Ringside Report Reviews Netflix My Best Friend Anne Frank

By Janet Grace

If there’s one thing that I absolutely appreciate in a movie, it’s when actors portray characters so well, you forget you’re watching a rehearsed synopsis of an account that may or may not have actually occurred.

Such is the case with this Danish film, adapted from a novel written by Alison Leslie Gold and Hannah Goslar and directed by Ben Sambogaart. The film, starring Aiko Beemsterboer, as Anne Frank and Josephine Arendsen as Hannah Goslar, is a poignant tale of a friendship that existed between innocent children, people and countries before, during and after a Madman gained control of the hearts and minds of the weak and those too faint to refuse to cooperate with the torture and death of their own democracy, morals, sanity, and selves.

As I watched this film, critical of its historical portrayal, its accuracy left me with tears streaming for the thousands who perished at the hands of mediocrity.

It takes nothing to hate, to spit upon another human, to cast into iniquity those who’ve never wronged anyone, because a Monster: Pure Evil Incarnate, tells you to.

The movie details the lives of Anne Frank’s family and her best friend’s, Hannah Goslar. From childhood games to war torn tragedies, the two never forgot a promise made to one another. They happen to meet again in a concentration camp where only one survived to tell the tale.

The movie was so captivating that; at its conclusion, I had to use all my senses to bring myself back to 2022.

I began writing this article weeks before any of us were aware of what was to come for the millions in Ukraine, as well as the rest of the world.

This war may be in Ukraine, but we are feeling it globally, at the gas pump, the grocery store and in places of worship, where prayers for peace must be clogging up heaven like the convoys of truckers and their trucks, having a field day down here.

The movie and accounts like it, are now playing out in real time, eighty plus years later.

It wasn’t enough that we all read the books, saw the movies and were warned by those who lived through it, studied the madmen and saw the signs.

When faced with our own republic’s narrow escape of the martial law, What’s His Face, TFG, was two seconds from declaring, we didn’t do enough when it came to our towns.

As it is, Roe v Wade is hanging on by a thread. The rights of millions of voters are beyond suppressed in many states without challenge. Why is that? We should be screaming at the tops of our lungs. The transgender population is being targeted, harassed and challenged. We watch it on TV and should be hitting back hard through peaceful protests, calling our congress people and going to court to support those needing our support. When we put our minds to it, there is nothing we cannot achieve.

NOW, is the time.

Thus far, we gave up on the “Magas” and retreated to our own safe space corners with like minded resisters because “there’s no getting through to them.” Know that there are those like DeSantis and other disgusting GOP’ers who would sell out their mothers and spouses (RAFAEL, LOOKIN’ AT YOU) to be part of the “In-Crowd.”

Those are the weak who must gather in droves to muster the courage of one resister. We must step up and be counted, lest we be given more than masks to wear.

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 50%. IMDb gave this biography a 6.2/10. I gave it a ten because it woke me up, period. Go see it and tell me your thoughts. I loved it, for as sad as it was, it was a stark reminder of how fragile our freedoms are.