"A Small Light"

Most holocaust productions are sad, sad, sad.  Depressing.  It's the nature of the beast.  Six million people were just slaughtered.  It doesn't make for happy fare.  "A Small Light" is the story of Miep Gies, a young woman who ended up being one of the caretakers for Anne Frank and seven others while they were in hiding.  The difference here is that Bel Powly plays Miep.  Between her effervescent performance and a nicely structured script, we see the hope, the promise that "someday" things would get better.  Miep sees plenty of the darkness but she does not focus on it.  She looks to the light.  It makes this very hard story bearable.  Not that there aren't tears.  There are.  Of course.  This is a known history.  But this is a layered production.  It brings a lot of normal life -- at least as normal as possible -- to an impossible situation.  Anne is a whiny teen but has more dimension than almost any other version of her I've seen.  Miep and her husband work to figure out their relationship stuff.  The people of Netherlands each has a different response to the Nazi occupation ... just like any group of people would.  This is nothing if not a human tale.  An outstanding production and way to spend eight hours.