Anastasia (1997 film)

Anastasia
Original theatrical poster for Anastasia
Directed by	Don Bluth Gary Goldman
Produced by	Don Bluth Gary Goldman
Written by	Susan Gauthier Bruce Graham Bob Tzudiker Noni White Eric Tuchman
Starring	Meg Ryan John Cusack Kelsey Grammer Christopher Lloyd
Music by	David Newman
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	November 14, 1997 (US release)
Running time	94 min.
Country	United States
Language	English/Russian/French
Budget	$50,000,000
Followed by	Bartok the Magnificent (1999)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Anastasia is an American Academy Award-nominated animated feature musical film produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman at Fox Animation Studios, and was released on November 14, 1997 by Twentieth Century Fox. The idea for the film originates from Fox's 1956 live-action film version of Anastasia. Executives at Fox gave Bluth and Goldman the choice of creating an animated adaptation of either the 1956 film or the musical My Fair Lady. The film was one of the most critically acclaimed since Disney's Beauty and the Beast for making historical topics appealing to families all over the world. It became famous for its score and songs such as "Journey to the Past" and "Once Upon a December".

Plot

The year is 1916. In St. Petersburg, Russia, Czar Nicholas II is throwing a grand ball to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Romanov rule, while his mother, Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna (Angela Lansbury), gives her favorite granddaughter, young Grand Duchess Anastasia (Kirsten Dunst), a music box and a necklace reading "Together in Paris" which serves as its key. The ball is interrupted by the arrival of Grigori Rasputin (Christopher Lloyd), a monk once trusted by the Russian Imperial Family, having since been cast out by Nicholas as a "traitor". He enacts his revenge through a demonic green reliquary; summoning a curse that sparks the Russian Revolution. During the storming of the Winter Palace by Bolshevik troops, Anastasia runs back to get her music box with Marie in tow. Separated from the rest of the royal family, a servant boy rushes them out of the palace, and Anastasia drops her music box in the panic. As the two royals are running across a frozen river, Rasputin attempts to catch Anastasia when the thin ice breaks under him and he drowns. They eventually reach a moving train, but only Marie is able to get on, as Anastasia falls and is knocked unconscious, forcing Marie to leave her behind. Ten years later, Russia is under Communist rule. Marie, now residing in Paris, has offered a money reward for anyone who can restore her granddaughter to her. Two Russian conmen living in St. Petersburg: Dimitri (John Cusack), a conniving young man; and Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer), a former aristocrat of the Imperial Court, decide to find a young girl to pass off as Anastasia. Meanwhile, a young woman named Anya (Meg Ryan), who owns the "Together in Paris" necklace, has just left her orphanage and has decided to learn about her past, as she had no recollection of the first eight years of her life. She then heads to St. Petersburg, accompanied by "Pooka", a dog she just found. She soon encounters Dimitri and Vladimir, who are struck by her resemblance to the young Grand Duchess, and recruit her as their "fake" Anastasia. The two men teach Anya how to behave like Anastasia during the trip to Paris, where Anya and Dimitri realize a mutual attraction, and it is discovered that Dimitri possesses Anastasia's music box in his baggage. Rasputin is revealed to be still alive, but trapped in limbo, unable to die because Anastasia had not been killed. His cowardly servant Bartok (Hank Azaria), an albino bat, unwittingly brings him his magical reliquary after his supposed "death" ten years ago, thus restoring his old powers. He summons a legion of demons to kill Anya and complete his revenge, resulting in two failed attempts on her life. Rasputin then realizes that the only way to kill Anya is to do it in person. Anya, along with Dimitri and Vladimir, arrive in Paris, just as the former Dowager Empress refuses to see any more fake Anastasias. However, Sophie (Bernadette Peters), the Dowager Empress' cousin, interviews Anya as a favor to her old flame Vladimir. Anya plays her part well, but when Sophie asks how she escaped the palace, Vlad and Dimitri become nervous, since they did not teach Anya an answer to that question. To their mysterious fortune, Anya dimly recalls a servant boy opening a secret door... but she believes this memory to be nonsense, while Dimitri is shocked by what this signifies. He later tells Vladimir that he was indeed the servant boy in her memory, meaning that Anya is the real Anastasia; nonetheless, he is sad that this is true, because "princesses don't marry kitchen boys." Sophie arranges for Anya to encounter Marie at the Russian ballet. After the ballet, however, Anya overhears that Dimitri was really a conman who was only using her to get the reward. When she abruptly leaves, Dimitri kidnaps Marie in desperation, and convinces her to meet (reluctantly) with Anya by giving her the lost music box. Upon meeting Anya at first, Marie is adamant until the girl suddenly begins to remember personal childhood moments, including the music box. Marie finally realizes the truth, and the two reunite at long last. At a later meeting, Marie is moved to find that Dimitri was the servant boy who had saved them years ago, yet is refusing the promised reward money. He leaves, determined not to interfere with Anya's destiny, and her belief that he is still a heartless conman. Marie eventually tells Anya of Dimitri's actions at the inauguration ball, making her realize her error. When Pooka suddenly bounds for the garden maze, Anya runs after him and is trapped. Rasputin finally reveals himself to her and tries to kill her on the Alexander Bridge over an icy Seine. Dimitri returns to save Anya, and in the ensuing fight, Anya manages to destroy Rasputin's reliquary by crushing it under her foot, causing him to disintegrate into dust. Dimitri and Anya reconcile and elope, sending a farewell letter to Marie and Sophie. The film ends with Anya and Dimitri finally sharing a kiss together. It ends with Bartok meeting a female albino bat who has a crush on him and sharing a kiss.

