Kritiken

Where is Anne Frank sometimes gets a little knotted up in the specifics of its magical devices, it still provides an imaginative way to retell a story so well worn that we risk losing our sense of its real meaning.

The film powerfully asks if Anne’s memory and lessons of the Holocaust has changed the world for the better when racism, poverty and injustice are still so much a feature of contemporary Europe.

Folman employs a range of styles that bitter-sweetly immerse us in her imagination and deadly reality, and the result is both vibrant and desperately sad. This is a tender, heartfelt work of animated art that powerfully situates Anne's story within the context of the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, as well as drawing attention to children under threat today.

By contextualising the grim reality of the situation within Kitty’s own experiences of love and her sorrow over the loss of her best friend, Folman takes us on a fanciful flight of the imagination that, while soaring to impressive heights, never quite manages to stick the landing.

Well-meaning yet pretty disingenuous, Where Is Anne Frank has some broad points to make about the necessity of learning from Frank’s diary instead of allowing it to become an unconsidered museum piece, but it’s scared to offer any genuine ideas of how best to implement these teachings.

The film is good enough to meet Folman’s goal of educating the next generation of children and helping them become aware of what’s happening out in the world, both past, and present. The adults, however, are going to wander off on the logic, the plot choices, and the tonal imbalance.

This film aspires, clearly, to inspire activism and feelings of empathy in the young people who watch it. As to how adults will experience the movie, Where is Anne Frank may come off as didactic or preachy, and not meant for them, which goes back to limiting the film’s potential viewership.

With Where is Anne Frank, Folman aims to educate children on the Holocaust through vivid animation and a relatable teenage girl protagonist. It’s an admirable goal, but he falls victim to the cliché of a white-savior narrative.

Making a children’s film about the Holocaust is a brave and commendable ambition, but the horrors of the Nazi era are so harrowing that the message at the center of Folman’s film feels trite.

Audiences will likely be split about how effectively Folman manages to thread contemporary sufferings of minority refugees in contemporary Europe with the operatically imagined, corpse-faced Nazis that seem to owe more than a small amount to Gerald Scarfe’s superlative work in Alan Parker’s “Pink Floyd: The Wall.”

If the film achieves its goal of educating younger viewers about Anne’s life and the parallels between the Frank family and thousands of others across the globe today, then more power to Folman. But the execution is flawed and adult viewers are unlikely to learn anything that couldn’t be gleaned from reading her diary.

Where is Anne Frank? is a masterpiece that blends past with present to create a refreshing, fantastical and devastating new perspective on the titular girl and her diary.