Anne Frank: The Whole Story

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I still believe people are good at heart.

"I want to be a champion skater and a writer, I want my picture in all the magazines. Maybe I'll be a movie star...I want to be different from all the other girls. I want to be a modern woman! I want to travel, I want to study languages...languages and history! I want to do everything..." —Anne's Opening Narration

"We've suffered before, and it's only made us stronger!" —Anne to Peter

A mini-series Biopic on the life of teen Holocaust victim, Anne Frank. Premiering in May 2001, it's been called the most accurate portrayal of Anne Frank's life (even though no real diary passages were used), and is so far the only film to go through her life in the concentration camp, and actually doesn't end until a month after she has died.

The film starts in 1939, with Anne already going to her Jewish only middle school, and having a fairly normal life with her friends. However, it all begins to crumble around her the first time the propaganda and antisemitism hits hard. Anne receives a diary for her 13th birthday, and begins writing about all the terrible things happening to her, up to the day her older sister Margot receives a call-up notice to report to Bergen-Belsen for work. With no other choice, the Frank family, along with family friends the Van Pels, have to live in a two-story, but extremely cramped, attic, and manage to stay hidden for almost three years before an anonymous tip sends the Nazis their way.

While this is where the play and original black and white film ends, as mentioned above, this film goes much further, and manages to give beautiful, accurate (the actresses actually cut all their hair off!), and definitely heartbreaking moments, leading up to a month after Anne died. Hannah Taylor-Gordon, who played Anne Frank, received both Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominations for her performance, while Ben Kingsley won a Screen Actor's Guild Award for his performance as Otto Frank, Anne's father.

Tropes used in Anne Frank: The Whole Story include:

• Alone in a Crowd: Otto, once he gets off the train and is searching for his wife and children.
• Based on a True Story: The one closest to the actual events so far.
• Break the Cutie: While Anne shows little hopelessness despite her religion being persecuted, slowly but surely when she goes into the concentration camp she slowly fades away. Anne accidentally causing Margot's death is the final event that makes life not worth living to her anymore, so she lets herself die a few days later.
• Bookcase Passage
• Daddy's Girl: At least in the first half, though she never really makes amends with her mother for being to cruel.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Margot dies in Anne's arms.
• Downer Ending: You'd think that, in light of the black and white film, there would be at least a glimmer of hope in the final scene (in the black and white film, it's shown that Anne's diary is going to change Otto for the better), but nope. The film ends with Otto going back to Anne's old room, all her pictures still on the wall, and collapsing to the ground in sorrow. While the original film used Anne's diary as a means of changing Otto's character, but in this version it was more of Otto realizing what his daughter actually felt on the inside, and Otto realizing he could have helped adds on to the sorrow.
• Fake Nationality: Ben Kingsley is Indian, playing a German with a British accent.
  • The entire cast, essentially, who are all played by British people. Granted, this is often done in these kinds of films.
• Foregone Conclusion: Everyone knows what happens to the Franks, but it's still such a nail-biting scene when they are captured.
• Frozen Face: Anne's expression, in the final shot with her in it. The reason being that now Anne has given up on life, and is letting herself succumb to death.
• Nightmare Sequence: After Hannah is arrested and taken to a concentration camp, Anne has nightmares in which she sees her, reaching out her hands and saying "Help me, Anne!"
• Please Wake Up: Anne's reaction to Margot's death.
• Rousseau Was Right: Anne's famous "Everyone is good at heart" line, which was actually in her real diary. In the film, it's spoken.
• Secret Diary: Subverted a bit; Anne's parents knew she was keeping a diary, but had no idea what she was writing in it, and didn't until weeks after the war was over.
• Sole Survivor: Only Otto Frank, Anne and Margot's father, is the only one left out of the eight people in the attic. The end of the film tells how everyone who wasn't on camera such as Peter and Edith are thought or known to have died.
• Survivor Guilt: Otto, seemingly at the end.
• World War II: Obviously.