Word: princesses
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Using the demise of imperial Russia as its backdrop, the tale centers around the heroine Anastasia, princess of the Romanov dynasty. During a celebration marking the third centennial anniversary of Romanov rule, the evil sorcerer Rasputin makes an abrupt entrance. He places a curse on the czar's family and with a little bit of fairy dust subsequently incites the Russian revolution (it's a tough pill to swallow). Though her family escapes for Paris (in the all too familiar get-separated-by-fast-moving-train scene), Anastasia is suddenly orphaned...
...film picks up 10 years later, as Anastasia, now 18-year-old "Anya," struggles to find her identity. She eventually runs into Dimitri, a former palace servant-turned-leading man, who is looking for someone to pretend to be the princess so that he can reap a reward from Anastasia's surviving grandmother. Amidst all this, Anastasia must deal with her amnesia (which seems a strange perversion of repressed memory syndrome) and with the pesky Rasputin who rises from Hell in order to destroy the last heir of the Romanovs...
...love story would work just fine standing alone. Meg Ryan does a magnificent job breathing life into Anastasia, giving the starry-eyed princess the touch of quirkiness that she needs to be believable. But there is little character development for the heroine--all her emotions are more asserted than dramatized...
Here, though, the Fox studios did not approach the life of Anastasia with the primary intention of recasting history. Rather, they were only searching for the obligatory princess heroine that every animated flick features. Consider the vast range that have appeared in Disney's canon, from Snow White and Cinderella to Ariel, the princess under the sea, Pocahontas, the Indian princess, and Jasmine, the sultan's daughter, to name but a few. As Anya herself astutely observes, "I guess that every lonely girl hopes she's a princess." One can only imagine where this will lead--perhaps Disney's Diana...
...industry itself tends to exacerbate the problem. Cinema is a particularly unique medium, in that it involves the collaborative creative efforts of large teams of people, not necessarily sharing the same artistic vision. What these disparate individuals can focus on, however, is a kernel of a story--a lost princess, in Anastasia, for example. When the emotional kernel of a story becomes the central, guiding principle, then historical veracity and the nuanced entirety of the story become disposable. This is unfortunate, as a true historical tale, with all its complexity and contradictions can be much more human, real and moving...