Mavka the forest song (movie review)

Warm greetings everyone.

After a hectic week, I decided to unwind and relax with a movie. Not an action movie but a computer-animation fantasy comedy drama movie. Talk about pampering the inner child within.

The plot

Mavka, the forest song

This is a computer animated fantasy comedy drama movie based on a Ukrainian folk lore. It was released this same year 2023.

What attracted me to this movie was the video quality. The trailer was so captivating that I knew the movie would be as well and I was not disappointed.

The movie begins with a brief history of the past between humans and forest dwellers, giving us information to the enmity existing between the two worlds. It was revealed that the enmity was borne from a man's greed to own the source of life which prior, he had been given a little amount of it to save his daughter's life.

Then, the movie moves past the history and to spring, a time of wakening for the forest dwellers. Mavka awakes first, as the soul of the forest and goes about waking the entire forest populace. A meeting was callwd by the guardian who informs them that the supreme spirits of nature would be appointing a new guardian because he (the current guardian is now old).

On the other end, the human world, a visitor just arrived and she introduces herself as Kylina, the late sawmill's daughter. She ganered the sympathy of the village folks only to lose it when she offers them a job to cut down timber in the black forest (mavka's forest).

Her outburst of a high reward attracted a young musician named Lucas ro her doorstep. Apparently he needs the money to buy drugs that could save his uncle Leo's life. The job he got was to find a particular tree with a peculiar leaf inscribed on a piece of paper, in the black forest. To make sure he succeeds, two henchmen were sent along with hin on the mission.

Moving on, Lucas and his team got to the enchanted Forest and a series of events occurred leading to them being scattered and noticed by the forest nymphs. On the other hand, Mavka refuses to alert the nymphs about Lucas, deciding to handle the situation on her own, she attempts to "scare the human.

This is so funny cos, she's a softie, a good natured being with a nice personality and this usually earned her taunts from other nymphs. She wanted to change her personality to please those who taunted her but it never worked out. This is a life lesson for us as well, you should not change just to please others, if there must be a change, it should be because you need it for you to become better in life

Later on a series of events happened that led to Mavka being chosen as the new guardian and Lucas leaving the forest with some portion of the cure for his uncle. During the chase, Lucaa dropped his flute. The flute was found by Mavka who makes the decision to go see the human world and Lucas. She makes herself appear human and went to see Lucas. Upon seeing Mavka, he was very happy and decided to give her a tour of the city.

Later on he played his music for her which exposes her disguise, revealing her as a nymph to the villagers. Kylina ceases the opportunity to incite the villagers against Mavka and a riot broke out. Lesh comes to Mavka's rescue using the opportunity to tell Mavka of the war many years ago that led to him forbidding humans from the forest.

The riot progressed with the villagers destroying the forest which causes Mavka to become weak. She tries to reason with Kylina but gets a shocking truth that kylina is not the sawmill's daughter but his wife. She makes the ultimate choice by invoking the spirit of fire to obtain the spark of rage, to be able to curtail the riot but it costs her soul as she would be trapped in a vast nothingness for eternity. She agrees and uses the spark of rage to chase away the villagers, only thing is that she was also destroying the forest in return, making both humans and forest dwellers homeless.

Where was Lucas while all this was happening? We see him trapped in the basement and almost drowning but he was saved at the last minute. After his rescue, he finds Mavka in a fire hurricane of rage, all attempts to communicate with her fails and only one thing was left....music. He plays the flute and leads an orchestra of the villagers and forest dwellers alike in musical symphony and that gets through to Mavka, who finally stops in her rage... apparently learning the truth...that not all humans are bad