Cast

Voice Cast

Singing Voice Cast

Release and Reception

The film opened in New York City on November 14, 1997 and across the world from November 21, 1997 (US release) to September 5, 1998 (Japanese release). It debuted and peaked at number two at the North American box office and grossed over US$58,403,000 dollars; the worldwide gross totalled $139,801,000, making it Don Bluth's most successful film to date. As a musical in the vein of Disney animated features, the film is notable for being one of Bluth's most critically acclaimed works, and for being one of the few animated features produced in the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. (The film is officially credited as using CinemaScope per Bluth's wishes, but the format is actually a regular anamorphic film and did not use CinemaScope optics, which had been retired for 30 years by the release of Anastasia. ) Anastasia was nominated for two Academy Awards in the categories of "Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score" and "Best Music, Original Song" for "Journey to the Past". At the awards ceremony, "Journey to the Past" was performed by R&B singer Aaliyah, who recorded the pop single version of the song. Another song which gained recognition is the ballad "Once Upon a December"; its pop single version was recorded and produced by Deana Carter. Due to its success, Fox Home Entertainment created a direct-to-video spin-off movie called Bartok the Magnificent (1999), featuring Rasputin's albino bat crony. It also starred Kelsey Grammer, who voiced Vladimir in Anastasia; in Bartok the Magnificent he voiced Zozi the Bear.

Fictionalization of historic events

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As a fairy-tale style adaptation of the legend of the Russian grand duchess Anastasia, the film imagines that Anastasia, daughter of Nicholas II of Russia, escapes the Imperial Palace during the October Revolution and survives the execution of the Imperial family. The film took several liberties with the details of historical events, and some Orthodox Christians were offended due to the historical Anastasia's sainthood, which was declared formally the following year. Some of the differences with actual history include:

• Though the body of two members of the Russian Imperial Family, including one of the daughters, have not been found, there is no evidence that any family members, including Anastasia, survived, although there have been many claims to survival. The most famous of these was Anna Anderson, whose story inspired the original 1956 Anastasia film on which this film is based, although this film doesn't actually deal with Anderson directly.
• In the film, Rasputin curses the Royal Family, bringing about the Russian Revolution. The real leaders of the Revolution (first Alexander Kerensky, then Vladimir Lenin) are not portrayed. Grigori Rasputin was a religious mystic, who washed infrequently and was often drunk. Nevertheless, he gained the trust of the Czarina Alexandra when he seemed to alleviate the symptoms of hemophilia from which her son Alexei suffered. All the evidence points to Rasputin's support of the royal family, though (as many have argued) with the intent being to gain power for himself. However, in a letter written just before his death, he predicted the Russian Revolution and his assassination, based not on any mystical powers, but on simple observation of political facts.
• The storming of the Winter Palace during the October Revolution of 1917 was not directed against the Czar but against the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky. The Czar had been deposed during the February Revolution of the same year.
• Judging by his letters and those of the Czarina, Rasputin was always careful to be polite and even affectionate to the members of the royal family, although by other accounts he spoke disparagingly of them to others and made lewd remarks about the Grand Duchesses. In any event, the family was deeply saddened by his death. By the account of one of the assassins at Yekaterinburg, the Empress and the Grand Duchesses were wearing little pins with an iconic portrait of Rasputin at the time of their death, showing they believed he would be a saint.
• Rasputin's death was a result of being frozen in ice; this allegedly followed an overdose of poison, several knife and gun wounds, and being thrown several stories onto the ice. A group of nobles plotted to kill him due to his growing influence over the Czar and, particularly, the Czarina. It is entirely likely Rasputin's film death was shown intentionally as drowning was the least violent of the above mentioned methods of death and the studio was attempting to downplay the violence in order to be as family-oriented as such film would allow. Also, the film shows Rasputin as trying to capture the Empress Dowager and Anastasia near the frozen river Neva, but the ice is too thin to support his weight.
• The palace depicted in the movie is the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo (Nicholas II and his family actually lived in the neighboring Alexander Palace). The staircase which Anastasia originally enters through is almost exactly like the actual grand staircase of the Catherine Palace.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, 1926

