Anastasia (1997) on Netflix
G19971h 34mAdventureAnimationDrama
Grand Duchess Anastasia loses her memory while fleeing the Russian Revolution. Ten years later, an orphan named Anya joins two con men who need a look-alike for the Dowager Empress's reward.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.2/10148,598 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
At a ball in Saint Petersburg in 1916, Dowager Empress Marie presents her youngest granddaughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia, with a necklace bearing the words Together in Paris and a music box. The celebration is interrupted by Grigori Rasputin, the former royal advisor exiled for treason, who has traded his soul for the power to destroy the Romanovs and uses a reliquary to start the Russian Revolution. Anastasia escapes the palace with Marie, and a fall on the way leaves her without her memory. Ten years later, rumors that she survived lead Marie to offer ten million rubles for her return. The con man Dimitri and his partner Vladimir Vasilovich search for a young woman to present as the grand duchess, while Anya, an orphan who recalls little of her past, sets out for Paris.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Anastasia (1997)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For decades, Anna Anderson was the most famous woman claiming to be the real Grand Duchess Anastasia, but when Anastasia's remains were found in 1991, DNA testing proved Anderson was actually Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker who had spent time in mental institutions.
- The comic-relief bat Bartok was originally written for Woody Allen, but the studio backed away from hiring him after revelations about his relationship with Mia Farrow's adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi Previn; Martin Short was then considered before Hank Azaria won the role just ten minutes into his audition.
- Meg Ryan was hesitant to voice Anastasia because of its dark historical subject matter, so the animation team persuaded her by taking an audio clip of her Sleepless in Seattle performance and building an animated reel around it, which left her blown away enough to accept the role.
- The filmmakers made the real historical mystic Grigori Rasputin the film's villain because of how thoroughly people had tried to destroy him and how villainous he really was, even though in reality Rasputin had already been dead for years by the time the Romanovs were assassinated.
- Peter O'Toole, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Pryce and Tim Curry were all considered to voice the villain Rasputin in Anastasia, but Christopher Lloyd was cast instead largely because of his popularity from the Back to the Future trilogy.
- Some Russian Orthodox Christians found the film an offensive depiction of the Grand Duchess, who had been canonized as a new martyr in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and many historians echoed them, criticizing it as a sanitized, sugar-coated reworking of the Czar's youngest daughter's story.
