“A Small Light” shines on Anne Frank’s heroes

As “A Small Light” arrives, we’re reminded of the large-scale heroism of everyday people.
At the core is Miep Gies, who risked her life for two years to hide Anne Frank’s family. “Miep is an ordinary person who ended up doing an extraordinary thing,” said Bel Powley (shown here), who plays her.
So are others in this four-week, eight-hour series, starting at 9 p.m. Monday (May 1) on the National Geographic Channel and reaching Disney+ the next day. They include:
— Gies. She was “this 4-foot-11, ordinary, blue-collar woman, newly married,” a fun person who ended up taking daily risks, screenwriter Joan Rater told the Television Critics Association.
— Otto Frank, Anne’s father, an “elegant guy” who had loved Germany, said Liev Schreiber, who plays him. He “had to aggressively compartmentalize his life” to run his business and protect his family.
— Anne herself, who was hiding from the Nazis from ages 13 to 15. “It is the most intense time as a young woman,” Powley said. “It’s coming of age; it’s when you are turning from a girl to a woman. You’ve got everything rushing through you.”
People called her “a bundle of contradictions,” Anne wrote in her diary (translated into English). “I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in love of life and, above all, my appreciation of the lighter side of things.”
She wrote that she didn’t find “anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke.” But “no one knows (my) better side and people can’t stand me.”
One long-ago classmate told Rater that Anne was “a pain in the (butt). She knew everything.” Others have described her as a fun friend who, among other things, amused them with a contortion trick she did with a loose shoulder.
“I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker,” Anne wrote. “A mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten.”
Except, of course, she has never been forgotten, 78 years after she died in a concentration camp.
The reference to movies was logical. Anne asked Giep to regularly bring her favorite movie magazine; she cut out photos. “The pictures of the movie stars on the wall (provided) a very clear sense of her trajectory,” Schreiber said. She savored attention; when an official (via radio) expressed an interest in seeing diaries after the war, Anne carefully rewrote hers.
And Gies had a personality to match, Powley said. “She was a party girl. She loved dancing …. She was a frivolous, fiercely independent young woman” who suddenly was saving lives.
The actress projects Gies’s strong emotions, often with just a glance. “That’s the curse and the blessing of having very big eyes,” Powley said. “It gives away a lot, sometimes not for the best.”
Schreiber needed a more-drastic step, shaving back his hairline. “The bald pate did a lot,” he said. “That sort of put the fear of God in me.”
He withdrew into the quiet, careful persona of Otto Frank – the opposite of his role in “Ray Donovan” … or in real life.
When the script arrived, Schreiber was in the Ukraine, helping organize humanitarian aid. He was “meeting all of these people who were doing the work. They are normal people … whose neighbor’s house got hit by a rocket.”
They were regular people, thrust into heroics – just like the ones in “A Small Light.”