Review: Anastasia (film and musical)

 I’m back on my Anastasia bullshit.

It’s hard to know why I love this movie so much. I mean, I’m the first to admit that it’s ridiculous to the point of offensiveness, seeing as it’s a lighthearted musical based on the real-life assassination of an entire family. Whatever you may think of Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov – or even monarchies in general – he was by all accounts a loving husband and father, and his five children (who at the time of their deaths were aged between thirteen and twenty-two) certainly did not deserve such a violent end.

Basing a children’s animated film around such an event, and adding talking bats, musical numbers and a happy ending is questionable to say the least. Yet watching this at age twelve, I hardly cared about any of that. I first learned of the film’s existence during the Golden Globe Awards of 1998, in which it was nominated twice for Best Original Song (Once Upon a December and Journey to the Past), and something about the clips just captivated me. The countdown began…

By the time it hit New Zealand theatres I had successfully hyped up my little sister and my best friend, and finally getting to see it was an Event in the way that going to the movies just isn’t anymore. And no, I’m not talking about the way Star Wars or Marvel films or any other big blockbusters are promoted as must-see big-screen Events, but rather the way you occasionally approach a film and just know that it’s going to soak into your psyche and become a formative experience.

I’ve only felt this way about three other films in my adult life: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Illusionist (2006) and Song of the Sea (2014) and in revisiting any of them it’s not just the memory of the stories that appeal, but recalling the storm of emotions I felt while watching them for the first time. I’m sure we’ve all got books or movies or shows like this – ones that feel engrained in our subconscious either through having watched them at a very early age or by the way they cater so perfectly to our unique tastes and preferences that they feel like they were crafted for us personally.

When I take into account my other favourite movies – The Neverending Story (1984), Labyrinth (1984), The Secret Garden (1993), Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Mummy (1999), and The Others (2001) it’s clear how Anastasia fits into my storytelling predilections. It’s a period drama with a strong female protagonist, beautiful animation, a complex love story between two people with genuine chemistry who have to earn their happy ending, some ethical dilemmas, and a fairy tale ambiance that’s tinged with loss and regret, but also a strong sense of enduring hope. Give or take a few of these elements, and that describes all my favourite films.

So I was perhaps always destined to be obsessed with Anastasia. Which, as I said, is absurd, because this movie is bonkers.

Not only profoundly rewriting history so that the Russian ruling class is composed of benevolent aristocrats who lived a harmless existence before being overthrown by nasty revolutionaries that are apparently not working on behalf of the staving and poverty-stricken populace, but who are instead under the thrall of Rasputin, now an undead sorcerer in league with unholy powers (*rubs temples*), the film’s real oddness is in splitting itself into two distinct narratives:

One is a stunningly animated and incredibly heartfelt story about an amnesiac teenage girl who unknowingly teams up with two con-artists who’ve concocted a plan to trick the surviving Dowager Empress into believing her grand-daughter Anastasia – rumoured to have escaped the Revolutionaries – has been returned to her.

Of course this scrappy teenager is the real lost princess, and of course there are obstacles between her and the reclamation of her identity, and of course their voyage from Russia to Paris is filled with danger and adventure, and of course the handsome con-artist begins to fall in love with his mark, and of course he becomes guilt-stricken about the fact he’s manipulating her, which is only exacerbated when she divulges a memory of the two of them as children, which simultaneously proves her identity as Anastasia and puts her out of his reach forever – damn, this material is fantastic!

Unfortunately, there’s a whole other plot at work, in which Rasputin has been trapped in limbo for the last eighteen years, only to realize it’s because the last Romanov daughter is still alive. To free himself he must complete the curse and kill her, helped along the way by singing bugs, little green demons that emerge from a distractingly CGI reliquary, and the aforementioned talking bat voiced by Hank Azaria. And it gets weirder, as this post explains:

All the weird misinterpretations and revisions of Russian history aside, Anastasia is one of my favourite movies because its plot structure is so fucking weird.

It’s a period piece romance. That’s cool, that’s all well and good, except that on the sidelines there’s an undead warlock who’s trying so hard to kill the protagonist, but all in ways that the protagonist either doesn’t notice or doesn’t accept as supernatural.

And it isn’t a twist! The audience knows about the warlock! The warlock has a villain song! The warlock is one of the principal characters! But the protagonist spends 95% of the movie completely unaware of the warlock, and just spends the entirety of the movie doing period piece romance things while being repeatedly inconvenienced by the warlock until the climax, when the protagonist has to very suddenly:

• Acknowledge the existence of the warlock
• Acknowledge the existence of the supernatural
• See some real-ass goddamn magic
• Kill the warlock

I have never seen a movie with a plot structure like this before, and I don’t think I’ll see one like it ever again. It’s like an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that turns Lady Catherine into a vampire who’s just repeatedly trying to drink Lizzy’s blood, but Lizzy doesn’t even notice until the climax whereupon she stuffs Lady Catherine’s mouth with garlic and cuts off her head (an adaptation I would kill to see, by the way). There are two completely different genres playing out at the same time, and one of them is trying to kill the other.

And it’s not just that. In attempting to stick very closely to the Disney Princess template, the movie adds several catchy but unnecessary songs, a cute animal sidekick that exists only to sell plush toys of itself, and several celebrity voices that don’t really match the characters they’re playing. And that’s a shame, because if it had had the confidence to stick with a story that focused solely on the character arcs of Anya, Dimitri and Dowager Empress Marie, the culmination of which is as emotional as anything Disney managed, they might well have had a genuinely unique (or uniquely genuine) classic on their hands.

As it is, you can see how strained it is to force itself into that Disney mold, sometimes at the cost of what makes it so special: Anya’s quest to reclaim her identity, Dimitri’s redemption arc, and the love story that springs up between them, which is more complex and poignant than it has any right to be. I love me a Disney Romance, but throughout its entire body of animated princesses, I have only TWICE ever believed that the hero and heroine have truly fallen in love with each other.

That’s Belle/the Beast and Aladdin/Jasmine in case you were wondering, because rather than just asking us to go along with love-at-first-sight, their respective films take the time to give them personalities and backgrounds that demonstrate their compatibility, and actually show these characters establishing a relationship. Anya and Dimitri can be added to that very exclusive club, as they’re each a fully-formed character in their own right, whose relationship gradually progresses from enemies to friends to lovers with just the right amount of chemistry, humour, and growing trust on both sides.

A Beatrice/Benedick arc is hard to pull off – too often the guy becomes a negging jerk and the woman an uptight shrew, but every now and then you get lightning in a bottle.

