Word: romanovs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Surviving members of the Romanov family--who had come from addresses as diverse as Paris; Oakland, Calif.; New South Wales; and East Sussex--kept a low profile. Those who spoke Russian did so in an archaic St. Petersburg accent that has all but disappeared. Some, such as the mayor of Palm Beach, Fla., Paul Ilinsky, never learned the language. They were restrained in their comments on Nicholas and made no claim to any stake in Russia's political future...
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...
...named Anya, rather than being brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks. Indeed, the Fox flick barely mentions that neither Anastasia's parents nor siblings survived the Revolution. Running into a pair of con artists--who, in Fox's twist on history, are looking for an Anastasia impostor to claim the Romanov fortune--Anya leaves cold, miserable Russia and discovers her own identity as Anastasia as everything ends up happy in Paris...
...death, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, Grand Duchess of Russia, should have no particular reason to stand out in the history of European royalty. But her extraordinary murder, combined with a string of confusing propaganda and poorly conducted investigations, opened the door for numerous impostors seeking to lay claim to the Romanov name and fortune. Indeed, Anna Anderson, as the most famous of these impostors came to be known, kept up her charade for years, through the press and even the German court system, until her death...
...orgy of unsubtle Russophilia, the Fox production scarcely attempts to stick with even the broadest historical facts regarding the fate of the Romanov dynasty and Anastasia. The only part of the film that even attempts to ground itself in history is in a short opening prologue, occurring during an unmentioned First World War, one year after the Russian Revolution in 1916. Somehow, Anastasia, born in 1901, is only eight years old in 1916. With the help of a servant boy, Dmitri, Anastasia manages to escape from Rasputin and his revolutionaries, but falls off a train, hitting her head...