I saw this movie "The Day of the Crow" on Saturday at 10:20 a.m.  I read the synopsis briefly before going in so I had a general idea of what the plot was going to be like.

 First off, I enjoyed the animation very much, I thought that was very well done.  The story reminded me of the Jungle Book, in the sense that we begin with a young boy who is raised in the forest.  He is raised with his father, who is stern and tells him not to venture outside of the forest because he will disappear.  The boy obeys but is on the edge of the forest one day and sees people walking in the distance.  He is unsure so he asks his father about it and his father says that it can not be true.  Now if this were American cinema then they boy would venture there out of curiosity alone, disobeying his father, however he does not.  His father is injured during a thunderstorm and the gets a broken leg, the boy is desperate and leaves the forest, with his father, to go and find the people he saw and ask if they knew how to fix legs.  It is only in desperate need that the boy disobeys his father, otherwise he would die.  The boy finds a town and leads his father to a doctor who takes them both in.  The doctor is kind, gentle, and sweet and gets his daughter, of similar age to the boy (perhaps 10??), to watch after him while his father is recuperating.  It is here that the plot thickens because there is this old woman who sees the father and says that he is "pumpkin" and is rallying to have him killed or run out of town because she says that he killed her daughter and burned down their barn.  The boy meanwhile is basically getting to know the girl better and becoming very good friends with her.  When the boys father, "pumpkin", wakes his is angry but convinced by the sweet doctor to stay until his leg is healed and out of a cast.  All pumpkin wants to do is leave as soon as possible.  When he does leave, we learn that pumpkin was in love with the old woman's daughter and was caught in the barn with her by her father.  He then was extremely angry and ended up trying to shoot pumpkin, and in doing so burned the barn down out of rage on accident and died.  Then pumpkin and the girl run to live in the forest.  We don't know how the mother dies but we do see, throughout the film, beings that have the body of a person, with normal clothes, but the heads of animals.  These people are people who have died, they are ghosts and the boy can see them.  The father becomes ill shortly after arriving in the forest and the boy gets a crow to take a handkerchief to the girl, and bring her back.  The only significance of crows in the story.  She does and is trying to heal his father when he wakes, thinks she is wife for an instant, and then when he sees that she is not he lashes out in anger and sadness because he is kind of going crazy because he basically became a hermit when the mom dies.  In lashing out he sets fire to the hut, but sacrifices himself to save the children, and in doing so joins his wife and finds peace.  The boy returns with the girl to her town.

 The biggest difference between this and American cinema is the reference to death.  In our films, especially children's films, we tip toe around the subject and when someone does die, it is a huge thing.  In this film, the subject of death seems to be less crucial.  It doesn't seem to be a big deal.  The boy can see ghosts and sees his mother all of the time, so he is not phased by death at all.  I like this approach because I agree that we should teach children that death is natural, since it is unavoidable and is natural after all. I enjoyed seeing this movie a lot at the festival!