#AnneFrank - Parallel Stories

First up, like nearly every other review for this title, I echo the same sentiment- the social media girl had no place in this documentary. That sub-plot added nothing. Absolutely pointless. Next, Helen Mirren. Why? Why the cringey emoting? I get that she is an actor, but we did not need one here. All she had to do was simply read through the book without trying to channel her inner Anne.

The stories of survivors who were born around the same time as Anne Frank were the highlight of the movie, as it should be. Anne would have been 91 today. Tatiana talking about her mother moved me to tears. It was also nice to see the kids and grandkids being interviewed. One could see that they realised they existed in this world because their grandma made it out of Auschwitz. Touching stories.

I saw this a couple nights ago and enjoyed it very much. I particularly liked Helen Mirren's dramatic readings from the diary as well as hearing from Anne's contemporaries and their children/grandchildren, which makes you wonder "what if" she had been able to hold on a couple more months. Many pictures were incorporated that I've never seen before. Something that didn't work for me was the "modern girl" with the Twitter handle "KatherineKat". Since Anne was writing to a fictional "Kitty", this seems to be Kitty writing back and presumably was a modern day equivalent of a diary but using social media instead. Whereas Anne could expound in her diary, a tweet was by it's nature quite limited. I found that aspect a little annoying, but I suppose younger audiences might well have enjoyed it.

Anne Frank is so well known I hoped this documentary would focus at least in equal measure on the "parallel stories" in the title. Unfortunately, I didn't learn much about them. Also, the instagram girl gimmick was useless, with all her #lousyhashtags.

Is this a docu-drama or an exercise in cinematography? The camera work is superb! But it's overdone and too "artsy-dartsy" for a film of this type. It's also far too long. Nor do I understand how Helen Mirren fits in. She is a favourite of mine. But there seems little point in having her (or anybody else) do an on camera narration. Nor, unlike the original movie, this film would be a confusing mystery to anybody not familiar with Anne Frank's story or the grim history of the period.

Last night I went to see the movie documentary #Anne Frank: Parallel Stories (the hash tag is part of the title). First thing to remember is that it's directed at teenagers so it's not going to be quite as in-depth as something like Shoah, the gold-standard for Holocaust documentaries. That said I found the movie pretty shallow and in many ways annoying. The heart of the movie was interviews with five women Holocaust survivors of the same age as Anne Frank would be now. This was moving and very well done, with each woman drawing parallels between what had happened in their childhoods and the rise, encouragement, and acceptance of racism and bigotry we see now. One survivor particularly moved me when she said "Our revenge against the Nazis is our children".

Helen Mirren narrated and linked various parts of the movie from what was said to be an exact reproduction of Anne Frank's bedroom, if you've ever been to the Frank house you'll know that the annexe is kept mostly empty at the wishes of Otto Frank. This was effective in evoking the claustrophobia of life in the annex but seemed a little unnecessary. Mirren herself seemed to have pretty much dialled in her performance, a combination of overacting and not very believable emoting. Too much Mirren and not enough narrator.

The movie's main trope was that of a teenage girl travelling to various places in Western Europe associated with Anne Frank and documenting her feelings on instagram-like social media. The girl had no character whatsoever, the only thing we learn about her is that she likes cake and nose-piercings. Her social-media updates never rose above the level of "I wonder what you were thinking, Anne? #oppression".

The usual pictures and films of what happened in the camps are, as always, horrifying, and I cried a little during the interviews with the five survivors but overall this was a wasted opportunity. This has been done so much better in other movies and documentaries. I hope this is better received by the target audience than it was by me.

The most important message from this documentary was that the appeal of fascism and the urge to genocide has never gone away, that it is in fact back with a vengeance. That all those who are horrified by what happened in the Shoah should also be horrified by what's happening now to refugees and immigrants around the world and should draw the parallels between the populism, bigotry, hatred, and nationalism the Nazis parlayed into power and the populism, bigotry, hatred, and nationalism so many of our current governments are also parlaying into power. The witnesses to the Holocaust are nearly all gone now, their history is being rewritten and denied by those whose intentions are evil and it's more important than ever that those witnesses get to speak out now to generations to whom the Holocaust seems to be as far away and irrelevant to their lives as the Spanish Armada.

Despite my opinion that this movie could have been so much better, if it manages to get that message across to its target audience then it will have served its purpose and that purpose is eminently worthwhile.