And this love story is *chef’s kiss*. It’s what Tumblr dreams are made of. Try to imagine me watching it at age twelve – my tiny tween hormones couldn’t take it; they were too young to process it all properly.

Because, okay you guys, ermigawd – when they’re just kids and the Winter Palace is stormed by the Bolsheviks, Dimitri saves Anastasia’s life by pushing her through a secret passage, only for him to be knocked out immediately afterwards, just a few centimeters away from the music box the Dowager Empress gave Anastasia as a parting gift.

And then, years later, he’s grown cynical and bitter, and wants to use that precious keepsake to con the grief-stricken old lady, who is now offering a reward for anyone who can bring back her lost granddaughter.

Because on the night the rest of the Romanovs were killed, the Dowager and Anastasia managed to make it to the train station, only for the latter to hit her head on the platform after she fails to make it on board the departing train. Ten years later, we’re reintroduced to her as a young woman who grew up without any memories of her past and only one clue as to her identity: a necklace with the words “Together in Paris” inscribed on it.

We the audience are aware that this necklace doubles as a key that opens the music box, and so are treated to the poetry of knowing that for most of their childhoods and adult lives, Anya and Dimitri are each carrying around one half of the same interlocking gift.

I don’t know who exactly came up with it all, but they plugged straight into Peak Romance with this shit.

Anastasia (now known as Anya) is a prickly, defensive and deeply lonely individual, but one guided towards hope by the necklace she wears and the message it carries. As she tells herself: “whoever gave me this necklace must have loved me,” and so makes the decision to find a way to Paris.

She learns that Dimitri can provide her with the travel papers required to leave the country, though remains in the dark about how he and his cohort Vladimir are holding auditions for an Anastasia lookalike. They find each other at the old palace, a place that triggers Anya’s latent memories, and on noticing her resemblance to the portrait of Anastasia on the wall, Dimitri expertly manipulates her into joining him and Vlad on their journey to Paris.

By his logic, they don’t actually have to bring Anya in on the con itself, as she’s just a girl with memory loss whose only desire is to get to Paris. By painting himself as a good Samaritan he offers her the necessary exit visa, while informing Vlad that this way they don’t have to share the reward money with her. Naturally, this deception is going to be milked for maximum angsty pay-off later in the film.

I have seen some people point out a potential plot hole here: that Anya comes off as incredibly naïve for believing that these two men are trying to find the Duchess Anastasia out of the goodness of their hearts. (It’s also worth mentioning that in the Broadway musical, Anya was aware of both the reward money and the audition process, though we’ll discuss that in more detail later).

Yet I’d argue that movie!Anya probably presumes there’s some sort of reward on offer for the return of Anastasia – it’s just that her main goal is simply to get to Paris by any means necessary, and she’s willing to play along with whatever Vlad and Dimitri suggest in order to achieve this objective (that she ribs them on the validity of their tickets on the train indicates she’s aware of some underhanded dealing). It's a bit of a "don't ask, don't tell" situation, since both parties are using the other for their own gain.

What’s important is that she isn’t aware she’s embroiled in a deliberate con. For whatever reason, she’s swept up in the insistence of the men that she could be Anastasia, and goes along with it for the sake of Paris. It’s not until they’re halfway to France that she finds out she has to be vetted by the Empress’s cousin Sophie, and is very staunchly against lying (“show up, yes, look nice, fine, but LIE??”) until Vlad confides to her that he was once a member of the Russian court.

It’s an expert manipulation that subtly suggests to Anya that Vlad is doing all this out of the goodness of his heart, and pushes her into embracing the Anastasia role under the logic that: “if I’m not Anastasia, the Empress will certainly know right away, and it’s all just an honest mistake”. For her, "I might be Anastasia and these guys are hoping to get something out of it" is a very different assumption than "they know I'm not for real, and they're grooming me as part of an elaborate con."

My point is: it’s important that Anya is an innocent pawn throughout all of this, because that places the responsibility for the deception entirely on Dimitri’s shoulders (weirdly, Vlad suffers no consequences for his participation in it) and sets up the inevitable explosion of the truth coming out. Which brings us to Dimitri…

When it comes to writing three-dimensional characters, the “want versus need” technique is a tried-and-true method of adding depth and complexity. The whole point of a decent character-focused plot is for the protagonists to untangle their selfish desires from their true natures and become better people as a result. In this case, Anya is a rare example of an interesting character whose want is the same as her need – that is, to discover her identity, track down her remaining family, and understand her place in the world.

The want/need conflict is much more dramatically satisfying in regards to Dimitri, whose want – to exploit a woman’s suffering for financial gain – is completely at odds with his need – to become more like the selfless child he used to be.

But at this stage, it’s also worth mentioning the difference between protagonist and subject in any given story – for example, Aurora is the subject of Sleeping Beauty as she’s the figure around which all the story revolves, but not the protagonist. That role largely belongs to the three fairies. On the other hand, Aladdin is certainly the protagonist of the film that’s named after him, but not the subject – that would be the Genie and the power that comes from possessing his lamp.

Anastasia is interesting in that she’s both the protagonist and the subject of this movie – the search for her is what the drives the plot and motivates all five of the main characters (Anya, Dimitri, Vlad, Empress Marie and Rasputin) though ironically her role as the film’s subject does more for Dimitri’s character than it does for her. After reclaiming her identity as Anastasia, Anya is still essentially the same person she was before the truth came out, whereas her shifting role in Dimitri’s life – from mark to love interest – is what forces him to go through his profound change in character.

Which is to say that in many ways Dimitri is the more interesting character of the two. Much like the co-leads of Beauty and the Beast, it’s the male character who goes through the most dynamic arc, because he’s the one who is considerably more flawed to begin with. Anya’s problems are largely external (she has no control over losing her memories and her family) and her journey extremely straightforward, both to her and to the audience. Family: good, undead monk: bad.

There is a sprinkle of tension at the finish line when she realizes she has to make a choice between royal life and the man she loves, but this is literally introduced to her in the last few minutes of the film and is decided upon totally off-screen.

But Dimitri’s problems are all self-inflicted. He’s the one who comes up with the idea to hire an Anastasia impersonator, to “dress her up and teach her what to say,” and to use the music box as proof of his claims in order to con money out of an elderly woman who is searching for her lost granddaughter. It’s a dick move to say the least, but at the same time we’re allowed to view him sympathetically. Everyone knows that life in post-revolutionary Russia wasn’t a walk in the park, and it’s obvious from Dimitri’s surroundings that he – along with everyone else – is living in abject poverty.  

