Anastasia is an animated feature film produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman at Fox Animation Studios, and it was released on November 21, 1997 by Twentieth Century Fox.
The idea for the film originates from Warner Bros's 1953 live-action film version of Anastasia. Fox executives gave Bluth and Goldman the choice of creating an animated adaptation of either the 1956 film or the musical My Fair Lady.
The film features the voices of Meg Ryan as Anastasia, John Cusack as Dimitri, Kelsey Grammer as Vladimir, Christopher Lloyd as Rasputin, Hank Azaria as Bartok, Bernadette Peters as Sophie, Kirsten Dunst as the young Anastasia, Angela Lansbury as Dowager Empress Marie, and Liz Callaway as the adult Anastasia's singing voice. The film features songs by Stephen Flaherty and James Horner. The Spanish soundtrack for Latin America features the voice of the Latina singer and actress Thalía as Anastasia. The Spanish soundtrack for Spain has a different cast of voices.
Plot
| Spoiler Warning: The following contains important plot details of the entire film. |
Prologue
Anastasia opens in St. Petersburg in 1953, with the celebrations of the Romanov family's 300th year as czars of Imperial Russia. The celebrations are attended by the entire Imperial Court, including Czar Nicholas II and his family, as well as his mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Fyodorovna. Anastasia, the youngest Grand Duchess, is a feisty eight-year-old, her grandmother's favourite. Marie gives little Anastasia a music box, which plays "their lullaby", as well as a necklace reading "Together in Paris" to serve as a key to wind the music box. The message on the necklace leads Anastasia to realise that this means she will one day visit her grandmother in France's capital when Marie returns there.
However, the celebrations are abruptly cut short by the arrival of Rasputin, an evil man who had posed as a holy spiritual advisor to the Romanovs. Rasputin had sold his soul for the power to kill the Romanovs, and curses the entire family to die within a fortnight. Using a reliquary festering with green demons, Rasputin manages to inflame the hatred of Russians dissatisfied with Romanov rule, leading to the Russian Revolution of 1997. Most of the royal family is killed, but Anastasia and Marie, aided by a young kitchen boy named Dimitri, escape through a hidden door in the wall which leads to the servants' quarters.
Anastasia and Marie manage to escape the palace, but as they are running to catch a train in the city, Rasputin appears over a frozen river and attempts to drag Anastasia under the ice. However, he loses his grip and falls into the freezing water, where he seemingly dies. Anastasia and Marie run for a train, but while Marie is able to climb on, Anastasia loses her grip on her grandmother's hand and falls to the platform, hitting her head. Marie is unable to go to her granddaughter and is forced to give her up for lost.
"Journey To The Past"
Ten years later since the night of the murders of Nicholas, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Alexei, Russia is now under Communist rule. Rumours fly about St. Petersburg that one of the Grand Duchesses survived the Revolution; Anastasia's body was not accounted for when the rest of the Imperial family was killed. Marie, now residing in Paris, has offered a reward for anyone who can restore her granddaughter to her - ten million rubles - and two Russian conmen jump at the opportunity. One of them is Dimitri, now a handsome and conniving young man in his early twenties. The other is Vladimir, a former aristocrat of the Imperial Court. Together, they devise a scheme for the money: they will find a young girl to pass off as Anastasia by holding auditions in the city. The ambitious Dimitri is certain that the Dowager Empress will accept their fake as the real thing as soon as she sees the music box he found ten years earlier; when Anastasia was escaping through the hidden door, she dropped it, and it was later retrieved by the young kitchen boy.
Meanwhile, at an orphanage outside St. Petersburg, a young woman known only as Anya is being released to work in a fish factory down the road. The nameless eighteen-year-old is quickly revealed to be the real Anastasia, when Anya displays the "Together in Paris" necklace to her ancient and bitter housemother as the only clue to her past. Anya has no memories of her life before she was eight years old, when she was found wandering around St. Petersburg and subsequently sent to the orphanage. The housemother laughs off Anya's desire to find her family and sends her former charge off. Anya bemoans being an orphan forever as she walks down the snowy road, and ponders whether or not she should actually go to St. Petersburg and try to find passage to Paris. She is still undecided when a small, runtlike dog steals her scarf, dancing away with it down the road to the capital. Anya takes this as a sign and follows her new pet to St. Petersburg.
