Roberto Faenza's Anita B. is a startlingly beautiful (and often heart-wrenching) account of the life of the young Anita, a Holocaust survivor and Hungarian Jew, following her release from Auschwitz in 1945. In a non-traditional telling of the story of the Holocaust, Faenza succeeds in his attempt to chronicle the Anita's life post-concentration camp, effectively documenting the raw emotion of both posttraumatic stress and personal renewal.
The film's protagonist, Anita, is first introduced to us as she boards a train bound for Czechoslovakia with escort Eli. Anita does not have identity papers, so she is hidden from authorities initially and, upon arrival at her new home, forced to remain inside while acting as a caregiver to a younger cousin. Throughout the film, Anita experiences a series of hardships, including imprisonment upon the discovery of her lack of documentation at a party, the loss of her virginity to womanizing Eli and eventual narrow escape from an unwanted abortion following Eli's discovery of her unintended pregnancy. Anita B. leaves viewers hungry for more information as the young heroine, freshly-liberated from the abusive Eli, boards a truck bound for Jerusalem prepared to start life anew as a writer.
At first glance, Anita B. is simply a biopic with a purpose; however, further contemplation yields an understanding of the film as an innovative piece of cinematographic art. The film's gentle sepia tone and bright lighting softens the often-dark situations through which Anita must navigate. Throughout the film, Anita is only cast in darkness when she is imprisoned for lack of identification, and even then her cell is never entirely dark.
With regards to the film's placement of its titular character within a pre-existing and seemingly pre-solidified historical narrative, the artistic choice to explain Anita's past through her own voice rather than through flashbacks to her time in Auschwitz represents a more realistic and understandable manifestation of survivor experience. European post-War reality was filled with thousands of survivors of Nazi brutality, yet following their physical recovery from the effects of imprisonment and malnutrition, survivors were often told to keep quiet and thus became invisible sufferers of trauma. Viewers of the film see Anita as her counterparts might have seen her – as a beautiful woman with an undiscussable past. Because of our distance (but accompanied by a general popular understanding of the implications of concentration camp imprisonment) we are able to better understand Anita as a human being first and a survivor second. This perspective makes Anita B. an effective communicator of strife, as well as a conscious chronicler of human experience.
As an aspiring historian, woman and human being, I can say with great confidence that Anita B. demands attention as both a piece of high art and a historical document. The film tells a complicated story of womanhood in the face of human evil and reproductive choice in a style that is as accessible as it is visually appealing. In a culture that is fond of romanticized remembrance rather than honesty in biographical cinema, films like Anita B. are so, so welcome.
The film's protagonist, Anita, is first introduced to us as she boards a train bound for Czechoslovakia with escort Eli. Anita does not have identity papers, so she is hidden from authorities initially and, upon arrival at her new home, forced to remain inside while acting as a caregiver to a younger cousin. Throughout the film, Anita experiences a series of hardships, including imprisonment upon the discovery of her lack of documentation at a party, the loss of her virginity to womanizing Eli and eventual narrow escape from an unwanted abortion following Eli's discovery of her unintended pregnancy. Anita B. leaves viewers hungry for more information as the young heroine, freshly-liberated from the abusive Eli, boards a truck bound for Jerusalem prepared to start life anew as a writer.
At first glance, Anita B. is simply a biopic with a purpose; however, further contemplation yields an understanding of the film as an innovative piece of cinematographic art. The film's gentle sepia tone and bright lighting softens the often-dark situations through which Anita must navigate. Throughout the film, Anita is only cast in darkness when she is imprisoned for lack of identification, and even then her cell is never entirely dark.
With regards to the film's placement of its titular character within a pre-existing and seemingly pre-solidified historical narrative, the artistic choice to explain Anita's past through her own voice rather than through flashbacks to her time in Auschwitz represents a more realistic and understandable manifestation of survivor experience. European post-War reality was filled with thousands of survivors of Nazi brutality, yet following their physical recovery from the effects of imprisonment and malnutrition, survivors were often told to keep quiet and thus became invisible sufferers of trauma. Viewers of the film see Anita as her counterparts might have seen her – as a beautiful woman with an undiscussable past. Because of our distance (but accompanied by a general popular understanding of the implications of concentration camp imprisonment) we are able to better understand Anita as a human being first and a survivor second. This perspective makes Anita B. an effective communicator of strife, as well as a conscious chronicler of human experience.
As an aspiring historian, woman and human being, I can say with great confidence that Anita B. demands attention as both a piece of high art and a historical document. The film tells a complicated story of womanhood in the face of human evil and reproductive choice in a style that is as accessible as it is visually appealing. In a culture that is fond of romanticized remembrance rather than honesty in biographical cinema, films like Anita B. are so, so welcome.