You can’t blame a guy for trying to get out of a dismal situation, and conning the wealthy elite isn’t the absolute worst crime a person can commit – or at least it feels that way when you have no emotional connection to any of them.

But that’s naturally not going to be the case by the end of the movie, and I don’t think any Disney Prince has ever gotten hit with the Karma Stick quite as thoroughly as Dimitri does. There is some irony in the fact that the trump-card (and possible inspiration) of his con is the music box, which he only acquired through his selflessness in saving Anastasia as a child, but the universe’s payback to his subsequent scheming is a double-whammy: first that he falls in love with his mark, and second that the mark truly is the girl everyone has been looking for, which leads to his realization that everything he’s done to convey her to the Dowager Empress and groom her into the role of princess has only resulted in putting her out of his league for good.

Dimitri puts his plan into action...

That he realizes his feelings and the truth of Anya’s identity in the same moment makes for what is undoubtedly the best scene of the film:  

It’s here that the character switch between want and need occurs – now he wants to be with Anya, but needs to do the right thing by her, which ironically is simply going ahead with what he planned to do all along: reunite her with her grandmother. Only now the context has utterly changed: he knows she’s the real thing, and that whether he comes clean about the con or not, his scheming means he’s going to lose her forever.

And it’s not just about her. If things had gone perfectly to plan at the Opera House, with Anya never finding out that she was the unwitting accomplice of a con-artist, Dimitri still would have been offered the ten million rubles – and probably still rejected it, though it wouldn’t have made a difference to anyone else at that stage. Due to a blend of his own self-loathing and a desire to give Anya a clean break from him by making her think he did accept the money, Dimitri carries out a quintessential case of What You Are In The Dark and rejects the reward without telling anyone.

I mean, who’d have thought this bonkers movie could get so emotionally complex? It works because his story is so unexpected in regards to his shifting motivations, conflicting desires, and the irony that’s inherent in nearly every choice he makes.

That girl he thinks he’s exploiting? She’s the real princess. The con he thinks he’s totally in control of? Is going to bite him in the ass. That he’s doing the right thing in taking the real Anastasia to her grandmother with absolutely no idea he’s doing so? Hilarious. Realizing he’s stumbled onto a genuine princess and now has guilt-free access to the reward money? Makes him miserable. That he pulls a I Want My Beloved To Be Happy AND a Break Her Heart To Save Her so that the woman he loves can get on with her life without him? Is – after all his lies and deception – what finally makes him worthy of her.

It is a fantastic arc. I never get tired of watching his smugness turn to softness turn to guilt-ridden angst turn to determination to redeem himself and do right by the girl he loves, even at the cost of his own happiness. Even if no one else knows about it. It’s a redemption arc that works because we know he wasn’t a truly terrible person to start with, and he puts in the requisite yards of internal suffering and risk to his own life to make up for it. And he broods. He broods magnificently.

And it gets more layered the longer you look into it. Another apparent plot hole that frequently comes up in discussion is the mystery as to why Dimitri didn’t prep his “impostor” by telling her about the fact he smuggled the real Anastasia out of the palace through a secret passage as a child – something only he, she and the Dowager Empress knew about. Along with the music box, it was definitive “proof” that his Anastasia was the real thing.

It should have been the lynchpin of his entire scheme, though it’s clear from his conversation with Vlad on the steps of the Paris Opera House that even his partner didn’t know about it. So why keep the story to himself? It’s possible that he’d forgotten all about it due to getting knocked unconscious immediately after closing the secret door, and only remembered when Anya recalled the moment at Sophie’s house and jogged his memory.

Yet Dimitri definitely has an Oh Crap reaction when Sophie asks the question of how Anastasia escaped the palace that night, so my take is that in his mind, saving the young princess was the last good thing he did in his life. He doesn’t want to sully the memory by dragging it into his sordid con – he figured the music box would be enough. It’s the same mentality that leads him to refuse the money without telling Anya; he wants to hold onto whatever integrity he has left, even if he never gets credit for it, for his own sense of self-worth if nothing else.

***

So we have two great protagonists in Anya and Dimitri, but have yet to be sold on the love story. The writers set themselves a challenge by having us invest in Anya’s desperate wish to find her family, while also being aware that Dimitri is going to exploit that need in order to fill his own pockets. That’s a hard sell if they don’t tread carefully.

The obvious comparison to make is Beauty and the Beast, in which the audience has to buy into the love story between a girl and the monster that’s holding her captive; starting him off in a dark place (spoiled, selfish, scary) from which he can realistically grow into a better person. We like Love Redeems stories, and we like character development, but pulling off both is a delicate balancing act between demonstrating growth in a person and depicting a sincere attachment to someone in a way that doesn’t put the onus for change on the woman in the equation.

The moment she makes him her “project”, or takes responsibility for his wellbeing, or turns into his therapist, the romance instantly dries up. Unless you’re into that kinda thing, in which case, my condolences.

Thinking that relationships with con-artists or cursed beasts will work out in the real world is just asking for trouble, but if you’re going to craft a fictional love story around this particular template, it’s crucial that the guy in question isn’t that bad to begin with – just bad enough for there to be room for meaningful change (think the Beast’s temper, Mr Darcy’s snobbery, Steve Harrington’s jerkiness). Add an opportunity for him to do the right thing in the end, and ensure that it’s not the woman’s job to fix his personality or behaviour, and you’re good to go.

So, how do they pull it off in Anastasia?

To start with they go for a classic Slap-Slap-Kiss dynamic between its leads, which is a staple part of any Meg Ryan movie shot in the nineties, and probably the script’s main source of inspiration when it came to planning out the trajectory of this particular love story.

But it works for being genuinely funny and witty, and rooted in a sense of distrust that actually makes sense for these particular characters. Of course an impoverished orphan and an embittered con-artist are going to be suspicious of each other. The verbal jabs aren’t just amusing for their own sake, but are indicative of each one’s walled-up personality and defense mechanisms.

From open hostility (in which Vlad keeps a scorecard on their verbal one-upmanship) we move to camaraderie, born out of sheer need when they’re thrown into a dangerous situation and forced to work together to survive. The runaway train sequence is perhaps the film’s best set-piece: it’s not only kinetic and suspenseful, continuing upping the stakes while using clear visuals to keep the viewer informed as to what’s happening throughout, but sheds further light on how Anya and Dimitri operate.

