From the New York Times:
November 9, 1997, Sunday
After the Revolution, Comes 'Anastasia' the Cartoon
By CAREY GOLDBERG (NYT)
POOR ANASTASIA: murdered by the Bolsheviks with the rest of the Romanov royal family in 1918; impersonated by a bevy of pretenders in the years to follow; exploited by Hollywood as a 1956 star vehicle for Ingrid Bergman, and later for Amy Irving, in a mini-series that seemed to drag on almost as long as the Communist regime.
And now, what many people will see as her final indignity: caricatured into a feisty animated orphan in a musical extravaganza, ''Anastasia,'' opening on Friday. It features Rasputin as a comically decomposing wizard; Bartok, a singing albino bat, and Pooka, a puppy (which must have been someone's little joke, because it sounds an awful lot like pook, a mild Russian vulgarity).
Not to get all politically huffy about a feature-length cartoon that is mainly meant to captivate children and give them a tantalizing sip of history.
Surely there was enough fuss over other attempts to animate history: Pocahontas's Barbie Doll build and kiss with Captain John Smith, the cuddly Quasimodo in ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame,'' the perceived negative stereotypes of Arabs in ''Aladdin'' and the Disney rewrite of myth to make Hercules kill Medusa and the Minotaur.
And surely, too, 20th Century Fox should be encouraged in this, its first major animated feature, which was created by the Disney defectors Don Bluth and Gary Goldman (''An American Tail,'' ''The Land Before Time''), at its new animation studio in Arizona. The $100 million venture promises to provide competition to the longstanding Disney ducktatorship. (Disney is rereleasing ''The Little Mermaid'' on Friday.)
But before Anastasia starts gathering points for its three-dimensional renditions of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg or its bird's-eye view of Paris, it seems fair to hear some gentle words of misgiving from a few true lovers of Russian history.
For as they see it, ''Anastasia'' goes a step beyond ''Pocahontas.'' It cracks a new level of ahistoricity, using the tragedy of the murdered Russian czarina as little more than back story -- the Revolution is over by the time the opening credits roll -- for the usual cartoon concoction of romance, adventure and the battle between good and evil, complete with the requisite happy ending and a shopping spree at Chanel.
In the new ''Anastasia,'' ''the history is completely wrong, and that is upsetting,'' said Suzanne Massie, author of several books on Russian history and culture, including ''Land of the Firebird.''
''I happen to think it's terribly important to have Russian history represented at least, if you will, spiritually correctly,'' she said, ''because it has been so falsified for so many years. And my experience of 30 years of trying to deal with this is that we are absolutely fraught with stereotypes in the West about Russian history.''
IF ''ANASTASIA'' IS ANY INDICATION of where things are going in the world of historically inspired movies, said Bob Atchison, a Web-page designer and Russian history enthusiast, ''The next thing they're going to do is, 'Anne Frank moves to Orlando and opens a crocodile farm with a guy named Mort.' ''
Those complaining had only seen the movie's trailer and a description of the plot. But that was enough to disturb them.
Repeated exploitation of Anastasia's romantic tale seems inevitable, however, so inevitable that many who might be offended the most -- Romanov descendants -- seem to accept it with equanimity.
The new movie ''just used the name and made it into a total fantasy,'' said Marina Beadleston, whose great-uncle was the murdered Czar Nicholas II. ''The thing is, that's fine so long as somewhere a history book and parents correct it to give how it really happened.''
She never ceases to be amazed, she added, by ''the romance people feel about the Russian royal family.
''I don't know why it is,'' she said. ''They don't have it about the English royal family or the French. It's about the Russians.''
Which is exactly what 20th Century Fox is banking on with its $53 million film -- that the magic of the Anastasia name and concept will prove as potent as, say, the roar of Disney's ''Lion King.'' ''Anastasia'' is Fox's first attempt to create a cartoon film that like ''Aladdin'' or ''Beauty and the Beast'' is so successful as a movie that it rises above the animated category and is seen simply as a blockbuster.
''We're shooting for all the bananas, all the marbles, all the -- something,'' said Bill Mechanic, chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment.
Mr. Goldman, the film's co-director and co-producer, acknowledges that ''Anastasia'' uses history only as a starting point: ''It's a fairy tale based on 'What if?' '' he said.
The filmmakers, he added, took the basic facts of the Romanovs' demise and the Russian Revolution and asked, ''What if this girl escaped, and what would have happened to her?''
They decided, he said, that the movie was going to be ''a family thing about a search for your family and strong family values'' as well as ''a self-discovery story, a story that everyone in life goes through.''
Those tempted to interrupt and exclaim ''Anastasia and her family were dead! Dead! She had no self to discover!'' should perhaps be reminded that the true power of the Anastasia myth has always been wishful thinking, the deep desire to undo the unspeakably bloody history of the Russian Revolution -- at least in the person of one princess.
So if the cartoon has the young princess (with the voice of Meg Ryan) meeting up with a handsome young con man (John Cusack) who persuades her to pretend to be the lost czarina, not knowing she really is the lost czarina, is it really much more farfetched than the real-life assertions of the best-known pretender, Anna Anderson, that she was Anastasia even though she could not speak Russian?
In response to the coming film, Mr. Atchison, the Web-page designer, has created a not-for-profit Web page (
www.pallasweb.com/anastasia) that offers readers the real story of Anastasia, including mention of recent DNA and forensic testing that has solved much of the mystery. The tests, technologically possible only in this decade, established, to the satisfaction of all but the most determined of conspiracy theorists, that her body was among those of her family unearthed in Yekaterinburg and that Anna Anderson was, in fact, a Polish factory worker.
Mr. Atchison and other Russian-history enthusiasts acknowledge a certain trade-off here. ''If 900,000 kids go to 'Anastasia' and of that, 10,000 kids become really interested in Russian history and go on and find the truth and pursue it, it's worth it,'' he said. ''But on the other hand, we create 890,000 people in the United States who are actually going to believe this story is true.''