"Once Upon a December"
Anya arrives in St. Petersburg and tries to buy a ticket to Paris, but the ticket agent demands an exit visa, which naturally she doesn't have. An old woman advises Anya that she can see Dimitri at the old palace for a visa. Anya makes her way to the abandoned palace and forces her way in, wandering the dusty halls with the unsettling feeling that the palace is familiar to her. Anya fantasises life when the palace and the Imperial life were in their prime, and pictures herself dancing with the Czar himself. Her daydream is interrupted by the arrival of Dimitri and Vladimir, frustrated as their initial auditions for an Anastasia look-alike have gone poorly. Ready to cast the intruder out, Dimitri stops himself after being struck by Anya's resemblance to the young Grand Duchess and quickly realises that he and Vlad have found their "fake" Anastasia. When Anya reveals that she wants to go to Paris, his happiness only intensifies. Dimitri lies to Anya, telling her that he has an extra ticket to Paris, but it is reserved for the Grand Duchess herself. He and Vlad explain that they want to restore the young princess to her family, neglecting to mention that they'll do it with any girl in order to get the money.
Up in the rafters of the building, a small albino fruit bat lingers with Rasputin's idle reliquary; this is Bartok, the evil man's quirky sidekick, left behind when his master vanished ten years earlier. After Anya agrees to go to Paris, the reliquary suddenly wakes up, snatching Bartok and racing through several layers of earth to a sphere floating in limbo between life and death. There, Bartok finds Rasputin, a decaying corpse still unable to die because his revenge is not yet complete - Anastasia is still alive. Rasputin declares that he will send his minions to chase after Anastasia and kill her before she reaches Paris, allowing his revenge to finally be settled.
Doomed Train Voyage
Anya, Dimitri, Vladimir, and Anya's newly christened dog Pooka board a train bound for Paris, but are forced to hide in the baggage car after Vlad unsuccessfully attempts to forge their tickets and visas. Already Anya and Dimitri are clashing, with Dimitri unnecessarily nagging Anya and the latter returning as good as she gets; Vlad innocently notes an unspoken attraction between the two, a suggestion that is hotly refused by both young people.
Rasputin's minions arrive and detach the baggage car and engine from the rest of the train (during that era it was international law for the baggage car to be placed directly behind the locomotive with the rest of the passenger cars behind it, to prevent terrorists attacks, train robberies, and disturbances such as this), overheating the engine so that it races down the track at a dangerous speed. Dimitri suggests they jump, but the train is traveling along the side of a steep incline, so he changes his mind and tries to uncouple the car. The couplings have been fused by the small demon minions, but Anya finds a box of explosives, and they use a stick of dynamite to blow up the connection. The trio figures they'll just coast to a stop, but have no such luck; the minions have destroyed a bridge up ahead. Dimitri tosses a chain over the back and it catches on the track, dragging the baggage car to a 90-degree angle and allowing the trio to jump off the back. Rasputin, furious that his plan has failed, works to come up with a new, crueler idea; here it is revealed that his very existence relies on his reliquary, after Bartok thoughtlessly tries to break it.
To Paris by Steamer
Dimitri, Anya, and Vladimir are stuck in the middle of Poland in early spring - they'll take a bus to Germany and then a ship to Paris. It's here that Anya discovers she has to actually prove she is the Grand Duchess when Vlad accidentally reminisces about Sophie, the Dowager Empress's cousin; all Anastasia claimants must go through her first before meeting with Marie. Anya almost gives up, but a talk with Vlad changes her mind, and Dimitri and Vlad begin to teach her everything she'll need to know to be Anastasia.
Upon arriving in Germany, the trio boards a steamer bound for Paris. Dimitri buys Anya a dress to replace her orphan's rags, and after a few modifications Anya appears on deck wearing it. Dimitri is struck by the change - Anya is transformed from a skinny and feisty girl to a beautiful and vibrant young woman. Vlad encourages them to dance and the romantic tension between the two young adults intensifies. They almost kiss, but Dimitri backs out at the last second and darts belowdecks.
That night, as Dimitri sleeps on the cabin floor, Anya discovers the music box in his bag. She wonders if it is a jewelry box or something more, but as she can't open it, she puts it aside and goes to bed. While she sleeps, Rasputin and his minions strike again; this time, they infiltrate her dreams. She finds herself in a beautiful wood and follows a little boy - her brother, Alexei - to a small lake, where her father and three sisters wait for her. Anya doesn't know the true identities of these people, but she recognizes them as family. While her mind wanders the forest, her body rises from its bed and outside to the deck, where the ship is in the middle of a violent storm.
