The Literary Combine: Ansatasia, Trailing Clouds of Glory

I took the kids to see Don Bluth's Anastasia at the dollar theater last Saturday. I didn't know how good it would be, but came away glad I'd taken advantage of the opportunity to see the film on the big screen. Bluth is a former Disney animator who left to create his own films in the classic American style of animation, which Disney had pioneered and then abandoned, and Bluth is often credited with sparking the renaissance of the form. Bluth comes from an artistic Mormon family from Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, and I've wondered if his double removal from the mainstream of American culture (as a Mormon and ex-colonial) hasn't contributed to his unique vision. I've followed his career with interest, both because of this and because he's a relative, a second cousin, not quite close enough for me to have met him or know his relationship to the Church, but close enough to make me perk up when the name is mentioned.

The movie opens on scenes of Imperial Russia, and one is immediately impressed with the sumptuousness of the backgrounds. Rich color and detail, consistently striking angles, this film is unusually well-drawn. Bluth makes strong use of three-dimensional computer animation techniques too, as we pan over St. Petersburg, watching foreground, middleground, and background, each moving faster or slower, growing sharper or hazier, just as your eye expects them to. One of the first scenes in the movie is of a huge ballroom in the imperial palace with hundreds of couples dancing, exceptionally lifelike in their movement. A little later we see a woman gathering her skirts and running down a flight of stairs into a garden, and the movement is as strikingly graceful and natural as before. The technique here is to film live dancers and actors and then to pattern the animation closely on the individual frames. I noticed the same technique in scattered scenes in Disney's Alice in Wonderland, but where there the lifelike movements clashed with the more typical, cartoon motion of the characters, here the choreography, both dance and natural movement, was consistent throughout, and uniformly stunning. Classic American animation mixes detailed, lifelike backdrops with balloon characters, and that's the pattern here. Bluth's faces come across as flat and a little disjoint, what with the odd and constantly shifting "camera angles." Facial features float unpredictably in relation to each other, so that one can never quite form an impression of what some of the principle characters look like. Visually, that's the film's one weakness. In general it's a delight to look at from beginning to end.

The story is based on the historical characters but is pure fabrication. Anastasia, with the help of a kitchen boy, escapes the revolutionary violence and grows up in an orphanage with little memory of who she was, and only a medallion inscribed "Meet Me in Paris" for a clue. Her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, has advertised a reward for her return, and the kitchen boy, grown up now, together with an impoverished noble, have been auditioning actresses to pass off as the princess. The kitchen boy possesses a Faberge egg jewelry box the Empress once gave to Anastasia, with which he hopes to secure the fraud. They meet our "Anya," note the resemblance without recognizing her for who she is, and convince her to come along to Paris with them without telling her of the reward. Anya, who just wants to know her identity, says, "Every little girl has dreamed that she's secretly a princess, but why not me? If I'm she, the Empress will surely recognize me, and either way, I'll know."

They travel by train, on foot, and by boat to Paris, the men schooling her in details of noble life and the royal family. They are opposed by Rasputin, who was banished from the court by Anastasia's father, Czar Nicolas. It was Rasputin's spells that unleashed the violence that lead to the Romanov family's overthrow. Rasputin is a corpse now, banished to limbo because his curse is incomplete -- Anastasia is alive, and he literally falls to pieces in frustration as each new scheme to stop her fails. (The film was criticized for being too graphic, but Bluth plays this for comedy, and my 6- and 8-year-old seemed to enjoy these parts and didn't seem unduly frightened. I don't take them to many scary movies, and I watch their faces closely.) Anya and the kitchen boy fall in love, and he comes to realize this is the true princess (long before she does). He is crushed, thinking she will never marry a former servant, but he repents of his intended fraud and works tirelessly to unite her with her grandmother. The Empress has seen so many impostors by the time they get to Paris that she refuses to receive them. He plots to bring them together and offers the proof of the jewelry box -- it turns out it's a music box, and Anya's medallion is the key. The Empress accepts Anastasia, but the princess pines for her kitchen boy until the Empress lets her know she needn't pick between them: "Whatever you chose, we will always be together," she tells her, freeing Anastasia and her love to marry.

From a narrative standpoint, Anastasia is less than satisfying. The reunion scene is not as cathartic as it could have been. Rasputin's machinations lack focus. My older children, early teen and preteen, liked the show a lot, but as the oldest said, "There weren't enough scary scenes." Anastasia's weakness is nowhere more evident than in the final showdown, where hedges in a garden grow suddenly tall, menacing, and full of briars, reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty (one of several scenes in homage to Disney -- I caught other glimpses of that film, one or two of Snow White, maybe a couple of Fantasia, and there were doubtless others too). Anastasia's hedge scene fails to build tension, and though I'm certain it's as long or longer than the Sleeping Beauty version, it seemed brief and inconsequential in comparison. Bluth's plotting is too elaborate for the form, (and its complexity pays an additional, unintended homage to the tight plotting of films like The Little Mermaid and The Lion King).

Read typologically, Anastasia holds up better, probably better than the Disney films. Think of the St. Petersburg palace as a regal, preexistent, celestial home, mostly-forgotten, towards which we grope, with little more than hope to guide us most the time. We are opposed by a sinister member of the court who has been expelled, and we have to be diligent and pure, and help each other, to overcome the obstacles he puts in our path. We're given emblems that help us recognize our heavenly parents when we find them, and once we're united with them we can't be separated again. Typologically speaking, Disney shows tend to boil down to, "True love (i.e. romantic love) conquers all." Anastasia boils down to, "If you're diligent in your quest, you can find your true identity and be sealed to your family eternally."

How we think of typology depends partly on what we see the author doing. It's perfectly legitimate to find Christian allegory in Snow White or the Lion King, whether the authors intended it or not, because one view of typology is that these patterns in all the world's stories are pre-existent -- they resonate because we knew them before we came. I think Anastasia is different, both because of Bluth's LDS background and because he's explored these same themes in his other films: discovering one's identity in The Secret of N.I.H.M, and finding one's family in An American Tale and The Land before Time (I haven't seen All Dogs Go to Heaven). I see Bluth as a Latter-day Saint trying consciously to give these themes a purer expression so they will resonate with people and prepare them for the gospel, or at least help make them truer to their natures. And I believe he succeeds, which I why I say I'm proud to claim him, both as a kinsman and for Mormon literature.

Benson Parkinson 
<byparkinson@cc.weber.edu>

------ 
Benson Parkinson is a writer and editor.  His published works
include The MTC: Set Apart (Aspen 1995) and S. Dilworth Young
(Covenant 1994).  He originated and moderates AML-List.  He and
his wife live with their five children in South Ogden, Utah.