Aladdin and Jasmine (as I looked at here) prove that the best way to get two characters to bond is put them in a life-or-death situation and see how they respond – to both the escalating circumstances and to each other. A runaway train requires the two characters to think on their feet, problem-solve under pressure, and most importantly – trust each other by working as a team. Damn I love this shit, and it provides some good intel on who they are as people: Dimitri is surprisingly brave and competent (leaping from one carriage to another, making plans on the fly), while Anya is quick-thinking and inventive (using the dynamite to uncouple the cars, standing in for Vlad when he falls over the luggage).

Best of all, while they’re carrying out Dimitri’s makeshift plan to slow down the train by fastening a grappling hook to the underside of the carriage before throwing it onto the rails, Dimitri is nearly hit by debris and saved only when Anya grabs his hand and pulls him to safety.

(Did I mention this entire sequence is the result of little green demons? Honestly, this has to be the only action sequence I’ve ever watched in which the cause is so superfluous to the outcome).

With that, open contempt moves into grudging respect, and awareness that they can trust each leads to the next step in any budding fictional relationship: vulnerability. The passage from Stralsund to Le Havre on board the Tasha is perhaps the most clichéd segment of their love story and the most traditionally romantic. There’s the inevitable She Cleans Up Nicely moment, and the way the two gradually warm up to the Dance of Romance – but it’s cheesy to the point of being a little goofy, and way too soon for the Almost Kiss that leads into the sleepwalking sequence.

In my version of events, the scene simply fades out on the two of them dancing after Vlad’s Learn To Do It reprise: “I never should have let them dance…” That’s all it needed to be.

But the two of them dancing together is an important motif, and rendered beautifully against the colours of the sunset. Likewise, Dimitri’s “I’m not very good at it,” is adorable, and we get one of those surprising bits of subtext that pop up every so often in children’s animation when Vlad sees that Anya is once again taking charge, and instructs her to let Dimitri lead.

The sleeping walking sequence (which, like the runaway train is sparked by supernatural means, though could have easily played out without them) is more about Anya and her true identity than the love story, though her unconsciously wandering out into a storm at least gives Dimitri the chance to repay the favour she did him, and save her life in return.

It ends with another slight cliché: the tough, stoic girl giving in to her emotions and sobbing in her love interest’s arms after he’s just saved her from certain doom… but screw it, the moment is earned. What she’s just gone through certainly warrants a minor breakdown.

This moment of abject vulnerability (which takes place at the midpoint of the film) serves as the turning point for their relationship. The snark and sniping is largely over with after this moment, and a sense of affection and companionship replaces it. The next big epoch in their life is one that only affects Dimitri and which I’ve already discussed at length: during Anya’s interview with Sophie to verify her identity, she gets hit with a trick question: “how did you escape during the siege of the palace…?”

And then, perhaps because she’s spent all this time with the very answer to that question, something in Anya’s memory is jogged, and she accurately describes the circumstances in which she escaped that night: a servant boy opened a wall and pushed her through. The crux of their relationship irrevocably changes, but only one of them is aware of it. Dimitri knows who Anya is before she does. Now what’s he going to do about it?

There were a number of choices. He could have done the selfish thing and kept quiet, called the whole thing off and convinced her to settle down with him in Paris. He could have done the unselfish thing and come completely clean: about the con, their history and her true identity. He settles for the middle ground, which again, makes perfect sense for his character. He’ll go ahead with the plan like nothing has changed, reunite Anya with her grandmother, and (in his words) “walk out of her life forever.” He doesn’t have to confess to being a con-artist, and his consolation is that she’ll always remember him fondly.

It’s still not the right thing to do. It leaves Anya in unnecessary suspense in the leadup to her meeting with the Dowager Empress, and if he had told the truth immediately then the explosion at the Opera House would have never taken place.

There are some more beats leading up to that scene: Dimitri is hilariously glum throughout the otherwise upbeat Paris Holds the Key to You Heart, he’s quietly supportive in the face of Anya’s nerves at the ballet, and we even get an Aborted Declaration of Love from both of them (which again, is very cheesy, but the animation and the voice acting somehow makes it as charming as it is silly).

So Dimitri rises to the occasion, even if it’s in a very self-sabotaging way – and he would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for that ajar door. Anya overhears the Dowager Empress confronting Dimitri about his identity as a con-artist who was holding auditions for an Anastasia lookalike, he gets thrown out of the booth by her bodyguards, and shit hits the fan.

Watching this as an adult makes me realize how appreciative I am of the fact that when Anya discovers she’s been used, she Makes a Scene. The script permits her to be loudly and violently angry, and she actually SLAPS Dimitri – really hard! – in the face! In front of wealthy Parisian theatre-goers! He did her dirty, she has every right to be furious, and even though we know he’s been acting in her best interests for the past few days, he totally deserved that slap.

So many films and shows are terrified of their heroines being righteously angry; that a female character at least partly modeled on a Disney Princess was allowed to react in this way is pretty remarkable, even today.

And it’s another incredibly effective scene: the anguish in her voice and the desperation in his, the way he tries to grab her and how it only makes her angrier; how they’re both not only grappling with the truth coming out, but the fact their hearts are breaking.

This is what’s known as the Third Act Misunderstanding of any Romantic Comedy, though it’s a cut above the usual considering it doesn’t involve the usual contrivance of misconstruing a conversation or holding something back for no reason. Dimitri was running a con, and there was a good reason to keep this from Anya, and she did have a right to be furious at him even without being aware of his change of heart, and the film itself is under no misconceptions that the fault of all this lies solely at Dimitri’s door. Even when the full truth comes out, it’s not Anya who needs to apologize.

Instead, Dimitri must go the extra mile in order to make things right. And whereas the Beast proved his worthiness by putting Belle’s happiness before his own by simply letting her go, and Aladdin eventually came clean to Jasmine and admitted he wasn’t really a prince, Dimitri has to be a proactive participant not in his romantic aspirations, but in ensuring the woman he loves is reunited with her grandmother. So he steals a car and kidnaps an old woman. That’s commitment.

It leads to the film’s big Tearjerker, when Anastasia and the Dowager Empress finally recognize one another, and – as I’ve said before – it’s on par with anything that Disney Studios has done.

In the midst of all this surprising emotional complexity, Rasputin’s role is so extraneous that the leads barely notice his existence. Perhaps a better movie would have created a stronger narrative link or emotional hook between Rasputin and Anya – like if he was desperate to stop her from remembering who she is instead of just wanting to kill her for whatever reason, but the writers never go there. Seriously, they never even explain why he had such a hate-on for the Romanovs.

