inducing to evoke much pleasure; what you mainly feel is the vulnerability of these little beings in a world that doesn't readily yield compassion to outsiders, even when they are as lovable as a newborn Lab. Above all, it's a very, very downbeat story, no matter how positive its parting message and how bright and uplifting its closing moments. The kids (and adults) who would most enjoy this movie would either have to be devoted dog lovers or have one heck of a strong masochistic bent. If you ride along with Fluke, then know that your emotions are going to be reduced to a spectacular smoking wreckage. Myself, I'm just the glutton for that level of punishment. On top of which, I have this thing for stories about reincarnation. For some reason, I just like them. Even Emile Ardolino's Electra complex-centred Chances Are (1989), which sets many other skins a-crawling.

The eponymous Fluke is a stray Labrador-mix (voice of Sam Gifaldi, and later Matthew Modine) who dreams of being a man. Or, more accurately, he's bothered by persistent nightmares of being human and eventually deduces that these are memories of a former life. For Fluke is indeed the reincarnated spirit of Thomas P. Johnson (also Modine), a young businessman who was killed in a car crash that Fluke's gut instincts tell him was no accident. As a puppy, he's impounded and earmarked for death, but pulls off a daring escape and is adopted by a bag lady named Bella (Collin Wilcox Paxton), who gives him his enigmatic moniker. Shortly afterwards, Bella dies (and is reincarnated as a firefly, recalling a poem by Rabindranath Tagore she cited earlier) and Fluke finds a new custodian in an adult dog named Rumbo (voice of Samuel L. Jackson), who belongs to a junkyard owner, Boss (Jon Polito), but regularly scrounges food from a vendor named Bert (Bill Cobbs). Fluke comes of age, and for a while lives quite happily as Rumbo's cohort. But those nightmarish visions of his previous existence as Thomas P. Johnson still persist, to the point where Fluke feels the urge to leave his new life behind and seek out his former wife Carol (Nancy Travis) and son Brian (Max Pomeranc), under the belief that they are threatened by the sinister male figure who regularly encroaches on his visions (Eric Stoltz), and whom Fluke suspects of being his killer.

Fluke was based on a novel by James Herbert, who is better known for writing one of literature's most infamous works of rat horror (we'll get to that, no doubt). It's not exactly a children's book, although it's probably fine for older children to read it. Compared to Herbert's original story, Carlei's film is a decidedly more sentimental creature, and a notch more family-friendly (Carlei's film gets pretty intense in places, but you could have made a darker picture still from Herbert's novel). The basic concept of a dog realising that he was a human in a past life and attempting to find his way back to his former family is recreated more-or-less faithfully, although the film does take several liberties with Herbert's story in order to fit it into a more conventional Hollywood mold. The most crucial difference is that Fluke's relationship with his family is much more of a focal point in the film than it was in the novel. Herbert's book was more focused on the journey itself, and the process by which Fluke comes to grips with the concept of being a man trapped in a dog's body; by the time Fluke actually reunites with his family, the story's nearly over. Herbert's book is also more episodic than Carlei's film; the second half consists primarily of assorted interludes that serve only to sidetrack Fluke from his main objective, many of them quite desultory in nature - eg: his time spent living with a sociopathic old lady whom he initially mistakes for kindly and harmless, and his short-lived partnership with a conniving vixen who exploits his trusting nature. The film cuts out all of these extraneous adventures and substitutes with expanded story material of its own. Not all of this new material works, but overall I think that Carlei's film does a good job of capturing the essence of Herbert's book, and its various meditations on life, death and the importance of accepting change and moving forward, while taming Herbert's rather flabbily-structured story into something altogether more focused and efficient. What the film inevitably sacrifices, to the narrative's detriment, is most of the detail concerning Fluke's somewhat split personality, and the tension between the dog and human portions of his mind - for example, Fluke frequently gets confused as to whether knowledge that comes to him naturally is via instinct or something he remembers from his past life as a man. The book is related (almost) entirely from Fluke's point of view, and while the film still incorporates his voice-over narration, it doesn't have the luxury of having quite the same direct line into Fluke's thought processes. In the film, we do have the problem that many of Fluke's attempts to reconnect with the human part of his psyche - such as when he operates a telephone or puts on one of Thomas's hats - look more like dumb pet tricks than a dog sincerely trying to be a man.

