Anastasia and the afterlife

I watched one of my favorite childhood films last weekend, Anastasia. While it somehow garnered a G rating, there is a deep undercurrent from the underworld throughout the whole film, with an undead Rasputin ruthlessly hunting the protagonists, and never mind the revisionist history. Maybe that explains how I turned out, but I digress. The interesting thing here is how a pop culture film depicts some aspects of the afterlife.

In one of the first scenes, Rasputin is shown selling his soul, implicitly to the forces of evil. In another, his bat crony is pulled, shrieking, to where his master is caught “in limbo” because of the unfulfilled curse on the Romanov line. Fire, lava, cold rock and general barrenness are the backdrop for this pitiful realm, with a chorus of demon bugs rounding out the picture.

I find it particularly interesting that this is not really a representation of hell per se. Rasputin isn’t really being punished. Like I said, he is in “limbo.” In Dante’s Inferno, limbo is in the outer circle of hell, reserved for the noble pagans and unbaptised babies. It is not really a place of overt punishment; rather, the virtuous damned are punished by being denied the beatific vision. They are granted some of the peace of heaven, but nothing beyond the grasp of mortal minds.

But the place Rasputin is in, though called limbo, is obviously not at all like the near-paradise Dante imagined, and it isn’t much like a place of torment, either. Rasputin seems to almost rule over the unfortunate realm. He isn’t being punished so much as being denied final rest. And although his body is obviously decaying, it is still capable of being animated in a most… flexible way.

I’m not really sure what image of the afterlife the movie is trying to convey. I’m not really sure that the studio knows, either. It is probably just another case where underworld elements are used more for moving the plot along than making any serious claims on what the afterlife might be like.