The lovers are reconciled when that dratted B-plot rears its ugly head once more and Rasputin tries to assassinate the newly-realized Anastasia. As befitting his entire role in this drama, he’s not even the catalyst for their reunion: Dimitri was coming back anyway after finding the rose Anya gave him earlier in his pocket, and there’s every chance Anya would have acted on her grandmother’s disclosure that Dimitri rejected the reward money and gone to find him at the train station. A part of me resents not seeing how it would have panned out if Rasputin hadn’t turned up.

But as is the way of this remarkably bizarre movie, the two of them have to kill a magical zombie monk before they can get their happily ever after. Sure, why not? Those little green demons are back, and there’s a giant flying statue of a horse, and Dimitri gets to punch Rasputin in the face and send his head into a 360 degree spin before getting knocked unconscious, but in another interesting twist that sets Anya apart from all the preceding Disney Princesses, it’s she that finally gets to full-on kill the film’s villain by stamping on his source of power (that reliquary). Look at this screenshot:

The likes of Belle and Ariel and Jasmine never got anything this badass.

So whatever, Rasputin dies an astonishingly grotesque death, in which he melts into a convulsing skeleton before disintegrating into dust, but is so inconsequential as anything other than a last-minute obstacle that (and this is truly hilarious) neither Anya nor Dimitri even mentions him after he’s disposed of. Seriously, Dimitri wakes up from his concussion and says nothing about the guy they’ve just killed. Not even a: “wait, did you just murder the undead zombie monk?” or “hey, what was up with that giant horse statue that was magically brought to life?”

They just jump straight to the tearful confessions and thwarted declaration of love. And who would have it any other way? When Dimitri struggles to answer Anya’s question as to why he didn’t take the money and can’t even look her in the eye as he says: “because I…,” I mean, what the fuck is this doing in a kid’s movie? It is WASTED on children.

In conclusion, their love story is amazing. I never get sick of it. The film makes everything work, from the verbal call-backs (“if we live through this, remind me to thank you”) to the recurring motif of ballroom dancing; from their Forgotten First Meeting and how they re-meet in the same place they last saw each other as children, to the symbolic carrying of the music box and necklace-key throughout the years. The arc of their relationship from hostility to camaraderie to vulnerability to flirtation to misunderstanding to reconciliation all works so much better than it had any right to.  

In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the euphoria of romantic love depicted quite as powerfully as in that final scene of them dancing on the deck of the riverboat. This is what complete joy looks like, the absolute zenith of human happiness.

They’ve left behind the abject poverty of Soviet Russia and the shackles of the Romanov dynasty’s gilded cage, they’re young and free and in love in the brightness and warmth and modernity of Paris, they’ve found each other across so many years despite amnesia and a long-con and the class barrier and all the other obstacles set against them; they’re dancing for joy at all they’ve managed to survive and overcome…

And then the film pans to the FUCKING BAT, who not only gets kissed by a totally random PINK female bat that just appears out of nowhere, but who breaks the fourth wall to say goodbye to the audience.

What the fuck is this movie. I just CAN’T.

***

So as you can see: big feelings about this movie, as well as mixed ones. You could remove Rasputin and Bartok from the story and not lose anything important – his demons might be responsible for the runaway train and the sleep walking sequences (which are too good and narratively important to cut) but with a bit of tweaking they could just as easily been chalked up to natural occurrences. As for the confrontation with Rasputin at the end? That’s a little trickier, but it’s extremely telling that after he’s dead neither Anya nor Dimitri speak of him again – not even to clarify that he is, in fact, dead.

It’s no accident that the Broadway musical does away with his character entirely (along with the bat and the dog) and doesn’t suffer for it at all – beyond losing those aforementioned set-pieces, which were going to be impossible to recreate on a stage anyway.

But a theatre production needs to compensate for its lack of cinematic scope, and so it ends up being a very different narrative creation in several key respects, even as it deepens and clarifies some aspects of the film.

For instance, the film offers no insight into what happens regarding the public discovery of Anastasia and the inevitable media frenzy surrounding her return (there’s a shot of a newspaper whose headline reads “Romanov Princess Found”, but no elaboration on how this pans out for Dimitri and Anya, or how the Empress deals with it in the aftermath of their elopement). In comparison, the show has a wonderfully bittersweet conclusion in which the Empress addresses the media and informs them that Anastasia was “just a dream” and that she’s going to end the search for her.

My twelve-year old self would have been outraged by this, as she was dead-set on Anya returning to her grandmother and publicly embracing her identity as the lost princess (I can neither confirm nor deny the existence on fan-fiction on this matter) but these days I love the film’s implication (and the show’s confirmation) that she does the exact opposite – escapes that stifling lifestyle to live out her days in blissful normalcy… though presumably with a nice down-payment from grandma.

The musical actually takes it a step further by pointing out that Anya must remain incognito for the sake of her own safety – the emergence of an Imperial Princess in France would not be taken lightly by the Revolutionaries, and she might well have been dodging assassination attempts for the rest of her life had she gone public. Better that she slip away quietly into the night…

The show also fleshes out the fraught relationship between Vlad and Sophie (now called Lily for some reason), gives Dimitri some backstory, and draws more on the actual history of the Romanovs – particularly the circumstances of their deaths. And of course, Rasputin is switched out for a very different type of villain: Gleb Vaganov, a general for the Bolsheviks who is tasked with upholding the new regime, and whose father was among those who assisted in the assassination of the royal family.

When he gets wind of Dimitri’s con and the Anastasia imposter, he warns Anya not to pursue her course of action, but eventually decides that he must complete his father’s mission by killing the last Romanov – despite harbouring feelings for the girl. I mean… damn. Just that brief premise is far more interesting than anything Rasputin ever said or did.

The musical began its run on Connecticut’s Hartford Stage in May 2016 before premiering on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre in April 2017 (eventually closing in March 2019 after over eight hundred performances) but there are several small variations between the two productions – from costuming to choreography – that differentiates them slightly. As it happens, I watched a recording of the Connecticut version on Vimeo, so that’s the one I’ll be referencing here.

Although there were some cast changes over the years, the musical is best known for starring Christy Altomare as Anya and Derek Klena as Dimitri, with Mary Beth Peil as the Dowager Empress, John Bolton as Vlad, and Caroline O’Connor as Lily (formerly known as Sophie). Ramin Karimloo played Gleb on Broadway, but was originally portrayed by Manoel Felciano in the filmed version I was able to access.