Fluke came out in the summer of 1995, a year which saw several landmark changes in terms of how computer generated imagery was altering the cinematic landscape, many of them occurring within the arena of family cinema. Casper was the first feature to incorporate a fully computer generated main character, Toy Story was the first all-CG animated feature, and Babe rewrote the rule book where talking animal pictures we concerned. Earlier talking animal features such as Homeward Bound and Look Who's Talking Now had largely depended on an approach in which the human voice-over was slapped atop the animal footage to give the impression that the animals were communicating with some kind of inner voice (although we can go back even further, to those Francis The Mule pictures, where the animal's mouth was manipulated using wires). Babe, though, made it standard practice to digitally manipulate the footage so as to look as though the animals' mouths were moving along with their dialogue. The results were so impressive that in the succeeding years, films with talking animals whose mouths moved became a popular novelty. (Unfortunately, I think that Hollywood took the wrong lesson from Babe - there, it worked a treat because the production never allowed the spectacle of the technology to run away with the picture, and managed to deftly incorporate it with the animals' natural movements and mannerisms. Compare it to Cats & Dogs from six years later, which attempted to combine real animals with a rubbery, Loony Tunes-esque energy, and the results looked eye-searingly ugly; Cats & Dogs was apparently conceived as an animated film, and would have done much better to have remained one.) Fluke, which uses the old-school Look Who's Talking technique, was released to theatres a couple of months ahead of Babe, and no doubt seemed immediately dated and lacklustre by comparison. The approach in Fluke does seem considerably less lively and immersive than that of Babe, although the idea that the animals communicate telepathically rather than orally is both addressed explicitly in the script and entirely faithful to Herbert's novel. As I mentioned in my coverage of Mouse Hunt from earlier this year, live action animal movies, talking or otherwise, seem to have largely fallen out of fashion in the current cinematic climate. Just this year, Dolittle and The Call of The Wild found little favour at the box office, and that was before the Coronavirus had really had the chance to mess things up. They were ubiquitous throughout my own childhood, however, and I'd certainly rate Fluke as one of the stronger examples. It's neither as disarming or as innovative as Babe, nor does it have the twisted personality of Mouse Hunt, but it's an unusual picture (despite the familiarity of its premise), one that tackles its morbid subject matter with an unassuming earnestness and conveys a few straightforward but effective meditations on bereavement, resilience and mortality. Like Herbert's original, it's a flawed work, but fascinating.

Fluke also fits in with another category of films that seemed to crop up a lot in the 1990s, in which a (normally) negligent father dies, is reborn in some awkward new form and gets a second chance to forge a meaningful relationship with the child for whom he (typically) never made time on his first go around. For other variations on this theme see And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird (1991) and Jack Frost (1998). The longer Fluke spends in the company of his family, the more of a picture we get of the kind of life he once led, and it becomes apparent that, as Thomas, he wasn't exactly the most conscientious husband or father, preferring to neglect Carol and Brian in favour of strengthening his business. So getting to be with them once again, even regulated to the role of family pet, presents a tremendous opportunity to see and understand them in ways that had previously passed him by. Yet Fluke is surprisingly cautious on the whole idea of revisiting the past in order to right old wrongs. It is a redemptive story, in that Fluke's experiences as a dog leave him with a renewed perspective and appreciation for life that was totally lost on him as a human, but it ultimately serves to bear out Rumbo's reflections that, "There's no going back - you can't be sorry for what's been. You've got to be." The harshest lesson Fluke has to learn is that his desire to be re-assimilated into his old family, however sincere, is misguided. Shortly before Fluke is reunited with Carol and Brian, he's greeted by the "STOP" sign on the side of a school bus, a clear warning from the cosmos not to proceed, but one that either does not register with Fluke or that he chooses to ignore.