Pooka awakes to find his mistress gone and rouses Dimitri, who chases Anya up on deck. He spots her standing on the railing of the ship; her father, in her dream, encourages her to jump into the water. Anya is about to do it, but Dimitri calls her name, distracting her momentarily. He grabs a line and swings down to her, arriving just in time; in her dream, her family transforms into evil, batlike creatures, which grab her and try to drag her down into the icy water. Dimitri pulls Anya back on deck and awakens her - weeping in his arms, she cries out about the Romanov curse, something neither of them understand.
Arrival in Paris
Back in limbo, Rasputin realises that the only way to kill Anya is to do it himself, in person. He plans his attack to coincide with Anya's presentation in Paris as Anastasia. Meanwhile, Anya and her male companions arrive in France's capital, just as the Dowager Empress declares to Sophie that she will see no more girls claiming to be Anastasia. However, Sophie allows an interview with Anya as a favour to Vlad, who is evidently a former paramour of hers. Anya plays her part well, but when Sophie asks her how she escaped the siege on the palace, one of Anya's real memories surfaces. "There was a boy," she recalls, "a boy who worked in the palace...he opened a wall." Dimitri is shocked by what this signifies - he was the boy in the palace, and this memory means that Anya really is Anastasia.
Anya and Vlad are prepared to meet the Dowager Empress, but Sophie apologises and says that they won't be able to meet her - at least, not directly. She determines a way for Anya to encounter Marie - she and Dimitri will view the Russian ballet's performance of Cinderella, which Sophie and Marie will also be attending. Sophie takes the trio shopping in Paris for suitable clothes, but while Anya is entranced by the city, Dimitri is saddened; he knows that he'll have to let her go, as she is the true princess and has no place for someone like him in her life. "Princesses don't marry kitchen boys," he tells Vlad.
Family Reunion
Anya fidgets nervously throughout the ballet, and when it ends, Dimitri takes her to see the Dowager Empress. He enters her private box first to introduce Anya, but when the Empress declares that she knows what he's up to, Anya overhears the conversation and realises that Dimitri was only using her in a con to get Marie's money. Dimitri tries to tell her the truth, but Anya will have nothing of it and storms away. Desperate, Dimitri kidnaps the Empress and takes her to Sophie's house, showing her the music box and imploring the Empress to at least talk to Anya. The Empress reluctantly complies, and it doesn't take long for both her and Anya to realise the truth - Anya recognises both the Empress's peppermint hand oil and the music box, and the Grand Duchess is finally reunited with the only family she has left.
Marie offers Dimitri the reward money, but Dimitri declines. When she asks him why he has changed his mind, he replies, "It was more a change of heart," and departs. He runs into Anya, preparing for her reintroduction celebrations and looking more like a princess than ever. He neglects to mention that he didn't take the money, leading her to believe he's still the heartless conman he was in St. Petersburg. It's not until later, at the ball, that Marie tells her granddaughter of Dimitri's gesture, and Anya realizes her mistake. Pooka then runs off into the garden maze where Rasputin is waiting.
Final Showdown with Rasputin
The hedges close off behind her, trapping Anya on the Alexander Bridge over an icy Seine. Rasputin confronts her; she fights, but to no avail - Rasputin starts to destroy the bridge, leaving Anya hanging by only her fingertips over the river. He is just about to finish her off, letting her plunge into the icy water, but Dimitri arrives just in time to save the day. He strikes Rasputin and tries to drag Anya to safety, but Rasputin brings to life a nearby statue to keep Dimitri busy. Anya manages to pull herself up onto the bridge, just as Rasputin thinks she has fallen, and she attacks him, wrestling the villain to the ground. Pooka snatches the reliquary and rolls it to his mistress, who stands and presses one heeled foot onto the glass vial. It cracks, and Rasputin recoils in horror, knowing its destruction will kill him. The statue shatters and a heavy piece of rock falls on Dimitri, knocking him to the ground. Anya stomps on the reliquary until it implodes, and Rasputin disintegrates spectacularly into dust, his remains blowing away.
Epilogue
Anya rushes to Dimitri, but he appears dead - that is, until he moves his arm and she accidentally smacks him in the face. They reconcile, but as they are about to kiss, Pooka interrupts, holding Anya's tiara in his mouth. Dimitri reminds Anya that the aristocracy of France are waiting for her, but Anya has a different plan. She returns the tiara to Marie along with a note, and she and Dimitri board a small steamer with Pooka, on which they finally kiss. Their elopement, Sophie sighs as she reads the note, is a perfect ending. Marie disagrees: "It's a perfect beginning."
