My Best Friend Anne Frank is an ode to friendship that survives the test of troubled times

Two best friends – one wants to be the next Florence Nightingale and tend to the sick in Palestine; other wants to travel the world and be famous. Would the first give up her dream to follow her best friend? Well, the world knows how the two met their ends. While The Diary of Anne Frank met its fate – the journal of a 13-year-old chronicling what Jews went through the Holocaust is a testament of the times, her friend Hannah Goslar lived up to her side of the story.

My Best Friend Anne Frank, based on Alison Leslie Gold’s Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend, stems from Goslar’s account of their friendship. While the film is based on real life friendship, cinematic liberty is taken to play up or down some scenes.

The film captures the life of Jews in Amsterdam – two families in particular. Otto Frank moves to Holland in hope for a better life. Only Nazis make it difficult there too, Jews living the second class life, living perennially in fear of being taken away.

Then there are Goslars, waiting for their passport to come. How the two families try to save themselves and in the process, how the two friends are separated takes the plot forward. They meet again at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. While Anne is suffering from typhus, and is starved; kind, resourceful Hannah gives up her chance at getting out to help Anne.

The film flits between two timelines- at Amsterdam and at the Camp between 1942 and 1945. Even if these are tragic times, the little girls are going to grow up. While the dread is built from scene one, there are moments of kindness, compassion, love, care and affection – Hannah shines not just as best friend but as elder sister who would lead Gabi through the turmoil, taking chances as she goes from ‘What would Anne do’ to ‘What would I do’.

The casting is superb. Josephine Arendsen as Hannah lives the lead part. The scene where she sees her friend through the barbed wall, and her gentle smile at seeing her friend and dreaming of being together warms our heart. Aiko Beemsterboe shines as Anne – a playful tease to her miserable last times. While the readers who have loved The Diary, might feel that the film doesn’t do justice to Anne Frank or her times, but the director has done justice to the story as an ode to friendship in the troubled times.

Music by Merlijn Snitker heightens and breaks the harsh sadness going back and forth in time. Watch this feted Dutch film on Netflix if tragedies are your genre. The sense of poetic justice at Anne becoming what she wanted – world-famous, and, Hannah becoming a nurse in Palestine and getting back at Hitler with she and her younger sister Gabi having seven children and 38 grandchildren and 27 great grandchildren – does little to lift up the spirits from the depths that this incredibly sad story throws one into. At the same time, one thinks of how dreams come true, just like Hannah does – dreaming of travelling the world with Anne, going to Hollywood, Paris, India and China. — Mona