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Anastasia
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(c) 1997
<-- BUY THE VIDEO --> 
(Non-streamlined version Real Video - 15 Frames/Sec 558K)
First of all lets be clear about this - Anastasia
is not a history lesson! The film seems a little bit based around the story of Anna
Anderson, a kind of "what if it had been true" type story. Anna Anderson was a woman who
appeared a short time after the Imperial family was killed by the Bolsheviks on 17 July in the
1918 revolution. She claimed to be Anastasia, and many of Anastasia's comtemporaries identified her as genuine. Even years after her death it was not certain that
she was not Anastasia. Eventualy, however, science caught up with the deception and proved that she was a Polish factory
worker. Who knows, perhaps the deception may have been an honest one on her part. Its
not impossible that she was brainwashed or otherwise convinced into thinking she really was
Anastasia by others who stood to gain. (just my thoughts - in fact that happens to Anya in the film!).
The recent discovery of the graves of all but two of the
family have apparently revealed that Anastasia was indeed killed. One of the skulls in the burial pit matched her facial features. On the 17 July 1998,
eighty years to the day after their murder, she and the rest of her family
were reburied together at the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg, across the river from their winter palace. The ceremony was in part designed to reconcile and bring the matter to a close, but I doubt that it ever will.
Click here for another Anastasia site (mentions the film and Bluth/Goldman)
Anastasia begins with everyone driving through the snow in their cars and carriages to the Romanov's party (I think to celebrate 300 years of ruling over Russia - there is the number 300 in lights on the palace wall), where the young Anastasia's Grandmother, the Dowager Empress, gives her a music box and a necklace winding key marked "Together in Paris". As everyone is having their wild party Rasputin, apparently kicked out for being a traitor, comes back and puts a curse on everyone, (just what I would do!) assuring the Romanov's of their impending deaths, and generally tries to spoil the party. (I think he took the "traitor" thing badly!)
Rasputin then goes home and sells his soul to give him the power to carry out his curse. A giant green flame appears, and his flesh is pulled into the flame, leaving behind a skeleton, which then gets fleshed back out as Rasputin. For his troubles he gets a green lantern with a skull on top, filled with green demons. These demons fly off, and appear to help cause the peasants to revolt, bringing down the Romanov dynasty, as we see demons flying around, with hoards rushing into the palace faded into the background.
Dimitri, a kitchen boy, helps Anastasia and her Grandmother to escape, but Bartok (the bat) and Rasputin see them leave. Rasputin manages to grab Anastasia, and pulls her back. As he is pulling the ice he is standing on cracks beneath his feet, and he falls through.
Anastasia, now Anya, with no memory of her past, leaves the Orphanage where she has been cared for grudgingly by an old woman who reminded me a little of Mad Madame Mimm out of "The Sword in the Stone". She reaches a signpost, one sign pointing to the fisherman's village, where the old woman has directed her, and another to Saint Petersburg where Anastasia can head for Paris, as she feels she is meant to. She shouts for a sign, then sits down in the snow to wait for one. Suddenly a small dog comes on the scene, and pulls off Anastasia's scarf, leading her in the direction of St Petersburg.
Anastasia reaches St Petersburg, but finds that she cannot leave for Paris without an exit visa. She is told by a woman waiting in line with her that there is a man called Dimitri who can get her an exit visa.
Anastasia travels to what appears to be the ruins of her palace, where Dimitri and his accomplice Vladimir, a former member of the palace court, are now auditioning fake Anastasias to take to Paris to cheat the Empress out of the large reward she is offering for her Grandaughter's return.
They have just finished auditioning a Greta Garbo Anastasia when the real Anastasia (unknown to them) appears asking for help to get to Paris. The pair are delighted at how much she looks like Anastasia, and they convince Anya that she could be Anastasia for all she knows, since she is the right age, the right appearance, and she has no memory of not being Anastasia. At least seeing the Empress will at least clear up the confusion - after all, she has lost her memory, and it would be an honest mistake. The pair take her on a train and set off out of Russia. The problems begin to mount up however when Vladimir overhears some passengers remarking on the new visas being in red ink, instead of the old blue ink - like their forged visas!
Meanwhile Rasputin, who is now relaxing, enjoying his existence of solitude in limbo, finds out from Bartok that Anastasia still lives. Rasputin, in between loosing body parts as he shouts, generally against the advice of Bartok, sends his flying demons back to attack Anastasia's train and the bridge it is heading for to finally kill her, the last of the Romanovs, completing his curse at last!...
Anastasia has obviously had a lot of work put into it, and the 21:9 widescreen picture is well used, giving the film scale, but I got the feeling the animators had run out of production time, as the film had the look in places of being a rushed job. A lot of the film seems to have been filmed at 12 frames per second instead of 24 frames per second, and as well as giving some of the motion a jerky appearance, the characters mouths don't seem to move as convincingly as they talk at this speed. You can get away with it for talking animals, but we're all too used to seeing each other talk! A small number of backgrounds also seem to have less detail away from the action, sometimes even the brush strokes becoming visible - which is strange, since this film is supposed to have been made using computerised production equipment! The train crash and firework displays were a little disappointing. The train crash had no feeling of impact, and the firework display moved in jerks, instead of smoothly as your mind expects.
That aside though, this film certainly still looks very good. In most parts of the film the backgrounds have the usual lavish detail, and the characters are very well drawn, including subtle changes in skin colour - especially around the cheeks, instead of the usual fill of one colour as you often get in Disney and other studio's films (I suspect because their cels have been painted by computer, although I'm by no means sure about that).
This is definitely a leap in quality for all the things I moaned about earlier, even by Bluth's standards - visually its easily the quality of Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". It is also a film better seen at the cinema - don't wait for it to come out on video!! Apart from losing half the cinema picture, you will never be aware of the detail in the backgrounds. I'm pleased to see a big film company like Fox finally backing Don Bluth as he should have been backed years ago - the film shows what Bluth can do when the money is available! Hopefully this feature will lead to others. Its only fair to mention that one or two brief Rasputin scenes (about the scariness level of the "Night on Bald Mountain" section of Disney's "Fantasia") showing Rasputin as a skeleton, and some scenes with flying demons may frighten the very young.
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~~~ ANASTASIA is one of the few animated films I have ever seen that were made in 21:9 (7:3) widescreen, and if you possibly get the chance, see the widescreen version on either satellite TV or video... It looks far better, and its a crime to crop away half of the visual work that was put into this film! ~~~
I suppose its a matter of taste which you personally decide is better... its an easier question if you own a widescreen television with true widescreen software (anamorphic widescreen where the picture image is transmitted squashed then stretched out again by the widescreen TV, so that the picture area normally wasted when showing widescreen films - the black stripes at the top and bottom, can be used, giving the final image much more detail) such as DVD or digital TV, but on VHS video its a tradeoff between the lost picture detail of the letterbox version, and lost picture with pan and scan (normal TV shape) - personally I prefer to loose the detail rather than to loose the whole lot! Plus I like to know whats going on out of shot! :-) (Note: Not all digital TV transmissions or DVD disks are widescreen, although a lot of DVD disks include both normal and widescreen versions on the same disk.)
This is the shape of the normal video release, although it is shown in very slight widescreen anyway.
This is the same moment of the film in widescreen, although my rescaling the picture to match the height of the one above has made it come out a little fuzzy. (Note: The picture quality of the captured images is largely limeted by my capture card and the original image size I captured - but that is NOT the quality of the original image!)
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All images © copyright Fox Animation 1997
This page was created Saturday 16 May
1998