• The film depicts Anastasia as escaping from the Imperial Palace during the Revolution, when in fact she stayed with her family, living at first in Tsarskoe Selo and later in Tobolsk in Siberia until they were executed by a squad of Bolshevik secret police under Yakov Yurovsky in Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg in a period from July 16 to July 17, 1918.
• In the film, Anastasia is only a young child (the film states she is eight) at the time of the Revolution, when in fact, she was four months shy of 16 years old. Anastasia was born on June 18, 1901.
• The Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna did not live in Paris, either before or after the Revolution. She lived in Russia until 1920, when she evacuated the Crimea with White forces, and thereafter in her native Denmark. She was a daughter of Christian IX of Denmark and his Queen consort, Louise of Hesse.
• At the times the story takes place, Saint Petersburg was known as Petrograd or Leningrad, not Saint Petersburg, as it is called in the movie.
• At the beginning of the film - 1916, the hanging ornament marked "300" in the ball room implies it is the celebration of the Romanov tercentenary, when the tercentenary was in 1913.

Bluth and Goldman, who did extensive historical research on the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia and the Russian Revolution for the film, never intended for their film to be scrupulously analyzed for historical accuracy; their film is based upon the legend of Anastasia having survived the slaughter of the family. A disclaimer can be found at the end of the credits for the film. It reads as follows:

"While some of the characters and events depicted in this film were inspired by well-known historical figures and events, the portrayal of such characters and the depiction of such events are fictional. All other characters and incidents portrayed and names used were created for the purpose of fictitious dramatization and any similarity to the names, characters, and history of actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional."

Coincidentally, this now-standard disclaimer was created in the aftermath of a scandal and lawsuit brought by Prince Felix Yusupov -- the man who is most often credited with the murder of Rasputin -- in 1932, against MGM for their film Rasputin and the Empress, which took enormous artistic liberties with the available facts. The film is based on the play from the 1950s by Marcelle Maurette adapted by Guy Bolton and turned into the film Anastasia (1956) which was based on the legend of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia surfacing as "Anna Anderson". Dimitri was probably inspired by Gleb Botkin and Pooka, Anya's fictional dog, as the real Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia's spaniel, Jemmy.

Trivia

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• It has been noted that Anastasia and her grandmother are the only members of the Romanov family who are prominently featured in the film. The Dowager Empress in the film spoke fondly of Alexandra, although in reality the two disliked each other. However, it is also possible that the Dowager Empress, who outlived Nicholas II by ten years, was despondent over the murder of both of her son and his bride together, and may have remembered Alexandra more fondly. Anastasia's sisters Olga Nikolaevna, Tatiana Nikolaevna, Maria Nikolaevna, and Alexei Nikolaevich, her brother, makes their cameos in the musical number "Once Upon A December" when they are seen dancing around as Anya sings in her imagery, in the family portrait that displays the last Romanovs on the wall in the abdanoned palace, and in her dream, jumping around on a warm summer day, inviting Anya in for fun and swimming in a pond.
• The musical number Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart) includes cameos by various historical figures from the time, including Maurice Chevalier, Sigmund Freud, Charles Lindbergh, Josephine Baker, Claude Monet, Isadora Duncan, Auguste Rodin, and Gertude Stein.
• As with many Don Bluth films, the characters carry some of their voice actors' physical and personality traits. It was stated in The Art of Anastasia that one half of Anya's face is made to look like Meg Ryan and the other half like Audrey Hepburn.
• The Parisian bridge on which the confrontation between Rasputin, Dimitri, and Anya occurs is the Alexander III bridge, named after the real Anastasia Romanov's grandfather on the occasion of his state visit to France in the 1870s.
• When Anya goes to Sophie's house in Paris, some of the photographs in the background are actual photos of different members of the Imperial family.
• Rasputin is depicted as a Lich.
• The gown Anastasia wears to the coronation ball is based on an actual dress that the sisters wore for a photograph.
• The only Russian spoken in this film was the phrase "До Свидания" (Da svidaniya), which means good bye, was spoken by both Anastasia and Rasputin.

External links

• Anastasia at the Internet Movie Database
• Anastasia at All Movie Guide
• Anastasia at Rotten Tomatoes
• Anastasia at Metacritic
• Anastasia at Box Office Mojo
• Official Website of Anastasia (1997 film)