The entire plot point about Thomas being a negligent husband and father is exclusive to the movie; in the book, the relationship that Nigel Nettle (for 'twas his name) had with his kin isn't explored in any substantial depth. In both cases, however, Fluke's urge to be reunited with his family is driven by a basic inability to let go of the past, something that very nearly leads to tragedy for them all. At the end of the book, Fluke muses that, "a ghost had been vanquished. That ghost was my humanness." In the film, there is the added complexity that Fluke is mourning for the life he could otherwise have led, not only if he hadn't died, but if he'd taken advantage of the opportunities he had while they were available to him. Part of what drives Fluke is regret and the recognition that he squandered his time as a human. But as Rumbo says, there can be no going back. At first, the positive bonds Fluke reforges with Carol and Brian convinces him that returning to them was the right thing, and that he has been restored to his proper place: "This was where I really belonged. Sooner or later, I'd find a way to tell them who I really was." But of course, he can't. There is a fundamental communication barrier that cannot be broken. And as much as Fluke would love to resume his role as Thomas and pick up where things left off, the world as he once knew it is changing. Years have passed since Thomas's death, and while his family still mourn their loss, there are ways in which they are beginning to heal and continue their lives without him, something that Fluke finds utterly unfathomable. His regained bliss is disturbed the instant that Stolz's character, Jeff, finally appears in person, and a darker impulse suddenly awakens in Fluke. He becomes a savage, snarling beast, at which point his newly-carved niche as family pet is in serious jeopardy.

Jeff, Thomas's former business partner and Carol's present lover, is portrayed as fairly brooding figure for much of the film, and the viewer is encouraged to share in Fluke's suspicions of him, but - spoilers - these turn out to be red herrings designed to throw us off the scent of the more troubling underlying motive that has been unconsciously driving Fluke this entire time. In the film's pivotal plot twist, it is revealed that Jeff was not, in fact, Thomas's killer. To the contrary, he attempted revive Thomas after his accident, something that Fluke only recalls after he's launched a brutal attack on Jeff from the backseat of his car, causing him to crash and potentially killing them both. Jeff might not have murdered Thomas (who was not murdered at all, but rather a victim of his own recklessness), but Fluke recognises him as an existential threat to everything he was as Thomas, and his reaction is one of jealous retribution. Jeff's real transgression is in attempting to take Thomas's place, both personally and professionally - he now has full ownership of Thomas's business, and has his sights set on marrying Carol. Fluke's uncontrollable hostility toward Jeff is, on the dog level, a manifestation of his primal desire to defend his territory, but it is in service of a very human resistance to the entire notion of life going on without him. His desire to return to his family has less to do with protecting them from any phantom threat than with imposing himself on the world he'd left behind and preserving his own legacy. In other words, the human ego is still very much alive and thriving. This element is present in Herbert's novel, in which part of Fluke's rage toward Jeff's literary counterpart, Reg, stems from seeing the words "Never Forgotten" on his tombstone and believing this to be flagrantly untrue. However, Fluke later returns to the grave and notes that fresh flowers have been laid there, at which point he comes to terms with the idea that his family finding renewed purpose after his death should not be seen as an affront to his memory: "The memory of the husband, the father, the friend would dull with time, but I'd always be somewhere in the corner of their minds." Fluke's personal odyssey entails the coming to terms with his own loss, of the man he once was and, in the film, the man he senses he could have been had he lived his life differently. He comes to accept that the time for both has now passed, and rather than spend his current existence pining for what has gone, he must relinquish his grip on his family and allow them the freedom to grow and develop in their changing circumstances, even if it means having to go his own separate way. The film's other key message is conveyed in Rumbo's musing that, "Love hurts". Pain and loss are to be accepted as an unavoidable part of life.

As noted, Carlei's film isn't perfect, its most glaring weakness being a narrative thread involving Ron Perlman (better known as the future Hellboy), who has a sideline in harvesting stray dogs and selling them to vivisection labs. This is one of the film's original creations, for no such thread occurs in Herbert's book. Here, it's a bizarre and unpleasant tangent that's quickly forgotten (although Herbert's book had no shortage of those, hence the whole wretched saga with Miss Birdle) - its sole purpose, in narrative terms, is to bring about Rumbo's death. On that note, Rumbo's dying revelation - that he too was once a human - falls slightly flat as a plot twist. We, like Fluke, suspect that Rumbo was also a human in a former life, and when, mortally wounded, he admits to Fluke that he used to be Bert's brother, it's a touching moment, but its impact is somewhat blunted by the fact that you at home will have figured out Rumbo's former identity long before he tells Fluke. There is a visual clue from earlier in the film that is implemented with a woeful lack of subtlety. Incidentally, I recall once reading a criticism of the laboratory scene which made specific note of the moment where Rumbo activates a button that opens the door to all the animals' cages, in a manner described by the reviewer as being very "un-dog-like". True, it does look goofy as hell, although you would do well to keep in mind that Rumbo is a dog who retains memories of being human (a concept not explored in as much detail as in the book), so some anthropomorphisms must be permitted. The greater oddity is why the lab would have such a plot-convenient button in the first place. It is, however, a circle, and the idea of a circle governing all is a highly enticing one in the context of this particular story.

