Movie Review

ANNA AND THE KING (1999)

Ambreen Abbas | Entrepreneurship | 12/01/2017

Context
Anna and the King of Siam is a 1944 semi-fictionalized biographical novel by Margaret
Landon. In the early 1860s, Anna Leonowens, a widow with two young children, was
invited to Siam (now Thailand) by King Mongkut (Rama IV), who wanted her to teach his
children and wives the English language and introduce them to British customs. Her
experiences during the five years she spent in the country served as the basis for two
memoirs, The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870) and Romance of the Harem
(1872).

Margaret Landon took Leonowens' first-person narratives and enhanced them with details
about the Siamese people and their culture culled from other sources.

OVERVIEW
Anna and the King is a 1999 biographical drama film loosely based on the 1944 novel Anna
and the King of Siam (and its 1946 film adaptation), which give a fictionalized account of
the diaries of Anna Leonowens. The story concerns Anna, an English schoolteacher in
Siam (now Thailand), in the late 19th century, who becomes the teacher of King
Mongkut's many children and wives.

The film was directed by Andy Tennant and stars Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-fat. It was
mostly shot in Malaysia, particularly in the Penang, Ipoh and Langkawi region. It was an
Academy Award nominee in 1999 for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.

CAST

 Jodie Foster as Anna Leonowens

 Chow Yun-Fat as King Mongkut
 Bai Ling as Tuptim
 Tom Felton as Louis T. Leonowens
 Randall Duk Kim as General Alak
 Kay Siu Lim as Prince Chaofa, King Mongkut's Brother
 Melissa Campbell as Princess Fa-Ying
 Deanna Yusoff as Queen Thiang
 Geoffrey Palmer as Lord John Bradley
 Anne Firbank as Lady Bradley
 Bill Stewart as Mycroft Kincaid, East India Trading Co.
 Sean Ghazi as Khun Phra Balat
 Syed Alwi as The Kralahome, Prime Minister
 Ramli Hassan as King Chulalongkorn
 Keith Chin as Prince Chulalongkorn

PAGE 1
  Alif Silpachai as Chulalongkorn's brother
 Kenneth Tsang as Justice Phya Phrom
 Shantini Venugopal as the nanny
 Goh Yi Wai as Daughter of Mongkut

PLOT

Anna Leonowens (Jodie Foster) is a British widow who has come to Siam with her son
Louis (Tom Felton) to teach English to the dozens of children of King Mongkut (Chow
Yun-fat). She is a strong-willed, intelligent woman for her time, and this pleases the King.
Mongkut wants to modernize Siam, thinking this will help his country resist colonialism
and protect the ancient traditions that give Siam its identity. Mongkut and Anna discuss
differences between Eastern and Western love, but he dismisses the notion that a man can
be happy with only one wife. In order to win favors through Britain's ambassadors,
Mongkut orders a sumptuous reception and appoints Anna to organize it. During the
reception, the King spars graciously and wittily with Sir Mycroft Kincaid (Bill Stewart), of
the East India Company. The Europeans express their beliefs that Siam is a superstitious,
backward nation. Mongkut dances with Anna at the reception.

Anna is enchanted by the royal children, particularly Princess Fa-Ying (Melissa Campbell).
The little girl adores the playful monkeys who live in the royal garden's trees. When Fa-
Ying falls ill with cholera, Anna is summoned to her chambers to say goodbye. She gets
there just as Fa-Ying dies in King Mongkut's arms, and the two mourn together. Mongkut
later finds that one of the monkeys "borrowed" his glasses as his daughter used to do. He
finds comfort for his grief in his belief in reincarnation, with a notion that Fa-ying might
be reborn as one of her beloved animals. Lady Tuptim (Bai Ling), the King's newest
concubine, was already engaged to marry another man, Khun Phra Balat (Sean Ghazi),
when she was brought to court. Mongkut is kind to her, but Tuptim yearns for her true
love. She disguises herself as a young man and runs away, joining the monastery where
her former fiancé lives. She is tracked down, returned to the palace, and put on trial where
she is caned. Anna, unable to bear the sight, tries to prevent the execution and is forcibly
removed from the court. Her outburst prevents Mongkut from showing clemency, because
he cannot be seen as beholden to her. Tuptim and Balat are beheaded publicly and Anna
prepares to leave Siam.

