Television review The recent drama Anne Frank became a box office magnet in the Netherlands – the depiction of friendship of girls living in the ghetto of Amsterdam remains annoyingly superficial

Culture|Television review

Drama

My best friend Anne Frank ★★

Mijn beste vriendin Anne Frank, The Netherlands 2021

Netflix

The Holocaust one of the most famous victims Anne Frank (1929–1945) has been in the headlines again recently, 77 years after his death.

Teen Frank kept a diary in Amsterdam during the German occupation. He hid with his family from the Nazis for more than two years until someone reported them in August 1944. Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. The diary, published in 1947, became a bestseller.

In January was reported extensively from the international research team’s six-year contract, which had resulted in finding out, at least almost, who reported Frank’s family. The “fairly certain” information was that the perpetrator was a Jewish notary who died in 1950 Arnold van den Bergh.

Since then, the research result has already passed to question extensively.

Frankin fate is therefore still of interest. Of course, there is also a huge number of different Anne Frank-themed cultural products that are still being made. Dutchman Ben Sombogaartin controlled by My best friend Anne Frank are the most recent examples. The film, which premiered last fall, was a box office magnet in its home country and is now available on Netflix.

The drama depicts the events of Frank’s friend, Hanneli Goslarin, tips. Goslar also ended up in a concentration camp but survived. It was in Bergen-Belsen that the roads of friendship last met.

That encounter is also the climax of Sombogaart’s film. We move towards it by jumping between two time levels. Life in Amsterdam is full of light and squeaky girls, even though the oppression of the Jews is already commonplace. In contrast, the gray and bleak reality of the concentration camp with its brutal Nazis is seen.

January the news, of course, arouses curiosity as to whether to take a stand on the frustration of Frank in the film as well. Do not even think about that. The film stays firmly in Goslar’s ​​perspective and doesn’t go into digging or explaining the backgrounds of the events.

I argue that the delineation would work better if Sombogaart remained a responsible Hannel who dreamed of a career as a nurse (Josephine Arendsen) and the more mischievous Anne (Aiko Beemsterboer) in describing the years of growth. The girls ’attempt to live a normal youth in a completely abnormal environment would shake quite a lot more than the usual concentration camp description.

However, Sombogaart does not make a proper choice. Both the friendship of the girls and the atrocities of the Nazis remain a superficial presentation. Arendsen and Beemsterboer, who play the main characters, don’t get the painful story told in such a way that it moves.