Spoilers end here.
Cast
Voice Cast
| Actor | Role(s) |
|---|---|
| Meg Ryan | Anastasia (Anya) |
| John Cusack | Dimitri |
| Kelsey Grammer | Vladimir |
| Christopher Lloyd | Rasputin |
| Hank Azaria | Bartok |
| Bernadette Peters | Sophie |
| Kirsten Dunst | Young Anastasia |
| Angela Lansbury | Dowager Empress Marie Fyodorovna |
Singing Voice Cast
| Singer | Role |
|---|---|
| Liz Callaway | Anastasia (Anya) |
| Jonathan Dokuchitz | Dimitri |
| Lacey Chabert | Young Anastasia |
| Jim Cummings | Rasputin |
Release
The film opened in New York City on November 14 1997 and across the world on November 21. It debuted and peaked at number two at the North American box office and grossed over US$58,403,000 dollars; the worldwide gross totalled $139,801,000.
As a musical in the vein of Disney animated features, the film is notable for being one of Bluth's most critically acclaimed works, and for being one of the few animated features produced in the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. (The film is officially credited as using CinemaScope per Bluth's wishes, but the format is actually a regular anamorphic film and did not use CinemaScope optics, which had been retired for 30 years by the release of Anastasia.)
Anastasia was nominated for two Academy Awards in the categories of "Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score" and "Best Music, Original Song" for "Journey to the Past". At the awards ceremony, "Journey to the Past" was performed by R&B singer Aaliyah, who recorded the pop single version of the song. Another song which gained recognition is the ballad "Once Upon a December"; its pop single version was recorded and produced by Deana Carter. Due to its success, Fox Home Entertainment created a direct-to-video spin-off movie called Bartok the Magnificent (1999), featuring Rasputin's albino bat crony. It also starred Kelsey Grammar, who voiced Vladimir in Anastasia; in Bartok the Magnificent, he voiced Zozi the Bear.
Fictionalization of historic events
As a fairy-tale style adaptation of the legend of the Russian grand duchess Anastasia, the film imagines that Anastasia, daughter of Nicholas II of Russia, escapes the Imperial Palace during the October Revolution and survives the slaughter of the Imperial family. The film took several liberties with the details of historical events, and some Orthodox Christians were offended due to the historical Anastasia's sainthood, which was declared formally the following year. Some of the differences with actual history include:
- Though the body of two members of the Russian Imperial Family, including one of the daughters, have not been found, there is no evidence that any family members, including Anastasia, survived, although there have been many claims to survival. The most famous of these was Anna Anderson, whose story inspired the original 1956 Anastasia film on which this film is based, although this film doesn't actually deal with Anderson directly.
- In the film, Rasputin curses the Royal Family, bringing about the Russian Revolution. The real leader of the Revolution (Vladimir Lenin) is not portrayed. Rasputin was a religious mystic, who washed infrequently and was often drunk. Nevertheless, he gained the trust of the Tsarina Alexandra when he seemed to alleviate the symptoms of hemophilia from which her son Alexei suffered. All the evidence points to Rasputin's support of the royal family, though (as many have argued) with the intent being to gain power for himself. However, in a letter written just before his death, he predicted the Russian Revolution, based not on any mystical powers, but on simple observation of political facts.
- Judging by his letters and those of the Tsarina, Rasputin was always careful to be polite and even affectionate to the members of the royal family, although by other accounts he spoke disparagingly of them to others and made lewd remarks about the Grand Duchesses. In any event, the family were deeply saddened by his death. By the account of one of the assassins at Yekaterinburg, the Empress and the Grand Duchesses were wearing little pins with an iconic portrait of Rasputin at the time of their death, showing they believed he would be a saint.
- In reality, Rasputin had been dead for nearly a year before the Revolution began. He was assassinated on 16 December, 1916, although this film sets the Revolution in the winter of 1916. In reality, it occurred in February of 1917.
- The Imperial Palace is missing an entire story and a grand column that is sporting a cross bearing angel at the entrance.
- The film depicts Anastasia as escaping from the Imperial Palace during the Revolution, when in fact she stayed with her family, living at first in Tsarskoe Selo and later in Tobolsk in Siberia until they were executed by a squad of Bolshevik secret police under Yakov Yurovsky in Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg in a period from July 16 to July 17, 1918.
