Finally, BBC Delivers a Real Anne Frank

This Sunday, the BBC will air the story of Anne Frank told with more realism than has been attempted in the past. The Washington Post says the “absorbing and smartly simple British adaption” does what all other failed to do:

In both its edgier screenplay and grittier characters, it offers a much more realistic interpretation of Anne Frank’s days in the attic with her mother, father, sister, the three members of the “van Daan” family and the dentist “Albert Dussel.” (This version retains the pseudonyms Otto Frank gave the attic’s other residents when Anne’s diary was first published posthumously in 1947.)

At last, these small series of rooms above Otto’s spice business feel as confining and yet as broad as the diary that describes them. Obsessed with details and accuracy, this version shows us a real girl, in a note-perfect performance from 20-year-old Ellie Kendrick (who had a supporting part in “An Education”), instead of some slightly oppressed version of Nancy Drew.

The LA Times’ Mary McNamara loves Kendrick as Anne:

Which is never saintly and often unflattering. This Anne, played brilliantly by British actress Ellie Kendrick, is mouthy and moody. Like many girls her age, she is fascinated by her own emerging self, often to the detriment of those around her. Although devoted to her father, Otto, whom she calls Pim (here played by Iain Glen), she is openly contemptuous of her mother, Edith (a movingly shell-shocked and subdued Tamsin Greig). She loves her older sister, Margot (Felicity Jones), but rebels against Margot’s more placid nature which, in Anne’s opinion, has made Margot the favored child.

One of the reasons, I think, that the Anne Frank story has been prettied up over the years is that it’s been aimed at young readers and young thinkers. The Holocaust itself is unbearable on its own, but once you personalize it with this young girl who was still busy being a young teen even with the war raging around her, seems to be the kind of psychological torture most of us want and need to avoid.

This version of Anne Frank is likely to do very well with the Emmys and with the Golden Globes because it’s rare that history comes together with flawless execution. You can see for yourself tomorrow night.