Katherine Landsberg\u2019s great-grandfather died in a Stalinist purge.<\/p>\n\n
Her grandparents were born in Russia and she grew up among Russian ?gris in the United States. She is a faithful member of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a proud, ultra-traditionalist body that has canonized Tsar Nicholas II and his family as martyrs.<\/p>\n\n
This helps explain why Landsberg went to Chicago\u2019s massive Water Tower Place mall last weekend on a personal mission, distributing educational leaflets as moviegoers flocked to see the first showings of 20th Century Fox\u2019s holiday-market offering \u201cAnastasia.\u201d She is yet another example of a trend: true believers frustrated by entertainment industry invasions of holy ground.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI just couldn\u2019t help myself,\u201d said Landsberg, a professional writer with an Internet firm. \u201cI know Hollywood does whatever it wants to do with portrayals of historical figures, especially religious figures. \u2026But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s appropriate to make a silly movie about a martyr. Anastasia was a real person. This girl was brutally murdered. Leave her alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Landsberg\u2019s leaflet featured a photograph of the young grand duchess and the story of her life and execution, with the rest of her family, by Bolsheviks in 1918. Later, a series of impostors claimed to be Anastasia or some other royal sibling who miraculously survived.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cNow, 79 years after the execution of the Romanovs \u2026 there has emerged a new impostor \u2014 one who, without remorse, will finally succeed in capitalizing on this tragedy,\u201d wrote Landsberg. \u201cPlease share this true story with your children in order to help prevent the distortion of history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Mall security guards eventually asked her to leave, so she headed out to a suburban mall. This weekend, she plans to print up 200 more leaflets and do it again. Most people accepted her work without comment. Others bluntly asked why she was making such a fuss about a movie.<\/p>\n\n
Landsberg\u2019s answer is simple: whether its makers intended to or not, \u201cAnastasia\u201d has painted a cartoon face on an icon. Everywhere she looks, on posters, billboards and television, she sees flirty images of a teenybopper princess who, in reality, did not live happily ever after.<\/p>\n\n
Out in Hollywood, a 20th Century Fox spokesperson said the studio has no plans to release an official statement in response to \u201cthe handful of complaints\u201d it has received. The movie\u2019s official World Wide Web page \u2013 in a niche between those for \u201cAlien Resurrection\u201d and \u201cHome Alone 3\u201d \u2013 doesn\u2019t mention any of the heroine\u2019s ties to Orthodox Christianity.<\/p>\n\n
The movie itself is yet another comic confection pitting a perky heroine against a symbol of supernatural evil. In this case, the film could have been called \u201cBeauty and the Priest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The villain, Father Gregory Rasputin, is a holy man who is portrayed as having sold his soul to place a curse on the Romanovs. Anastasia accidentally escapes the revolutionaries and, after various chase scenes and musical extravaganzas, finds romance in Paris. In a pivotal scene, she looks to the sky and asks for \u201ca sign\u201d to lead her to \u201chome,\u201d \u201clove\u201d and \u201cfamily.\u201d Yet there are no positive religious figures to oppose Rasputin and God is never mentioned.<\/p>\n\n
The producers of \u201cAnastasia\u201d say the film includes 350,000 animation drawings, in 1,350 scenes and was built on years of research. Yet no one seems to have discovered the religious themes in the real story.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI bear them no grudge, because I really don\u2019t think they had a clue,\u201d said Bob Atchison of Austin, Texas, who leads a research and restoration project on the Romanov family\u2019s palace outside of St. Petersburg. He also operates an Internet site (http:\/\/www.pallasweb.com\/anastasia) dedicated to the grand duchess, through which he has received many letters from people who are upset about the film.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt really doesn\u2019t look like the people at Fox knew what they were dealing with,\u201d said Atchison. \u201cPerhaps they didn\u2019t even know that she has been canonized as a martyr. \u2026But the truth is the truth and the facts are out there. Perhaps the lesson here is that it pays to do your homework when you start messing around with people\u2019s faith.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Katherine Landsberg\u2019s great-grandfather died in a Stalinist purge. Her grandparents were born in Russia and she grew up among Russian ?gris in the United States. She is a faithful member of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a proud, ultra-traditionalist body that has canonized Tsar Nicholas II and his family as martyrs. This helps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n