Circles are an important recurring motif throughout Fluke - it opens with a shot of the Earth as seen from outer space, a curiously grandiose starting point for a film that spends most of its time surveying the world from the dog's eye-view. We also have the circular holes through which chemicals are administered to Fluke's eyes during his mercifully brief stint as a lab animal and, most prominently of all, the engagement ring that Thomas presents to Carol in a flashback sequence, with the assurance that, "Two connected circles mean forever". Thomas correctly identifies the representation of eternity, but possesses a misguided understanding as to what "forever" actually entails. It is not, as he assumes, a matter of everything maintaining a fixed and permanent state. The circle symbolises the ongoing cycle of life, and the process by which it is constantly renewed and perpetuated. Everything has its time and its place and, eventually, all things must pass, but the circle is evocative of the idea that within this process there is no discernible beginning or end. Things simply move from one state to another and, through that, the basic essence of life endures and continues, forever finding its way back along the cycle of life, death and renewal. The circle also symbolises interconnectivity, and the notion that everything is intrinsically linked, hence the opening shot of the Earth, indicating that Fluke's story is just one of many in a sprawling network of beings all attempting to navigate their way through a vast and intimidating cosmos, something that Fluke contemplates in his closing narration. Paths may intersect along the way, but everything inevitably has to continue along its own route. Meanwhile, the title and character name of "Fluke", much like the title of Ardolino's aforementioned Chances Are, points to the capriciousness of existence, and to the chance encounters that enable individual lives to intersect and leave their respective marks on one another - in the case of Fluke/Thomas and his family, at least twice.

Although Fluke is told from the perspective of the deceased, his journey can, if you like, be interpreted as an allegory for the bereaved themselves successfully coming through the grieving process, with Fluke's final decision to "release" his family signifying the lessening of grief and the accommodation of memory in such a way that it is no longer debilitating. As Fluke observes at the end of the book, a ghost has been vanquished. The film also functions as an affecting plea for a greater appreciation and respect for non-human forms of life, and for their part in the ongoing proliferation and continuation of life (although if Herbert was going for such a message in his novel then I think there is a definite point at which he royally blows it).

In both Herbert's novel and Carlei's film, Fluke survives the second crash and atones for his grotesque error of judgement by reviving the unconscious Reg/Jeff, after which he goes his own way. The film, however, gives additional closure to Fluke's relationship with his family, which in the book comes about more obliquely via those freshly-laid flowers. Here, Fluke gets to make one last ditch attempt to communicate to Carol who he really is, by scratching at the "forever" engraving on Thomas's tombstone (thus recalling the words of his marriage proposal), and apparently succeeds - Carol does not make her newfound knowledge explicit, but is visibly aghast as Fluke limps away. Fluke ends his bond with Carol, at least in the direct sense, by once again emphasising the eternal nature of the connection they forged, which is now understood to refer not to permanence or possession, but to something far broader - the level on which all things remain connected, and are constantly affecting and perpetuating one another. Fluke then leaves them for good, having decided that his family have a right to move on with their lives and that his presence would only be an obstruction; all he can do now is accept his life as a dog and find the pleasure and value in that. The last glimpse we see of the Johnsons shows Jeff, fully recovered from his injuries, returning to the family home and presenting Brian with a new puppy. They may be fully restored as a family unit, with Jeff now filling the void left by Thomas, but the puppy signifies the extent to which Fluke/Thomas's own legacy will continue in their lives; by simply intervening a second time around he has left another mark and created an additional void that needs filling. The young life likewise represents a new beginning, the continuation of yet another individual story that has intersected the family's own - there is a brief moment where Carol, still haunted by her final encounter with Fluke, stares the puppy intently in the eyes, as if contemplating the likelihood that it too was human in a former life.

