As for films or stories about Baba-Yaga, I've almost tried not to miss them since I was a kid. I even learned that the acting prowess of male star Georgiy Millyar became the model for any Baba-Yaga character appearing on the screen after the 1960s.

In this film, Mariya represents spring, while Baba-Yaga and sometimes Kikimora represents autumn or winter. Danila must go into the magic lake to develop intellectually, personally and strengthen his faith. Life has many pitfalls, but in the end, faith, energy and love will overcome them all.

A film, which was made very simply, but touched me very much. Since 2007 when I entered my university, it has been a long time since I had a family meal. I often eat alone and rarely have friends to talk to. That's why I sympathize so much with the fate of the Holy Child and little Vasya.

Now I am in the middle of translating this film, well, and I suddenly remembered a species of chicken that is quite famous in Vietnam. Indeed, it seems similar to the dragon on the flag of Kazan. This breed of chicken is called as Đông-Tảo Chicken or sometimes Dragon Chicken.

Perhaps a thousand years ago, this was just a normal breed of chicken with a normal size, but through the process of cross-breeding and fattening, they have become the shape they are today. Their bodies are of course better than other chickens, but not special. One thing that makes this chicken valuable is its legs. Their feet are rarely used for eating, but will be soaked in wine to store for many years. This wine can cure joint diseases, colds or nourish persons who have just recovered from illness. In fact, their legs often cost many times more than their bodies. This characteristic is similar to toad meat, which is a special nutrient only for children in Southeast Asia.

I must also add that there is a very interesting history behind this chicken. Đông-Tảo is originally a village with a very small area in the Northern Delta of Vietnam. Previously it was called as Đông-Cảo. "Đông" simply means East, and "Cảo" is jargon for areas reserved for people serving prison sentences. It is similar to the Sibir region. However, the prisoners in Cảo commune were actually nobles, officials or generals who unfortunately committed crimes. The monarchy's purpose in exiling them was twofold : To reclaim the wastelands and at the same time profit from the prisoners' labor. After all, those are all good directions. Therefore, with the accumulated knowledge, such prisoners created not only the Dragon Chicken breed but also many other good customs. But of course, because of the inferiority complex about the name of the settlement, they later deliberately called it as Đông-Tảo, in which, "Tảo" means the light of dawn.

The wisdom of the fox is a very familiar literary motif in Europe for thousands of years, but in Asia where the fox is hardly a common creature, the only corresponding image is the snake. In Aleksandr Nikolayevich Afanasyev's original, the fox even made the lion breaks the wolf's leg. However, that is a fable, but in my opinion, life forces us to have both the cunning of the fox and the ferocity of the wolf to survive.

Now I will tell a famous folk poem from Northern Vietnam, which probably appeared in the XIX-century :

Tò vò mà nuôi con nhện, / If a wasp were to raise a spider,
Đến khi nó lớn, nó quyện nhau đi. / When it be grown up, it would leave.
Tò vò ngồi khóc tỉ ti, / The wasp would sit there weeping,
Nhện ơi, nhện hỡi! Mày đi đằng nào. / O spider, my spider! Whither art thou gone?

In fact, the wasp has the habit of killing the mother spider, then bringing the spider larvae back to raise as its reserve food. However, the meaning of the poem is about the fate of adopted children. In old Vietnamese society, well-off families often adopted many children. They have a life no different from servants, and if they are girls, they will be allowed to marry their master's son. Even in my father's family, there are many men whose their parents have arranged for them to get married since birth. Therefore, there are two very funny facts : Both of bride and groom thought each other as brothers or sisters, the groom even carried the bride all day, because they were both just teenagers ; in addition, because family life was so mixed, incest occurs between father-in-law and daughter-in-law (if the husband was too young and the wife was older), mother-in-law and son-in-law, or this person's siblings and the other person's spouse was ever extremely common. That also makes genealogies only reveal half the truth.

When this poem is turned into a song, it contains another meaning, that is sad but more beautiful. Wasp and spider are like a couple who once had beautiful memories together, but then spider left and left wasp an endless sadness. In the song, the wasp counts the threads of spider silk to blame the spider for his ungratefulness. Finally, the wasp got caught in the spider's web and died. It must be added that the silk thread is a very popular literary and musical image in Vietnam, which represents the feelings of a couple when they are apart. The longer the thread, the fuller the nostalgia. If A develops feelings for B, then it is said that A has fallen into B's net.

This film, in my opinion, only deserves a B grade, or a score of 4/5 according to Russian standards. Because it contains too many slogans and noises, which makes the story heavy (Even though I was born and raised in a communist country, I also felt that the message from the film was very forced). Of course, in return, the soundtrack is very good and the images have documentary value about Soviet life in 1946.

