Insta-flashback in childhood

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2017)

I watched this movie countless number of times with my small children.
There isn't a lot to tell to be honest. Not from my perspective. The drawing is, as usual with Hayao Miyazaki movies, exceptional and the soundtrack sublime.
My neighbor Totoro is a simple story of two girls, relocating with their father in the countryside to be near to the hospital where the sick mother is taken care of. There is nothing much else to be honest.
So, why a 10/10? Simply because it is such a nice movie. Nice in its purest form. There isn't any opposition. In 99.999% of the movies there is always a conflict. Not necessarily a fight or war between two factions or two persons, but the notion of conflict is almost always there. Most of times the distinction is clear and driven by the scenario. Sometimes the distinction is not that clear. And then there are the 0.001% movies left: the ones where there is zero conflict at all.
Some people may find this absence of conflict boring, I find it refreshing. Don't get me wrong though. That doesn't mean the movie is empty, because there are emotions popping out as you watch it. Mainly positive and kind emotions, but equally there is some tension. All adults won't necessarily feel the tension. Adults that were never in this kind of situation won't understand what feeling they are supposed to have.
SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE
The tension is present when actually the girls find out through a telegram that their mother needs to stay longer at the hospital. But they don't know why and start to panic! Did their mother became REALLY sick she is going to die? Why? And the smallest girl, incapable to wait longer to have the answer, leaves the home and try to join the hospital which is hours by walk from home. The father is absent at that moment and the older girl launches herself trying to find her lost little sister being afraid she will never find her back.
And as an adult, ex-children, you recall this tension of not knowing immediately what is going on.
Nowadays it won't make a lot of sense since we are totally interconnected with smartphones and apps, and you get notifications almost instantly, but try recalling when you where a children and there weren't any mobile phone. Try recalling when your parents where late, really late, to pick you up at school and you started panicking thinking something awful happened, an accident, the house on fire or god knows what other horrible incident, and that you'll be left alone, with your siblings and no one to take care of you. Well, the movie succeeds in making you recall this emotion, stress, panic, you had when you were a kid. That is the tension the movie creates and does it in an extremely sensible, kid-perspective, manner.
It's a real gem.