The Writer Recalled
Today's review: Anne Frank: The Whole Story.
Anne Frank: The Whole Story certainly has a decent idea (letting us see Anne as human and not just a tragic historical figure), but I’m not entirely sure they executed it correctly. Biopics, and especially stories revolving around the Holocaust, have to walk a very fine line between accuracy and telling a good story that emotionally resonates with the audience. In this particular case, I’d say the movie crosses both sides of the line at varying times.
True to the title, the story begins just around the start of WWII, where we’re introduced to Anne (Hanna Taylor Gordon) and her family and friends, going about their normal life. We then proceed to rush through several years over the next fifty minutes, setting up both important players for later and showing the gradual increase of oppression against the Jews. After that, we get the part Anne is most famous for, the hiding above a spice factory, which takes up another hour. And after we reach the point where Anne’s diary entries end, the rest of the movie is dedicated to what happened to her and her family afterwards, with all the nastiness you’d expect (though they do avoid bringing in the thing the Holocaust is most infamous for). It’s all definitely impactful…but it winds up feeling like a very calculated impactfulness.
One of the problems with the movie is that it’s inconsistent with how it portrays Anne and the rest of her family/the people hiding with them. On the one hand, you get the impression that the filmmakers wanted to make them all feel more human, thus giving them flaws and moments of pettiness, which is fine if sometimes jarring for an audience who’s used to seeing these figures in one particular way. On the other hand, they then have the characters, but especially Anne, say very profound or tragically ironic things that feel like screenwriters contrivance instead of things that actually happened. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the opening minute, where we slowly zoom in on a street of people while we hear Anne talking about all the things she wants to do with her life, like travelling and writing. Then the camera comes to rest on one figure with their back to us, a voice calls out Anne’s name, and Anne turns around and smiles directly at the camera, which lingers on this image for several seconds. Perhaps Anne actually did say things like that (it’s been a very long time since I’ve read the diary), but it’s just incredibly over-the-top, especially as an opening. While it does improve from there, there are still scattered moments where the movie can’t help but do things that foreshadow later events. This includes things like having Anne and her father (Ben Kingsley) attend a screening of the 1938 Marie Antoinette movie, which feels like the filmmakers trying to draw parallels between the tragic fate of Antoinette and what’s eventually going to happen to Anne. And of course, the movie makes a big deal about Anne admiring a certain diary in a bookstore, lingering on it for a few seconds after she moves away. These sorts of things are par for the course for historical movies, but that doesn’t stop it from being mildly irritating at times.
I’m also not sure how I feel about the last hour plus of the movie. One big problem with Holocaust movies is that, even though these horrible things actually happened and the stories should be told to help people gain an understanding of what happened (and try to keep them from happening again), they run the risk of being manipulative. This is definitely the case here, since a lot of these terrible events are happening to young teens. Furthermore, it feels kind of disrespectful to me. Thanks to Anne’s diary, we know the events in the annex actually happened, and it seems reasonable to assume that the events we see before the Franks go into hiding are also accurate. But as far as I know, we don’t have any definitive accounts of what happened to Anne after she left the annex. As a result, it feels like the filmmakers are cramming in lots of pathos and movie contrivances (like a reunion between Anne and her friend) to fill in the blanks. They’re taking a real, tragic story and grafting even more suffering onto it, and that doesn’t wholly sit right with me.
I’m not sure if I recommend this movie or not. It’s pretty well made, feels realistic, and the actors are decent, but the obvious Hollywood touches drag it down. I do think it’s a story worth telling and hearing…but I’m not sure this was the way to tell it.
CAT ALERT: The Franks have a cat (that’s apparently going to have kittens, but I don’t know if she’s still pregnant in her last scene) that needs to be left behind when they go into hiding. We last see it climbing on the table and eating the food there. While in hiding, one of the other occupants brings his cat along even though he shouldn’t have, and it appears sporadically through the rest of the time in the annex, apparently not causing any trouble. I know they’re not the important part of the story, but I hope both cats were taken care of in the end. They’re innocent players in this too, after all.