Siam is under siege from what appears to be a British-funded coup d'état against King
Mongkut, using Burmese soldiers. Mongkut sends his brother Prince Chaofa (Kay Siu Lim)
and military advisor General Alak (Randall Duk Kim) and their troops to investigate. Alak
is really the man behind the coup, and he poisons the regiment and kills Chaofa. Alak
then flees into Burma, where he summons and readies troops to invade Siam, kill King
Mongkut and all his children. Mongkut's army is too far from the palace to engage the
rebels, so he creates a ruse - that a white elephant has been spotted, and the court must go
to see it. This allows him to flee the palace with his children and wives, and give his armies

PAGE 2
time to reach them. Anna returns to help Mongkut, since her presence in his entourage
will give credence to the tale about the white elephant. Mongkut plans to take his family
to a monastery where he spent part of his life. Halfway through the journey they see Alak's
army in the distance and realize they can't outrun him. Mongkut and his soldiers set
explosives on a wooden bridge high above a canyon floor as Alak and his army approach.
Mongkut orders his "army" to stay back and rides to the bridge with only two soldiers.
Alak, at the head of his army, confronts Mongkut on the bridge.

Anna and Louis create a brilliant deception from their hiding spot in the forest. Louis uses
his horn to replicate the sound of a bugle charge, as Anna "attacks" the area with harmless
fireworks. The Burmese, believing the King has brought British soldiers, panic and retreat.
Alak's attempt to recall and regroup his troops fails. Alak stands alone, but Mongkut
refuses to kill him, saying that Alak will have to live with his shame. As Mongkut turns to
ride back to Siam, Alak grabs his gun and aims at his back, but one of Mongkut's guards
detonates the explosives. The bridge and Alak are blown to pieces.

At the end of the film, Mongkut has one last dance with Anna before she leaves Siam. He
tells her that now he understands why a man can be content with only one woman. A
voice-over tells viewers that Chulalongkorn became king after his father's death.
Chulalongkorn abolished slavery and instituted religious freedom with the help of his
father's 'vision'.

REVIEW

“Anna and the King” is a 1999 film directed by Andy Tennant and (very loosely) based on
the 1944 novel “Anna and the King of Siam” about the relationship between the British
tutor Anna Leonowens and HM King Mongkut of Siam (Thailand). The film stars Jodie
Foster (as Anna) and Chow Yun-fat (as the King). The original plan had been to shoot it in
Thailand but the government, after reviewing the script, refused to allow this and it was
shot, instead, in neighboring Malaysia. It is a fairly entertaining movie and certainly a very
beautiful looking piece but I can certainly understand the objections of the Thai
government to it as it basically takes a very dubious piece of source material and runs wild
with it and, as a result, comes off as very condescending toward the Kingdom of Thailand.
People who get their history from movies would come away thinking that Thailand owes
everything from each step of “social progress” to its very independence to a British
schoolteacher who arrived to save everyone and show them the error of their ways. Of
course, having said that, it is impossible to address this subject without just a word on the
facts of the actual Anna Leonowens upon whose life this movie (and many other works of
art on the page, stage and screen) was based on.

PAGE 3
Anna Leonowens was, of course, a real woman, an English widow who arrived from India
to take a job as tutor at the royal court in Bangkok on the sole condition that she would
not include anything about Christianity in her lessons. She did do that job just as she was
hired to do, however, in her own writings about her life in Siam she greatly exaggerated
her influence and, frankly, made up a great many stories that have since been proven to be
totally false. To hear the story as she told it, one would have the impression that she found
Siam a backward and barbaric country and, by her own charm, intelligence and influence
with the King, set the process into motion for turning the kingdom into a more humane
and civilized country. In fact, she was, for the most part, simply a tutor and nothing more
and did not have any sort of special relationship or influence on King Mongkut at all. In
her own writings and the subsequent works based on them, including “Anna and the
King” she would try to take credit for everything from ending slavery to promoting equal
rights for women to saving the very independence of Siam itself. Rest assured that is
nothing more than some pretty shameless self-promotion and has no basis in actual fact.
That should be kept firmly in mind by anyone watching this movie; it is a work of fiction,
it is not how things really happened, it’s just for entertainment.

