Mavka: The Forest Song is...complicated

I really don't know what say about this one. Is it good? Is it bad? I'm not sure and quite frankly so are many others. This was easily one of the most anticipated projects in Ukrainian film history (shown clearly by being the highest grossing Ukrainian movie after it's independence) and the most highley expected sequel in the long array of Animagrad's projects. However, even before the release, some people weren't very fond of the direction it seemed to take, and I was certainly among them.

At first I was very excited for this film. The book it's based on, the play The Forest Song (Лісова пісня) by Ukrainian poet, novelist and playwright Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913) is not only one of my favorite books of all time, but is considered one of the greatest books and one of the most important staples in the history of Ukrainian literature. Apart from actual stageshows, the play was adapted into a succesful long running ballet, two Ukrainian languge live-action films (released in 1961 and 1981 respectively) and a Russian languge animated short made for TV film in 1976. It also has a sentimental meaning for me for being my very first experiance with fantasy as a literary genre. When I saw the early teasers which premiered in 2018 I was hyped. The mavka of the story looked exactly how I pictured her in my mind and they gave of the mystical aura of the story great.

Since then the movie's actual development was almost secret. Very little would be revealed about the production and I almost forgot about it. Until I came across the official trailer. And my reaction was Well... There they go botching one of my favorite childhood classics. However, I still thought that maybe the whole movie was actually good but poorly marketed and that all will turn out well.

Boy, oh boy, could I not have been more wrong.

First of all, this is one of the few times I won't be judging this one as an adaptation, because outside of a select few quotes, several characters, general set up and a few moments this movie has virtually nothing in common with the source material. Do I think that was a horrid idea? Of course I do, I feel like the movie could have been equally as strong if it stayed rooted within the original play instead of being a completely original story. However, the producers did mention that they wanted the film to remain family friendly and suitable for children, so the melancholic atmosphere and story of the book had to be left out. I understand this change to a degree so, whilst I don't applaud it, I don't dispise it.

But the question is could they still retain the feel, message and spirit of the original work? There were several examples of movies and shows not following the exact plot of the original book or comic, but still capturing it's atmosphere well (for example The Bourne Identity).

Also I won't be critiquing the changes made in the English languge and Croatian dubs, as they would be very hard to explain. However, some things that bothered me were the changes of authentic and traditional names of the characters to more worldly recognized names was in my opinion, pretty pointless, because, despite that not being very vital to the story itself, it's still a part of the original narrative's spirit.

But, let's examine what, in my opinion, were right and wrong things the film made.

(1) The Story Changes; Good or Bad?

The movie's plot only loosely follows the narrative of the original play, inventing a narrative that feels decisively more like Princess Mononoke but in a different cultural background. Now I don't mind that (after all PM is certainly one of my favorite animated films of all time), but an issue I have with it is that this could have just been an original Slavic mythology themed story without the unnecesary tie-ins to the book. To me it felt very alienating, in the same vein World War Z did.

However, is this newly invented storyline for the film a bad story on it's own merits, if we completely exclude the lack of faithfullness to the source material?

Whilst it's fairly cliche and full of things we've seen done a million other times in a million other movies before, it's not a fundamentally flawed narrative. I do think it would have benefited if it wasn't as heavily reliant on slapstick and humor, but as far as some recent children's fantasy films go, this could have been a lot worse. But, as far as the main narrative is concerned, I believe they handled it pretty strongly and had a specific vision for it which they wanted to fullfill. It doesn't fit much in line with the original book's message and premise, but it does still carry some strong and important messages featured in this type of stories.

Overall, the story changes work for the most part, even though the film would have worked fine if it omitted them.

(2) Accuracy to Folklore

Ok, look. Accuracy to Ukrainian folklore is nigh impossible to achieve in an adaptation of The Forest Song. Why? Well, the book changed a very significant aspect of folklore surrounding these creatures. In folklore, mavkas as creatures are spirits of girls who had comitted suicide within the forest due to unrequited love. Thus, in this form they are incapable of possesing romantic feelings for anyone, however, it is in their nature to seduce and taunt men and lead them to either a transformation which remains perminant or into straight up death, mostly through tickling. Lesya Ukrainka changed this aspect of folktales in order to make the narrative of the forbidden love between a human and a mavka possible, however, the rest of the story remains quite faithful to the beliefs and superstitions of the Volyn region of Ukraine where she grew up and set the story into.