Above all, Carlei's film teaches that where one door closes, another opens, as is demonstrated in the final moments, when Fluke, having retreated deep into the wilderness, encounters a squirrel, who is revealed to be Rumbo in his latest form. Once again, sheer fluke has enabled two familiar paths to intersect, although things are not quite as they were before, and perhaps that's even a good thing. Rumbo's excitement at getting to regale his old friend with the ins and outs of being a squirrel presents this impermanence as something to be embraced, for with every change comes the opportunity to see and understand the world from a fresh and exciting new angle. This is reinforced in a brief post-credits scene, which shows Rumbo (as a dog) and Fluke (as a puppy) running together, indicating that we have, in a metaphorical sense, returned to the beginning of the story, with their friendship newly rejuvenated and many further adventures lying ahead of them.

Here are some additional differences between Carlei's film and Herbert's novel:

• The book is set in the United Kingdom, whereas the film relocates the action to the States.
• Bella is in the book, but is a fairly different character. There, she is not homeless, and lives with her abusive, alcoholic son. She still takes in Fluke off the streets and feeds him, but is forced to turn him out when her son disapproves. In the book, Bella does not die, let alone get reincarnated as a firefly. Her main function in the film - to give Fluke his name - is in the book fulfilled by a junkyard worker named Lenny. In both cases, Fluke receives his name through his ability to play the shell game.
• The film (thankfully!) excises all of the details about Rumbo's passion for rat killing, including a confrontation with an unusually articulate rat who is hinted to also have some memory of his former life as a human. Sadly, it doesn't go in the rat's favour. Let's just say that I like movie Rumbo a whole lot better than book Rumbo. Movie Rumbo does not seem to share book Rumbo's prejudices, for he helps rats by freeing them at the lab.
• As noted, the entire vivisection lab arc occurs only the film. In the book, Rumbo is killed during a police raid on the junk yard when a pile of debris collapses on him. Furthermore, he dies immediately, and never confesses to Fluke that he was once human.
• There are literal ghosts in the book too, something not represented in the movie. In the book, they're a strange outlier, and have no obvious story purpose.
• In addition to the interludes with Miss Birdle and the vixen, the book has a chapter in which Fluke encounters a badger who shares some of his insight and speculation on the reincarnation process.
• While, most of the human characters' names have been changed, Carol's name remains the same in both versions.
• The character of Brian is exclusive to the film. In the book Fluke does not have a son, but a daughter named Polly. Polly does not form as tight a bond with Fluke as Brian does in the film. The climatic plot point about Brian being lost in a snowstorm and Fluke having to find him has no such equivalent in the book. I haven't said much about Brian, but he's the character who occasionally threatens to tip the film over from poignancy into mawkishness, particularly toward the end when it dabbles with the idea of him having a psychic connection with Fluke.
• The part about Fluke being reunited with Rumbo in the form of a squirrel does occur in the book, but plays out slightly differently. There, it's implied that Rumbo does not actually recognise Fluke, and the two of them do not become friends again.
• Both the book and the film are narrated from Fluke's perspective, although the book has an additional twist with regards to whom he is telling the story that is not carried over into the film. There, Fluke has been speaking directly to the viewer this entire time, whereas in the book he is revealed to have been telling the story to a dying vagrant who, in his moribund state, is apparently capable of understanding the dog. The book contains a short epilogue, narrated from the third-person perspective, regarding the fate of the vagrant once Fluke leaves him: "He died. And he waited."

Finally, I mentioned earlier that I have a weakness for stories about reincarnation. I suppose this can be attributed in part to my deep personal attachment to a pet species with a painfully short lifespan. When you're a rat owner for the long haul, you experience loss and having to start over so many times that it's helpful to think of this cycle, in its way, as the continuation of one universal life. The upside is that you get to frequently experience the joy of a new beginning, albeit with the paradox that you are, inevitably, setting yourself up to have your heart broken all over again. The story that I think perfectly encapsulates the darker side of the process? Stephen King's Pet Sematary. You're bringing something back from the dead, so that ultimately it can stab you in the eye.