Of the entire cast, Klena is an amazing physical match for Dimitri, seriously looking like he’s just stepped out of the movie, and captures much of the character’s essence: dry cynicism hiding a desperate need to believe in something. He’s a bit younger and softer than his movie counterpart, and an early song makes him way too openly vulnerable and emotionally mature, but he easily makes for the best transition from screen to stage.

Altomare plays Anya as more of a wide-eyed ingenue, which is a shame. Gone is the sharp tongue and spiky exterior, and though they keep in some bratty elements, it plays more like weird childishness than the vestiges of a royal background. The filmic take on Anya was almost a deliberate deconstruction of the Disney Princess line-up, whereas this Anya is very much structured around that naïve and innocent prototype, and clearly not an Anya who pulls an alpha-male on Dimitri and out-squeezes his grip during a handshake (which subsequently affects their dynamic).

As Vlad and Lily, Bolton and O’Connor take on the task of comic relief with occasional moments of pathos, but the big surprise is Mary Beth Peil as the Dowager, who gets extra screen-time, her own song, and plenty of focus on the misery she suffers in the wake of her entire family’s deaths.

When it comes to Gleb, he’s clearly a better villain than Rasputin, though in many ways his complexity leeches a little of the drama from the rest of the production. So much of the dynamic between Anya and Dimitri is lost, and that’s only exacerbated by Gleb’s internal struggle: torn between his sense of duty, familial pride/guilt, and confused moral compass.

His confrontation with Anya, in which he pulls a gun on her as she declares her true identity, works so much better thematically than the confrontation with Rasputin when it comes to her journey of self-discovery, that it threatens to become the emotional apex of the story, completely outdoing Dimitri’s similar crisis of conscience regarding his love for Anya and the part he played in deceiving her (which is also changed in several fundamental ways here).

Throw in the fact that Gleb has some residual feelings for Anya, and you’ve almost got a love triangle, even though the two men never meet or interact. As it is, Felciano plays the part well, with all the simmering anger and self-delusion you’d expect, but I regret not being able to watch Karimloo in the role. He would have brought the goods.

***

The structuring and pacing of the story is interesting, with the first act taking place in Leningrad and the second in Paris (and yes, they make the most of the contrast between the two cities, with the former being grim and dreary and the latter bright and carefree), with all the original songs sans In The Dark of the Night present and accounted for – though taking place at very different points during the course of the story. Learn To Do It is one of the first numbers, while Journey To the Past doesn’t turn up till just before intermission.

It also means that much of the second act struggles to balance out the surplus of the film’s score in its first half, with original songs such as The Countess and the Common Man and Land of Yesterday existing largely as filler. But there are deeper differences in the way the plot plays out, both for good and ill.

First of all, forget Dimitri helping Anastasia escape from the palace when they were children, and all that this plot-point subsequently leads to. There’s no poetry in the two each carrying around one half of the Dowager Empress’s gift; the musical box still exists, but Dimitri just coincidentally buys it off a dealer at the markets, and there’s no key-necklace at all; Anya’s yearning for Paris comes from her grandmother’s last words to her as a child: “remember… Paris.”

(This also creates something of a plot-hole in the very search for Anastasia, as why would the Dowager focus on her youngest granddaughter and only her youngest granddaughter? In the film she has good reason to believe she’s still alive, in the musical she was already in Paris when the massacre happens, and receives news that all of them have perished).

Likewise, there’s no moment in which Dimitri realizes who Anya truly is when she’s able to accurately describe the way he opened the secret door in the wall, which snowballs into there being no angry confrontation at the Opera House when the truth comes out, and no desperate scrambling to make things right by essentially kidnapping the Empress and driving her to Anya’s door.

It completely reshapes the fundamentals of their relationship, starting from the fact that Anya knew all along that Dimitri’s plan was rather dodgy (Gleb tells her about the Anastasia auditions, and Dimitri makes no secret that a reward is up for grabs) to them realizing at the same time that Anya really is the Grand Duchess. In this version of events, Anastasia once glimpsed Dimitri during a parade when they were both children, and on hearing the story from his point-of-view as adults, it’s enough to finally trigger her memories.

Crowd of Thousands is a beautiful song, and there’s something special about how it’s Dimitri that finally unlocks Anya’s amnesia (she specifically recalls how he bowed to her when they were just children; now as an adult he’s forced to bow to her again, this time in the knowledge that she’s still beyond his reach) but without the rescue and the con and the betrayal, there’s no need for any redemption or character growth from Dimitri. Like I said, most of that now goes to Gleb.

The film’s heart is the trifecta of Anya, Dimitri and the Dowager Empress, with any combination of that triangle having a fascinating rapport with each other (Dimitri and the Empress only get three scenes together, but my God, they make them count). The changes made to the plot in the stage-show intrinsically alters these relationships: Dimitri gets slapped, but this time it’s the Dowager doing it (and not because he’s kidnapped her, but because he stands on her dress) and although Anya is furious at him throughout the third act, there’s really no reason as to why. He’s been upfront and above-board about his Anastasia con right from the start, so the anger instead seems to stem from Anya feeling humiliated that the Dowager initially refuses to see her.

We don’t even get the Dowager’s quiet Test of Character when she offers Dimitri the reward money and he declines… because that was never a point of contention in the first place. All the BITE has gone out their dynamics.

There are plenty of other changes that work much better, specifically the more historically accurate portrayal of the Romanov family and the political events of the time. We a better sense of the parents and siblings that Anya has lost, as they appear throughout the show as ghostly visages whenever her memories start to resurface. It’s a great effect, especially during Once Upon a December and her final confrontation with Gleb.

Other changes are also good (the musical lets Anya chew out Vlad for his complicity in the con, something that is bizarrely omitted from the film), some are bad (why switch out Once Upon a December’s opening lyrics from “on the wind, cross the sea, hear this song and remember; soon you’ll be, home with me…” to its later reprise: “far away, long ago, glowing dim as an ember; things my heart used to know, things it yearns to remember…” which make very little sense as the opening words to a child’s lullaby?) and some make no difference whatsoever (in the film, Anya’s memories of her grandmother are triggered by the smell of peppermint, in the musical, it’s the scent of oranges. Sure, whatever).

