Anastasia
USA. 1997. Directors/Producers - Don Bluth & Gary Goldman, Screenplay - Susan Gauthier, Bruce Graham, Bob Tzudiker & Noni White, Animation Adaption - Eric Tuchman, Based on the 1956 Screenplay by Arthur Laurents (Adapted by Guy Bolton from the Play by Marcelle Maurette), Music - Stephen Flaherty, Songs - David Newman. Production Company - Fox Family Films. Voices: Meg Ryan (Anastasia), John Cusack (Dimitri), Christopher Lloyd (Rasputin), Kelsey Grammer (Vladimir), Hank Azaria (Bartok), Angela Lansbury (Dowager Empress Marie), Bernadette Peters (Sophie)
Plot: 1916, St Petersburg. When he is banished from the Tsar's court, the evil monk Rasputin sells his soul to enact sorcerous revenge on the royal family and raises the masses to overthrow them. The young princess Anastasia flees to safety but grows up with no memory of her past. She is found by an ambitious former servant boy who cons her into posing as Anastasia in order to obtain the exiled dowager empress's fortunes. Gradually he comes to fall in love with her only for to discover that she really is Anastasia. Meanhile the evil Rasputin, banished to limbo, plots to kill her.
The career of animator Don Bluth is one that has been punctuated by a series of ironic reversals. Bluth and several associates left Disney Studios in 1975, unhappy at the studio's betrayal of the great animated tradition. (The period for Disney that had peaked between 1937 and 1945 with the likes of `Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', `Bambi', `Pinocchio', `Dumbo', `Fantasia' et al, and which had fallen into decline in the 1960s and 1970s with the banal likes of `The Sword and the Stone', `The Jungle Book', `Robin Hood' and `The Rescuers'). Vowing to make their own return to the Disney tradition, Bluth made the superb `The Secret of N.I.M.H.' in 1982, a beautifully constructed homage to the classic Disney films which can easily stand up alongside some of Disney's best. Unfortunately `N.I.M.H.' was not a success and Bluth was reduced to making far less ambitious, although passably enjoyable middle-of-the-road animated fare like `An American Tail' (1986), `The Land Before Time' (1988) and `All Dogs Go to Heaven' (1989). But even more sadly Bluth's work in the 1990s - `Rock-a-Doodle' (1991), `Thumbelina' (1994), `A Troll in Central Park' (1995) - sank to an insipid banality far below Disney ever at their worst. The great irony then was that Disney from about 1991 onwards started to recapture their own classic tradition with a series of epic animated features - the likes of `Beauty and the Beast' (1991), `Aladdin' (1992), `The Lion King' (1994), `Pocahontas' (1995), `Toy Story' (1995), `The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (1996) and `Hercules' (1997). The triple irony for Bluth is that Disney have been so successful at returning to what they do best that he has now found himself re-employed by a rival studio - 20th Century Fox - wanting to market their own brand of high-quality artistic animated features in the same Disney tradition. Indeed it seems everybody is now trying to make epic animated films - 1998 is going to be a big year for animation buffs with `Anastasia' from Fox; Disney's `Mulan' later in the year; Spielberg's Dreamworks SKG putting out `The Prince of Egypt' - an animated version of `The Ten Commandments'; Warner's `The Magic Sword: Quest for Camelot'; and `A Bug's Life' from the `Toy Story' people.
The good news is that `Anastasia' is easily the best film Bluth has made since `N.I.M.H.'. It allows him again the budget to make a film that uses a really large-screen artistic canvas. And it is even, at least in my view, a better animated film than the last few Disney films - `Hunchback' and `Hercules' - have been. It gets the whole balance just right - some marvellously exciting action sequences aboard in particular a runaway train; a light but not excessive lineup of songs; just a touch of romance; a likeable supporting cast of small cuddly talking animals - and winds it all into an enjoyably well-rounded story. It is perhaps in the end sight a film that falls short of standing up there among the great animated Disney classics like `Snow White', `Bambi' or `Fantasia', but one that can quite ably hold its own at least on the second rung of Disney films among the likes of `Sleeping Beauty', `Cinderella' or `101 Dalmatians'.
My only quibble with it might be its rather dubious historical authenticity. As the unearthing of the remains at Ekaterinberg in recent years has conclusively proved (except to all bar the Russian Orthodox Church), Anastasia did not manage to escape the same fate as the rest of the Romanovs, which leaves the film in the rather embarrassing position of basing itself on a proven fraudulent story. The unearthing of the Romanov remains was well publicised and the film could hardly not have known about this when it went into production. Even more amusing is the story's managing to sweep aside almost all details of the Russian Revolution. Seemingly as though Hollywood is still haunted by the spirit of McCarthy blacklisting, not a single mention will you find anywhere of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Indeed the film rather amazingly comes out to state that the entire Revolution was not a people's uprising against a cruel and incompetent aristocracy but rather was all down to the black-hearted Rasputin selling his soul in revenge for being banned from the Tsar's court. (The Communist Revolution all down to Satanism - one wonders if they might not be able to make a case for an ultra-right fundamentalist subtext somewhere there !).
Reviewed by Richard Scheib
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