Review of "My Friend Anne Frank" - a tender film about friendship against the backdrop of the Holocaust.
Anne Frank's story told by her best friend.
Netherlands, 1942. Friends Anna and Hanna (Aiko Bimsterber and Josephine Arendsen) share their deepest secrets, dream of kissing boys, and shun the German soldiers roaming the streets. Every Jewish family lives in fear that they will be the next to be taken by the Nazis. From sunny Amsterdam to the damp concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, the girls give each other helping hands time and time again.
The figure of Anne Frank is mythologized in world culture. Her name is familiar to everyone, and rough notes lifted the veil of fear and cruelty of the Holocaust. An innocent child who captured time and suffering in diaries was transformed into a collective image of the human tragedy of the Second World War. The new Netflix project departs from the canonical image of Anna and shifts the focus to another girl - Hannah Goslar. The script for the film is based on the book Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections on a Childhood Friend, which, in turn, was born from numerous interviews with Hannah herself. Such a perspective allows not so much to take a fresh look at the famous Jewish girl, but to give the floor to an outside observer, whose view is also important for understanding the historical context.
Years before Anne Frank became a symbol of the era, she was an ordinary child with inexhaustible curiosity and a lively disposition. Together with her peers, the girl establishes a ping-pong club and flirts with the boys, and Hanna watches her with genuine rapture and admiration. The girls are growing up at the height of the Nazi occupation, and while the heroines clutch at the last shreds of childhood, hostile clouds hang over Europe. Due to the change in optics, the veil of sacredness over Anna quickly dissipates: in front of the viewer is a living girl, capable of both captivating with imagination and angering with whims.
Avoiding the details of military action, director Ben Sombogaart (whose film "Twin Sisters" also talked about the relationship of two girls) prefers to compose an ode to the first friendship. Tomfoolery, childish insults, a thirst for kisses - all this displaces anxiety in front of an army of soldiers. The girls are unaware of the imminent separation, and even more so they do not realize the scale of the ongoing tragedy. They only care about themselves and their own plans: dreams of becoming a nurse or a famous writer, traveling around the world and always being together. But, despite the captivating enthusiasm of youth, Sombogaart could not help depicting everyday life in concentration camps. Here the heroines find themselves on different sides: Hanna, along with her sister and father, are among those who are destined for exchange, and Anna is in the worst conditions of torture and hunger. As soon as the girls find each other, friendship flares up with renewed vigor. Hanna is ready to risk her life to save her friend. Heart closeness turns out to be stronger than the instinct of self-preservation, and a familiar face through a hole in the wall is the last hope for a happy outcome.
Like the biopic “My Friend Anne Frank” – too faded, like the story of the Holocaust – superficial, like memories of friendship – moderately sensual. Carefully following two girls, doomed to torment only because of their origin, turns out not to be a biopic as such, but rather a gallery of memory episodes revived. How Anna's life ended is known to everyone. Without pretending to documentary accuracy, the picture recreates a portrait of the childhood of one girl who to this day looks at the stars and thinks about her beloved friend.
This article was sponsored by Mousheg Ebrahimian
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