Her amnesia is also better portrayed, a result not of a bump on the head, but severe psychological trauma. We see in the prologue that she gets separated from her family when she dashes back to get her music box, and throughout the story she suffers from nightmares and intrusive flashbacks. How she escaped the palace is kept deliberately vague, as recounted in the lyrics to In My Dreams:

 

They said I was found by the side of a road

There were tracks all around, it had recently snowed

In the darkness and cold with the wind in the trees

A girl with no name, and no memories but these

 

Rain against a window, sheets upon a bed

Terrifying nurses whispering overhead

"Call the child Anya, give the child a hat"

I don't know a thing before that

 

Traveling the back roads, sleeping in the wood

Taking what I needed, working when I could

Keeping up my courage, foolish as it seems

At night all alone in my dreams…

 

It’s haunting, evocative stuff, suggesting in the vaguest of possible terms that she may have escaped the basement in Yekaterinburg (“I've seen flashes of fire/Heard the echo of screams”) and was helped by nurses in an orphanage or hospital, who suspected but concealed her identity – at least that’s what it gestures at. The element of ambiguity is what makes it so chilling, and lays a pall over the fate of the Romanovs and Anya’s somewhat uncertain future that even the movie couldn’t manage. The end of the film is pure joy; the musical leans heavily into bittersweetness.

***

There are other interesting touches here and there. The musical adds a few more clues as to Anya’s true identity, such as her producing a diamond that was mysteriously sewn into her clothing as a child, and an old Russian aristocrat recognizing her at the train station, but there’s always a lingering thread of doubt from start to finish as to who this girl really is, with the conclusion ultimately deciding that it doesn’t matter: she’s who she chooses to be.

As mentioned, there are also some differences between the Hartford and Broadhurst performances: the former has her wearing a white dress to the ballet instead of the iconic royal blue one, and she and Dimitri sing a short reprise of In a Crowd of Thousands when they’re reunited before posing in the manner of the music box as the ghosts of her family revolve around them. The latter has a gag in which the extremely-short Altomare grabs Dimitri’s suitcase and stands on it in order to kiss him, before they simply stand center-stage for the final song with the rest of the ensemble.

Paris Holds the Key To Your Heart is also heavily modified, with Hartford bringing out a slew of famous artists that were working in the city at that time: Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Broadhurst focusing instead on Vlad, Dimitri and Anya.

But despite all the story changes, the musical vibes well with the original film, and somewhere between the two lies a perfect storytelling experience. Much like the text and film of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, the two variations of the story somehow manage to work beautifully in tandem, each covering the other’s weaknesses and subsequently elevating the material. If we could take the best of each one – the film’s love story, its characterization and development, the action set-pieces, and the musical’s more interesting villain, focus on the real Romanov tragedy, and emphasis on the culture, history and politics of the period – then we would have Anastasia: The Best Take.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Did you know that Carrie Fisher was a script doctor on this film? Among other things, she was apparently responsible for the scene in which Anya stands at the crossroads and ruminates on what she wants for herself and her future. So along with Meg Ryan comedies, there’s perhaps also a little bit of Han and Leia in Dimitri and Anya…

Of all the casting choices, it’s Meg Ryan as Anya that really stands out – and not necessarily in a good way. The character is very much based on that Meg Ryan type, in regards to her pertness and mannerisms, but I don’t think anyone was fooled into thinking this was the voice of an eighteen-year old. (Even stranger, there’s a spoken line at the beginning of Learn to Do It (“alright, I’m ready!”) that is CLEARLY not Ryan, and presumably Liz Callaway (the character’s singing voice) instead.

The rest of the cast feel much better matched to their characters, especially John Cusack as Dimitri, who already had the monopoly on bitter and disaffected cynics. Kelsey Grammar (Vlad) and Angela Lansbury (the Dowager) are old pros at this type of material, though Bernadette Peters is the only one who attempts an appropriate accent. Rumour has it that she was unhappy with the design of Sophie since the character was overweight, but… huh? That doesn’t sound anything like Bernadette Peters, and Sophie herself is a fantastic character, both in design and performance.

The animation itself has a certain distinctive sense of movement to it, largely due to the fact it was rotoscoped: actors performed the actions and then the animators traced their movements. It gives the characters a fluidity and realism that’s apparent in every gesture, from Sophie casually pointing with her teaspoon to the way Dimitri’s shoulders heave when he says: “we’ll just COAST to a stop!”

It’s especially apparent in the way the film takes its beats from romantic comedies: whenever Anya and Dimitri are bickering or flirting there’s an attention to their body language that feels so natural – something that Meg Ryan herself mentioned in an interview.

The Dowager Empress’s opening narration states: “We lived in an enchanted world of elegant palaces and grand parties.” Yeah, YOU did. Really, the only concession that the film makes to this delusion is the title sequence in which the camera pans down from St Petersburg’s gleaming onion domes above the cloud line to the dirty streets and miserable homes beneath. Amazingly, the musical actually puts some accountability in the Empress’s mouth in regards to this: “I’m an old woman who remembers everything the way it should have been and nothing the way it was.”

It will never cease to amuse me that the film blames the Russian Revolution on a pact with Satan.

Also amusing is the anecdote about how the animators gave Dimitri a broken nose in order to make him less conventionally handsome, which hilariously backfired since the flaw easily made him about ten times hotter.

In the film, Dimitri is a kitchen boy who works in the palace, and whatever his background might be beyond that, it stays firmly off-screen (in comparison, the musical’s Dimitri divulges that his father was an anarchist who died in a labour camp, leaving him to raise himself on the streets of St Petersburg).

By the time we meet him as an adult, he’s clearly on a seedier path, but the film utilizes some extremely good shorthand dialogue in order to convey this lifestyle: a throwaway line in which he says: “no more forging papers, no more stolen goods,” combined with the sight of Vlad using a password to enter a building tells us everything we need to know about the way they operate.

(The musical also takes the opportunity to reshape Vlad’s history: no longer a dispossessed Russian courtier, but a genuine fraud who slithered his way into the aristocratic circles, and who explicitly seduced Lily/Sophie with the intent to steal her valuables).

Anya gets plenty of these subtle character notes as well, from the orphanage administrator accusing her of acting like “the Queen of Shebah” to her comment that: “I guess every lonely girl would dream about being a princess,” and: “it’s hard to imagine yourself as a duchess when you’re sleeping on a cold floor.” Her whole life and personality are caught up in those brief lines of dialogue.

A detail I had forgotten is that (like Tiana and Naveen in The Princess and the Frog) Anya and Dimitri bump into each other early on without realizing they’ve done so. Anya is asking directions, Dimitri brushes past her, and they each carry on their way. Fate didn’t waste any time trying to push them together.