The film, however, changes certain aspects of folklore, in order to, once again, have the story fit more in line with being family friendly. Naturally, I completely understand this as I don't think most parents would approve of their younglings watching a movie where the lead and her sisters are running around fully naked and with massive holes on their backs through which we see their internal organs in blazing glory.

However, I still feel like carrying over some less fucked up elements from folklore and mythology wouldn't have hurt the final product. A great example of this is the fact that out of all of the mavkas that appear in the film only the lead is called that and it's pretty apparent that it's her personal name. The issue with this is that, in folklore, mavkas don't have personal names, apart from the 28 recorded ones who don't appear in the film or the play and scholars still debate on wheater they are mavkas or rusalkas (with rusalkas being the freshwater equivalents of mavkas. Also I would have loved to see some other creatures of Ukrainian folklore to show up in the film, despite a lot of the big names (like the afframentioned mavkas and rusalkas, the forest spirit Lisovyk, the water spirit Vodianyk and The One Who Sits In The Rock (althought the last one being almost unrecognisable from his book and folklore counterparts)). For example, poterchata, spirits of lost deceased children who passed away before recieving a name, play a significant role within the book, althought I can see why they would be left out (althought some children's films like Coraline not being afraid of depicting deceased children, but this isn't that kind of film). However, I especially regret the lack of appearence of my favorite creature from Ukrainian folklore, the comet-esque night sky harbinger of misfortune Perelisnyk, which does appear in the play as well.

Overall, the folkloric accuracy of this adaptation is questionable, with some changes making sense, and others seeming quite unneccesary, overall this adaptation is a mixed bag when it comes to folkloric accuracy.

(3) Let's Hear Some Positives

The animation actually looks quite stunning, probably better than some of the more mainstream animated films in recent years. This pleasently surprised me as the Animagrad animation studio's previous effort (The Stolen Princess: Ruslan and Liudmyla) looked unfinished and dull. I don't think it's on par with the animation in the early teasers (whose beauty, despite being rough drafts, is undeniable), but it's still breathtaking, particularly the opening segments and end credits which remind me of stained glass windows and art naive. I feel like the character designs were mostly done very well, apart from maybe Lukash's dog Shust as well as tiny twig like spirits and some of the other beings in the forest who looked very cartoony and out of place.

The music is better than I thought it would be. The original instrumental tracks really brought forth the feeling of mystique and age of the forest most of the runtime takes place in. As per original songs... They were not my cup of tea. I'm of course talking about Song of the Wind (originally titled Mova vitru (Мова вітру) or The Language of the Wind) which was pushed everywhere in the film's domestic marketing. It's a decent song, don't get me wrong, but I do feel like the overexposure is what killed it for me (kind off like my least favorite song of all time, Let it go from Disney's Frozen). I honestly don't recall any of the other vocal compositions, but if they didn't stick out to me I pribably didn't find them very memorable. One thing I do give the movie credit for is the inclusion of traditional Ukrainian folk music within the ST. Whilst there are only two such examples present in it (I sincerely feel like there should have been more given the film's roots) they were one of the few moments that stuck out to me and impressed me. From the wonderful performances to the sweet melody of traditional folk music I always adored and the wonderful dance animation of the characters, these moments were pure gold and probably my favorite sequences in the whole film. If I had to pick out a favorite from the two, I would say it would be Mavka's dance (Mavchyn Tanok (Мавчин танок)) which uses the Ukrainian folk song Vesgnianka (Веснянка) performed by the folk band DakhaBrakha who play themselves in the film.

And yes, those are geniuene Ukrainian folk costumes and dance moves you see shown in the sequence.

In the end, would I reccomend it?

Well it depends... if you haven't read the book or seen the play put on live (which I assume most international audiences haven't) I feel like you would enjoy this one as a cheesy and childish, but overall entertaining little venture with a fair amount of positives. If you have read the book, unless you have as much connection with it as I do, I feel like you would find it a rather poor adaptation, but a fun way to introduce your kids to the story you might introduce them to when they're older. If you were hoping for a faithful modern and frsh retelling of the classic story like I was you are going to walk away dissapointed. It's not a terrible movie, but lots of the choices in it bothered me.

Trailers:

And as a special treat, here's how the movie sounds in the original Ukrainian (safely said, a lot better):