Anne of Green Gables Review

This review comes from my Letterboxd profile, where I review whatever movies I end up watching.

My mom grew up with the source material of this film and absolutely adored all of the characters, and since I'm curious about the adaptation Anne with an E that's been getting incredible praise for the past couple of years, I figured I should check out what has widely been called the definitive version of the book. Long story short, this movie surprised the heck out of me. I had a feeling I was going to at least enjoy it and I pretty much got the exact movie I wanted to see. This is the exact kind of film to set as an example as a movie that is meant for pure sentimentality and likability. All of the characters are incredibly fun to watch, and the majority of them are likable despite most of them flip-flopping back and forth with their moods when these young children start acting rambunctious. After a while, I realized why these women would so quickly change their attitudes toward the young Anne, however -- this is the late 1800s, a time where women were supposed to be seen as prim and proper and held back and obedient, and meanwhile, Anne is energetic and excited and full of imagination and quick to outburst. She's a girl full of determination, and while this movie doesn't explicitly state that this is what she's doing, she is absolutely fighting against the standard idea of that "prim and proper" woman and sets a role model for girls, and actually anyone, to look up to. Anyone, but especially young girls, can look up to Anne as a figure of passion, as a motivation to keep pursuing what you enjoy, and as a reminder to not let anyone stand in your way with what you think is possible.

However, the film also allows her to have her own doubts. Anne makes mistakes, but they're not malicious mistakes, they're mistakes that she makes because she's learning about the world and she actively works to avoid repeating those mistakes, even when she constantly makes new ones. She just wants to learn about the world, but the way she learns about the world can get her into trouble. People misunderstand her actions or she acts out in a way that seems appropriate at the moment and then turns out to not be the right decision. She constantly faces anxiety when it comes to caring for others and trying to do what's right and avoiding making mistakes, and it just feels so human. The more I think about how they wrote her character in this film, the more I just love it. She's not an idiot, she's a young girl who's learning about the world and is trying to act with the best of intentions. We've all made mistakes with the best of intentions, and this movie demonstrates that really well.

However, it wasn't until the ending of this film, probably about the last 20 minutes or so, that I truly realized how much I connected with all of these characters and the family dynamic presented in this film and the way they'd all developed and grown over the course of this film because of the lessons they learn from each other. I was emotionally affected by many events in those final 20 minutes because those character arcs had just snuck up on me with how compelling they actually were. I was not expecting that with this movie, but wow, did it deliver exactly that.

I think it goes without saying at this point that Megan Fellows absolutely embodied the character of Anne Shirley. She just got the innocence and the excitement and the curiosity perfectly, and she was always completely captivating. Something else that struck me as this movie went on, though, is that as she matured, the way she spoke completely changed to represent her changes as she grew up and gained more experience about the world. I honestly don't know whether it was the writing of this film or Fellows' brilliant performance that contributed to that more, but you really got the sense that Anne matures from this young, excited child to this more confident and determined and succinct young woman as the film goes on. It's such a brilliantly subtle detail, one that I'm honestly not sure I've ever seen a film pull off this well.

Even though this film is split into two parts and is over three hours long, it didn't feel like it was. It's so calmly paced and just feels like the perfect kind of slice-of-life story that it just feels like a series of events that fit perfectly together. I suppose that might be my biggest issue with the film, is that sometimes these events feel like they would be better suited to a six-episode miniseries with half-hour episodes instead of a two-part, three-hour movie because of the way it's segmented, and for a while, I definitely thought this film was more simple on the surface than it actually was, but man, this film is anything but just a sentimental crowdpleaser. Yes, that is the film's main intention, absolutely, but it's not the only thing that this film has going for it. Anne of Green Gables is actually a surprisingly compelling character piece with a role model that still holds up almost 40 years after the film's original release and a lead performance that is still absolutely phenomenal. Oh, who am I kidding, all of the acting is good, but I'm not gonna end this review without just saying that Colleen Dewhurst, Richard Farnsworth, and even Schuyler Grant should all be given just as much praise for their performances and that just needs to be said. Anyway, as a whole, this film somehow managed to surprise me. While its format doesn't always work for me and it definitely came off as a four-star "it does what it wants to do" production for a while, by the end of the film, I realized it was so, so much more. I was genuinely surprised to see that this film actually has mostly five-star ratings, but that surprise is of the pleasant variety. If you get the chance to check this out and you just need a three-hour pleasant escape with genuinely likable characters and performances, this is just the film for you.

Letter Grade: A