In hindsight, some of the songs are awkwardly staged, as though people are actually performing to an invisible audience, complete with breaking the fourth wall and choreographed dancing. Disney has cracked the secret to musical numbers: they usually occur as a real performance (Be Our Guest) or in a heightened reality dream sequence (Just Can’t Wait To Be King). There are exceptions obviously, but there’s a magic to them that helps suspend your disbelief that Anastasia is entirely missing. Like, at the conclusion of Learn To Do It, our trio end the song with a flourish on the gangplank of the ship, and it’s like… who are they posing for? Why are they behaving as though they’re in a stage musical?

Honestly, the only absolutely necessary song is Once Upon a December, firstly to establish the bond between Anastasia and her grandmother, and later to signify Anya’s memories returning to her. The sequence at the Old Palace is beautifully done, and works because it’s clearly mostly happening in her imagination. There’s something eerie and tragic about her wandering about her own home, her conjuring the sight of the ballroom ghosts, and even later, when she unknowingly stands in front of her own portrait and the light falls down upon her. 

So naturally the stage musical actually handles these songs much better, and there are some genuinely clever variations on the lyrics, as when they reprise A Rumour in St Petersburg, and Gleb is told: “The Princess Anastasia: alive or dead – it’s up to you,” or when they brilliantly get in a running joke about Gertrude Stein getting inspiration for her “a rose is a rose is a rose” line in the midst of Paris Holds The Key to Your Heart. Here’s an interesting interview from Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty about the changes they made to the songs.  

Despite me wanting Rasputin to leave every time he shows up, he does come with some pretty intense imagery and a pretty awesome villain song (they kept at least a few bars of it in the musical’s Stay, I Pray You). But like Anya, his singing voice – Jim Cummings! – sounds absolutely nothing like Christopher Lloyd’s speaking voice.

Nice to see that in recent years the actress who whips off her coat and rasps: “grandma, it’s me, Anastasia,” has made a big comeback as a meme. I wish someone would do the same for poor off-screen Ilya, the chauffeur who yells: “mah vehicle!” when Dimitri steals the car with the Empress inside it.

I’ve always considered it weird that there are no repercussions for Vlad, despite being totally in on the con and willing to string Anya along throughout (after all, he’s the guy who expertly manipulates her into agreeing to meet Sophie after she realizes she’ll have to be vetted first). In fact, he disappears entirely from the movie once Dimitri announces he’s going back to St Petersburg – shouldn’t he have at least been in the room when the Dowager and Sophie get Anya’s note that explains what happened to them? There’s such an odd lack of closure for such an important character.

It also strikes me as unusual that Anya never learns (onscreen at least) that Dimitri was indeed the boy that rescued her from the palace during the attack. He tries to tell her at the Opera House, but he never gets the chance to explain it to her properly. If nothing else, at least A Crowd of Thousands helps fill in this gap, even if their history exists in a completely different context.

I had this movie on VCR as a kid, and I can say with absolute certainty that a scene was cut from it: when Anya is sleepwalking and about to go over the edge, her father’s face changes into Rasputin and she finds herself in a hellish landscape, being attacked by demons (which turn out to be Dimitri trying to pull her back to safety). This was definitely not in the version I watched repeatedly as a kid, so perhaps it removed on account of being a little too intense.

Speaking of cut scenes, my junior novelization tells me that when Dimitri is at the train station, wondering whether to go or stay, he hears the voice of a woman saying: "tell her, tell her!" In context, it's actually just the old woman waiting in line behind him who is impatient for him buy his ticket from the lady behind the counter, but it snaps him out of his reverie and makes him yell: "that's it! I'll tell her that I love her!" 

The cut was undoubtedly done to keep the audience in a bit more suspense over whether or not he would return, but I've no doubt that the original scene was animated: you can hear the grumbling of the woman in the scene where he finds the rose in his pocket, and a wider shot depicts a more-detailed-than-usual extra standing behind him, looking impatient. I'd have liked to have seen the complete scene, just out of curiosity.

The film has the characters watching a performance of Cinderella at the Paris Opera House, which makes clear thematic sense, but the musical goes for Swan Lake – not as obvious an analogy as Cinderella, but then they match up each character’s stanza with a character from the ballet: Odette dances when Anya sings, Siegfried for Dimitri, the cygnets for the Dowager, and Rothbart for Gleb. It’s really nicely done.

The bridge that Anya and Rasputin fight on in the film’s climax is actually Pont Alexandre III, named for Tsar Alexander III, Anastasia’s grandfather. They certainly don’t make this explicit in the film, though it’s mentioned frequently in the musical, up to and including having a song about it: Crossing a Bridge.

***

So, that’s Anastasia: film and musical. It’s lived in my imagination now for over twenty years, and even after all this text I couldn’t tell you exactly why. As a kid I had boatloads of merchandise, and at my high school formal I ended up wearing a dark blue gown, of which I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t directly inspired by Anya’s evening gown. I even had the opera gloves, though they were black, not white.

It’s easy to pinpoint certain concepts that appeal to me: a facsimile of a Disney Princess who not only gets to kill the bad guy (while shielding the unconscious love interest with her body), but who choses to give up being a princess for a normal life of freedom and obscurity, which is beautifully developed through her journey from the coldness of post-Imperial Russia to the warmth and modernity of France.

How Anya’s quest for identity feeds into Dimitri’s redemption arc, moving between Anya gradually reclaiming who she is and then deciding who she wants to be, and Dimitri getting hit by a karmic jackhammer and scrambling in all earnestness to atone for his mistake, not to mention the inherent irony of his storyline: that a con-artist thoroughly plays himself by finding the real lost princess, unknowingly falling in love with her, and realizing that even if he succeeds in his scheme, he’ll still lose.

The way all this is beautifully captured in the movie’s original tagline: “a girl who finds her past and a boy who finds his future,” and how it’s tinged with a bittersweetness that can’t be removed – Anya’s happy ending doesn’t change the fact that her entire family was murdered or that she lost years of her life with her grandmother. She’s found love and purpose, but she’ll never be able to be Anastasia again.

And at the end of it all, I’m reminded of how the film was met with accusations of exploiting a real-life tragedy for a Disney-esque cartoon musical – and my rebuttal would be that Anastasia creates something of flawed but genuine beauty, puts a girl who was murdered at age seventeen at the heart of it, and gives her the chance to grow up, fall in love, find her remaining family, and just – live out her life in peace.

The real Anastasia died horribly in a cold cellar with her rest of her family, but the most poignant aspect of this film is that it – however inadvertently in regards to the intentions of its makers – allows a part of her spirit to escape her fate and live on in the way history did not permit her to. And that, to me, is not a bad thing.