So, to the movie, Anna, her son Louis and her Indian servants arrive in Siam to teach the
royal children and immediately causes a stir by (gasp) standing upright in the presence of
men and refusing to prostrate herself before the King. Fairly early on we also get the
beginnings of the main conflict for the movie which is that the Burmese (a British
possession) are colluding with the minister of war to launch a coup to overthrow King
Mongkut with the aim of making the country a British colony (none of which actually
happened in real life). We do get some liberal-progressive lines from Jodie Foster (and I

PAGE 4
say that as it sounds more like the words of a left-wing Hollywood actress than a daughter
of the British Empire) scolding the Brits for thinking that one country or culture could be
superior to another. That’s all fine and dandy except that it goes against her actions
throughout most of the entire movie. She is the one, for example, who teaches the little
crown prince (future King Chulalongkorn) that slavery is wrong by having him read the
American novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, to the displeasure of his father. It is Anna who
arranges a reception for the British officials, getting everyone to dress in European clothes,
eat with a knife and fork and to stop falling prostrate whenever the King comes into the
room. It is Anna who stands up for the tragic Juliet-figure of Tuptim (Bai Ling) who is
forced into the royal harem despite being in love with another man -which ends in
tragedy.

In the climax of the film, as the King goes out to meet a Burmese invasion force, it is also
Anna who uses bugle calls and fireworks to frighten the enemy away just when they are on
the cusp of victory. So, despite her earlier words, the movie is filled with examples of how
it took the arrival of this English woman to show the Siamese the error of their ways and
to adopt the customs and values of her own people. Given that, it is certainly not
surprising (or at least shouldn’t be) that the Thai authorities refused to allow the film to
be shown in their own country. Overall, it is pretty blatantly condescending, even if it
does make the British look bad as well. In fact, almost every main character comes off in a
rather poor light other than Anna herself who is not always successful (she couldn’t save
Tuptim) but who is always “right” from the standpoint of the audience with modern
liberal values. It becomes, at some points, rather absurd, particularly the ending, which
makes the Southeast Asians, whether Burmese or Siamese, seem like particularly inept
simpletons, easily fooled by the last-minute trickery of an English woman and her little
boy. The film also makes Anna seem to be credited with all of the great works of the future
reign of King Chulalongkorn the Great. He is a rather arrogant, petulant little brat when
Anna first arrives but her firmness and instruction makes him a compassionate liberal
who will one day abolish slavery in Siam when he becomes king. Such arrogance.

However, the film is also not without some positive elements. Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-
fat are both acting pros and turn in great performances. It is beautifully shot and really
succeeds in putting the viewer in the correct time and place. The palaces are gorgeous, the
scenery is breathtaking and, for many people I think, the visuals alone would be worth the
price of the rental (or however people are seeing movies these days). The King, although
not always a “nice” guy is portrayed pretty positively and he is shown as a man who is
genuinely struggling to do the right thing. There are also some fairly funny moments from
time to time, such as the look the Indian servants silently exchange when Anna tells her
son that “India is British Louis, that’s what being colonized is all about” or Louis, in their
house surrounded by chanting Buddhist monks, says he feels like they’re living “in a
beehive”. The sets, the costumes and the overall “look” of the movie was, to me, the
strongest aspect of it and, as film is a visual medium, that goes a long way. It is no surprise
that it received two Academy Award nominations for Art Direction and Costume Design

PAGE 5
but, overall, was not a very successful film, losing money domestically and only making a
minor profit internationally.

PAGE 6