Misa mi

Looking superficially "Misa mi" may leave an impression there's nothing new here and it is a medley of clichés. A widowed father finding new love, child-animal relation, grandmother living in wilderness, kids who dislike each other becoming friends while working for mutual aim, national minority with different lifestyle and traditions... Everything sounds so familiar. And beautiful nature, cute animals... Looks like playing a safe card, you just can't lose.

Now you expect an education movie: kids will get information about certain animal species, and be told to accept differences between people and usual things about environment etc. And if you watch the movie with one eye shut, during ironing or cooking or reading headlines in papers, you'll stay in that conviction. However, if you take your time to watch it without prejudices, you'll see this is a family and not child movie, targeting equally on all generations. There are no moralities, no final answers, no ecological proclamations and pamphlets, no psychological analyzing, no patronizing messages.. Questions are open, answers are offered, but there is always more than one. This is real life, you don't have simple answers. This is not "You must stop when the light is red" or "Don't touch the stove", not even "Black and white are equal" or "It's wrong to steal in the shop" child movie.

A girl is not prepared to share her father with a (potential) new stepmother? She has right to avoid her when she can, but her father has a right for his life to continue. Is traditional medicine better than official, scientific one? Both are here to cure people, and none of them can do everything. Growing up in old or modern way? First includes drinking coffee at the age of 3; the second means TV addiction.

The best example is the grandmother: she doesn't justify killing the wolf (the endangered species), but she also tells her granddaughter who stands for the right of the wolves to survive: yes, but people also live here and also try to survive.

The only final message may be - you can't make up your mind, you can't find definite answers until you try not just to hear and see, but live and understand both sides. And even then, it is only your choice and your answer, and not the universal truth (that most movies and most people in reality pretend to offer).