The film's content begins like someone writing a postcard to wish someone a happy birthday. Even, in my opinion, that was a son who left home to fight and sent a letter to his beloved mother in his hometown. The story moves continuously like someone looking at a collection of postcards, and of course, those "postcards" contain the history of a city. Perhaps after my generation, that is, persons were born in the 2000s and later, whom will find this form difficult to understand.

This film almost heralded the three golden decades of Soviet animation. I am sure !

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Just for fun, for most countries in the world, those three decades are very beautiful memories, because they are probably associated with the prosperity of welfare, media, entertainment... but for Vietnamese people only have obsessions of separation, loss, war, poverty and deception. Therefore, in the 1980s and 1990s, when the governments of the Soviet Union (inherited by Russia) and the United States promoted a large number of books and films, which were released in the mid-twentieth century, there was a phenomenon like this : Although Vietnamese people received it very warmly (because they all have attractive and humane content), they hardly understood anything.

Actually, I can say that the twentieth century was very scary in the minds of Vietnamese people, that's why they always talk about war and identify history with war. What is considered the most beautiful in the modern Vietnamese worldview often focuses on the early stages of life (school age, teenage love) or rural landscapes. That concept is now breaking like glass as the economic crisis spreads, and as for me, I am also trying to escape such a simple way of thinking. Regardless, our world has transformed profoundly since the Internet dominated the media. Now Goebbels's formula is no longer true, because too much information confuses the crowd and increases distrust.

While this one captures some of the magic of the season, I think it also continues the decline of the series that had already been noticeable in the previous episode.

The earlier episodes had straddled the line between childhood and adulthood, and the scripts had had something for all ages, but these later episodes became more purely for children.

Also, the animation style became simplified (no more "shading"). Probably because the studio was on the verge of being closed at this point, and was growing rather desperate to find a way to avoid its fate (perhaps the only reason it lasted as long as it did was because the Yeltsin people wanted to make sure they won the 1995 elections first).

Other animated versions of this tale (both also quite good):
Fox and Wolf (1936) - earliest surviving Soviet colour animation - unfortunately, the last 10 minutes didn't survive
Be Caught, Fish (2005) - part of the "Mountain of Gems" series, this one has an irreverent Ukrainian flavour

This story seems to be very popular in Eastern Europe, because it is related to the very familiar Damsel-in-Distress motif from the Middle Ages (only Europe, while not popular in Asia - where marital relations not free). Within just a few minutes when I posted the subtitles on Opensubtitles, there were about 30 downloads - a not small number for a little-known site.

It's interesting to think about how this lighthearted, snowy film (based on a mixture of northern European pagan and Western Christian folklore) was made at a time of horrific existential war, in a southern Islamic city surrounded by flat, semi-arid plains...

As a film, though - I like the song, and I think the film itself is pretty charming. But as New Year films go, the Soyuzmultfilm studio made a much better one three years later (and a few more classic ones soon thereafter), and I also prefer the 1937 "Silver Rain" made at Mosfilm.

This story still remains topical to these days. It seems that as the quality of life improves, the method of educating self-defense awareness becomes increasingly poor. In 2022, in a large city of Southern Vietnam, a rather unreasonable robbery occurred, but when I saw what happened, so I exclaimed that : This is the phenomenon of The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats. In the security clip, an intruder knocks on the door and threatens to force two children to give him the iPad. It must also be known that that morning their parents went to work and left them in the motel room. Đồng Nai ("deer-field") is an industrialized metropolis, where most residents are migrant workers and have very low incomes. The event also speaks to the seriousness of dependence on technology, because now Vietnam's Ministry of Education is also very worried about this issue.

However, that is still just a small problem and can be forgiven, but what about more complex issues such as : Sexual abuse, labor abuse and especially the use of force against children ? In the last days of 2023, there were at least three events that shocked Vietnamese society and even caused parliamentarians to question the Minister of Education :

1. Poisoning at school : A principal was suspended for 15 days for skimping on rations, causing every 2 students to eat the same small packet of instant noodles ; Some schools have had a series of students having to go to the emergency room after eating lunch ; Many students had stomachaches after buying snacks outside the schoolgate, some of which were found to contain drug powder.

2. A parent blocked the street and beat his son's classmate, forcing the schoolboy to go to the emergency room with a very serious brain condition.

3. A music teacher was locked in class by students, whom used disparaging words and then beat her until she fainted.

This is just a summary, because the real situation is much more serious and complicated. What I always think about is, what is the point of books still being sold on the streets, when no one wants to read them and if they do, they won't understand them ?