Anne Frank: The Whole Story certainly has a decent idea (letting us see Anne as human and not just a tragic historical figure), but I’m not entirely sure they executed it correctly. Biopics, and especially stories revolving around the Holocaust, have to walk a very fine line between accuracy and telling a good story that emotionally resonates with the audience. In this particular case, I’d say the movie crosses both sides of the line at varying times.
True to the title, the story begins just around the start of WWII, where we’re introduced to Anne (Hanna Taylor Gordon) and her family and friends, going about their normal life. We then proceed to rush through several years over the next fifty minutes, setting up both important players for later and showing the gradual increase of oppression against the Jews. After that, we get the part Anne is most famous for, the hiding above a spice factory, which takes up another hour. And after we reach the point where Anne’s diary entries end, the rest of the movie is dedicated to what happened to her and her family afterwards, with all the nastiness you’d expect (though they do avoid bringing in the thing the Holocaust is most infamous for). It’s all definitely impactful…but it winds up feeling like a very calculated impactfulness.
One of the problems with the movie is that it’s inconsistent with how it portrays Anne and the rest of her family/the people hiding with them. On the one hand, you get the impression that the filmmakers wanted to make them all feel more human, thus giving them flaws and moments of pettiness, which is fine if sometimes jarring for an audience who’s used to seeing these figures in one particular way. On the other hand, they then have the characters, but especially Anne, say very profound or tragically ironic things that feel like screenwriters contrivance instead of things that actually happened. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the opening minute, where we slowly zoom in on a street of people while we hear Anne talking about all the things she wants to do with her life, like travelling and writing. Then the camera comes to rest on one figure with their back to us, a voice calls out Anne’s name, and Anne turns around and smiles directly at the camera, which lingers on this image for several seconds. Perhaps Anne actually did say things like that (it’s been a very long time since I’ve read the diary), but it’s just incredibly over-the-top, especially as an opening. While it does improve from there, there are still scattered moments where the movie can’t help but do things that foreshadow later events. This includes things like having Anne and her father (Ben Kingsley) attend a screening of the 1938 Marie Antoinette movie, which feels like the filmmakers trying to draw parallels between the tragic fate of Antoinette and what’s eventually going to happen to Anne. And of course, the movie makes a big deal about Anne admiring a certain diary in a bookstore, lingering on it for a few seconds after she moves away. These sorts of things are par for the course for historical movies, but that doesn’t stop it from being mildly irritating at times.
I’m also not sure how I feel about the last hour plus of the movie. One big problem with Holocaust movies is that, even though these horrible things actually happened and the stories should be told to help people gain an understanding of what happened (and try to keep them from happening again), they run the risk of being manipulative. This is definitely the case here, since a lot of these terrible events are happening to young teens. Furthermore, it feels kind of disrespectful to me. Thanks to Anne’s diary, we know the events in the annex actually happened, and it seems reasonable to assume that the events we see before the Franks go into hiding are also accurate. But as far as I know, we don’t have any definitive accounts of what happened to Anne after she left the annex. As a result, it feels like the filmmakers are cramming in lots of pathos and movie contrivances (like a reunion between Anne and her friend) to fill in the blanks. They’re taking a real, tragic story and grafting even more suffering onto it, and that doesn’t wholly sit right with me.
I’m not sure if I recommend this movie or not. It’s pretty well made, feels realistic, and the actors are decent, but the obvious Hollywood touches drag it down. I do think it’s a story worth telling and hearing…but I’m not sure this was the way to tell it.
CAT ALERT: The Franks have a cat (that’s apparently going to have kittens, but I don’t know if she’s still pregnant in her last scene) that needs to be left behind when they go into hiding. We last see it climbing on the table and eating the food there. While in hiding, one of the other occupants brings his cat along even though he shouldn’t have, and it appears sporadically through the rest of the time in the annex, apparently not causing any trouble. I know they’re not the important part of the story, but I hope both cats were taken care of in the end. They’re innocent players in this too, after all.