My Best Friend Anne Frank
Based on the real-life friendship between Anne Frank and Hannah Goslar, from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to their harrowing reunion in a concentration camp.
- Released: 2021-10-07
- Runtime: 103 minutes
- Genre: Drama, History, War
- Stars: Josephine Arendsen, Aiko Beemsterboer, Roeland Fernhout, Lottie Hellingman, Simone Canaris, Stefan de Walle, Adél Jordán, Tünde Szalontay
- Director: Ben Sombogaart
Comments
- ddegive - 11 August 2022
This was a great movie (that some reviewers don't understand.)
First, I am so glad that I ignored the poor reviews written here and watched the movie anyway. It was very well done and as others have said, offers an alternative view of a story we all already know. A couple of reviews complained there was little action and plot. But there was actually plenty of plot, it's just subtle. The film didn't tell every detail that we are used to seeing in depictions of Anne Frank, because it is assumed that we already know those. But also, since it was the point of view of Hannah and not Anne, and Hannah DIDN"T KNOW all those details of Anne hiding in the annex. So the film portrayed things the way Hannah experienced them. It's only later that she finds out that Anne and others actually hid right in their same neighborhood, in the annex and that the trip to Switzerland was only a cover story.
Another thing that some reviewers complained about was that sometime there was no translation when people were speaking Hungarian. This only happens a few times (not "half the movie" as one reviewer exaggerated). But more importantly, this was done on purpose. If you're thrown into a concentration camp with other Jews from other countries who speak their a different language, there is not going to be subtitles flashed so that you can understand what they were saying. So hearing Hungarian and not understanding it was the actual, real-life thing that happened from Hannah's point of view. It made the movie seem more real and authentic. That's part of the challenge: figuring out how to communicate with people you're thrown together with. And also, the reason that sometimes people spoke German to each other was because it was a common tongue (lingua franca) that they could both understand. This is also a very real-world kind of thing.
I also do not agree with some who thing that Anne Frank was portrayed harshly. I think she was portrayed as a typical teenage girl. Again, this was the POV of her friend and not the based on the words that Anne wrote in her diary, which would've been her words, but not Hannah's and also maybe have been self-edited or self-censored.
This was a very good and realistic portrayal of what might have happened to them. It especially did a good job of portraying the unfairness of their confinement as well as the the subtle and not so subtle humiliations they had to put up with on a daily basis. Someone wrote that Anne should have acted "more seriously" and not like a goofy teenager. But maybe acting like a goofy teenager was a way of coping with the horrible things that were going on!
Definitely worth watching!