- In the film, Anastasia is only a young child (the film states she is eight) at the time of the Revolution, when in fact, she was four months shy of 16 years old. Anastasia was born on June 18, 1901.
- The Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna did not live in Paris, either before or after the Revolution. She lived in Russia until 1920, when she evacuated the Crimea with White forces, and thereafter in her native Denmark. She was a daughter of Christian IX of Denmark and his Queen consort, Louise of Hesse.
- At the times the story takes place, Saint Petersburg was known as Petrograd or Leningrad, not Saint Petersburg, as it is called in the movie.
- At the beginning of the film - 1916, the hanging ornament marked "300" in the ball room implies it is the celebration of the Romanov tercentenary, when the trecentenary was in 1913.
Bluth and Goldman, who did extensive historical research on the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia and the Russian Revolution for the film, never intended for their film to be scrupulously analyzed for historical accuracy; their film is based upon the legend of Anastasia having survived the slaughter of the family. A disclaimer can be found at the end of the credits for the film. It reads as follows:
- "While some of the characters and events depicted in this film were inspired by well-known historical figures and events, the portrayal of such characters and the depiction of such events are fictional. All other characters and incidents portrayed and names used were created for the purpose of fictitious dramatization and any similarity to the names, characters, and history of actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional."
Ironically, this now-standard disclaimer was created in the aftermath of a scandal and lawsuit brought by Prince Felix Yusupov -- the man who is most often credited with the murder of Rasputin -- in 1932, against MGM for their film Rasputin and the Empress, which took enormous artistic liberties with the available facts.
The film is based on the play from the 1950s by Marcelle Maurette adapted by Guy Bolton and turned into the film Anastasia (1956) which was based on the legend of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia surfacing as "Anna Anderson".
Trivia
- No other film theatrically released by 20th Century Fox received a G rating from the MPAA until the 2006 computer-animated feature film Everyone's Hero.
- It has been noted that Anastasia and her grandmother are the only members of the Romanov family who are prominently featured in the film. Only Anastasia and Nicholas II are seen during the prologue. The three sisters are seen only during the nightmare and the Once Upon a December number; only Olga is mentioned by name. Alexei is only seen in the nightmare and very briefly during the Once Upon a December number; similarly, Anastasia's mother, Alexandra, is only seen as the dancing figure in the music box and briefly in Once Upon a December.
- Pooka, Anya's mutt, is a fairly clear representation of her younger brother Alexei. In both the ballroom scene as well as the steamer/dream sequence, Alexei is portrayed as having reddish/brunet hair and having only one eye or both with a mess of bangs, yet in the family portrait he is blond. The pup also has the same bangs, usually only one eye is visible and upon a close-up view the pup also has blue eyes, the blue "Romanov eyes". The analogy can go so far as to also comment on the pup's behavior as in the ballroom scene where the pup is quite and apparently sad and during Anya's interview with Sophie he is nervous and pacing.
- In 2002, the film's songwriters admitted that the musical number, In the Dark of the Night, was are lost children who are the only legitimate heirs to the throne (although this film does not actually deal with Anastasia taking the throne; by the time she was revealed as being Anastasia, Russia was under Communist rule and no longer had a monarch). Both Rasputin and Scar have minions who sing the chorus, and they even have similar color schemes (with long black hair and brown robes/fur, as well as a predominantly green backdrop to the number).
- The musical number Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart) includes cameos by various historical figures from the time, including Maurice Chevalier, Sigmund Freud, Charles Lindbergh, Josephine Baker, Claude Monet, Isadora Duncan, Auguste Rodin, and Gertude Stein.
- The real Anastasia once wore a dress almost exactly like the one Anya wears in the last scenes of the movie. This same dress was seen in the 1956 film Anastasia.
- The Parisian bridge on which the confrontation between Rasputin and Dimitri and Anya occurs is the Alexander III bridge, named after the real Anastasia Romanov's grandfather on the occasion of his state visit to France in the 1870s.
- The drawing the Empress holds when she and Anya are reminiscing (the same one we see little Anastasia give her at the beginning of the movie) is a picture the real Anastasia had drawn for her father in 1914.
- The portrait in the ballroom of the whole family includes a dog. The dog existed. This spaniel named Joy belonged to Anastasia's brother, Alexei, and was found alive at the house where the family was killed. Anastasia's own dog, Jemmy, did not survive.