It’s one of the biggest productions to ever come out of the Ukrainian film industry, and it has understandably been a huge hit at home: Mavka: The Forest Song is inspired by a 1912 work by renowned Ukrainian feminist, activist, poet, and playwright Lesya Ukrainka, and it weaves traditional Ukrainian folk music and beautifully animated mythic motifs into a family-friendly story. I cannot even begin to imagine how validating it must feel to the home audience to see such a thing onscreen amidst a war of aggression launched by an enemy with the overt aim of erasing Ukrainian identity.
Alas, for audiences outside Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora, there’s little more on offer beyond the novelty of design elements we haven’t seen before. The runes are mysterious and the mountain meadows are idyllic, but the story happening around them is familiar to the point of tedium. Here we have a fantastical if demure Romeo-and-Juliet romance between human musician Lucas and nymph Mavka, “the soul of the forest” outside his village — they meet just as legends of a long-ago war between the villagers and the spirits of the forest are dredged up by the arrival from “the city” of the steampunk-esque Kylina, with her scheme to rob the forest of some of its hidden magic. (The temporal setting is vaguely turn-of-the-20th-century, but a nasty, rapacious outsider storming in to threaten bucolic calm feels very of the moment.)
Goofy forest-critter sidekicks and a trio of mean-girl nymphs who torment Mavka are but some of the components clearly imported from modern Hollywood, Disney especially; they are handled with hamfisted awkwardness at best. The messages of respecting nature and being true to oneself are heartfelt and welcome yet they never rise above the trite. Only the finale, with its warning about rage getting the better of oneself, finds notes of grim surprise. It’s here where the animation — computer generated and by Ukrainian animation studio Animagrad, for its second feature — finally comes into its own, with an arcane pull of furious power in the face of an enemy one wishes one did not have to face.
Perhaps it’s not unexpected that this is where the film’s only palpable passion radiates off the screen. Shame that it comes so late in the game.
Mavka: The Forest Song is available in both the original Ukrainian and dubbed into English. Ukrainian and English voice casts, respectively: Mavka (Nataliya Denisenko/Laurie Hymes), Lucas (Artem Pivovarov/Eddy Lee), Kylina (Elena Kravets/Sarah Natochenny).
more films like this:
• The Secret of Kells [Prime US | Apple TV US | Kanopy US | Studiocanal Presents UK | itvX UK]
• Spirited Away [Prime US | Apple TV US | Max US | Netflix UK]
