Cast: Jodie Foster, Chow Yun-Fat, Bai Ling, Tom Felton, Syed Alwi, Randall Duk Kim, Keith Chin
The story of Anna Leonowens and King Mongkut of Siam has gone through multiple mutations in 150-plus years. First, there were the diaries of Indian-born British citizen Leonowens (known to be creative, to say the least, about many aspects of her life and story, even her name), recounting her experiences as teacher to the royal children of the King of Siam in the mid-19th century. Then there was Margaret Landon's 1943 novel (a fictionalized retelling of Leonowens' diaries), and in the years following there have been three movies (one animated), a Broadway musical, and a short-lived TV series (can you imagine?). Now we have the romantic epic Anna and the King, starring Jodie Foster as Leonowens and Chow Yun-Fat as King Mongkut.
Jodie Foster has said in interviews about Anna and the King that this film is different because it shows "Asia" from an "Asian perspective," while earlier renderings of the story only cared about Europeans. I would counter that this film is quite concerned with Europeans (or more precisely, white audience stand-ins). In other words, it has made the story more palatable to our 1990s tastes by making Anna flawed (ignorant of local customs and arrogant about her own claim to civilization) and by making gestures toward re-thinking colonial imperialism. When the King's son laments to his Father, "Why do you punish me with Imperialist school teacher?", it's funny now, because we know the downside — to put it mildly — of imperialism. We also know that Anna has much to learn about her high and mighty cultural assumptions (not to mention, she's a Victorian era woman who needs to learn her place within those assumptions).
The boy's line would have been funny at an earlier time for a different reason — because it would seem misguided: an imperialist (read: "civilized") schoolteacher is no punishment! Yet, despite Anna having to rethink her belief that "the English way is the way of the world," we also hear (in a voice-over by King Mongkut's eldest son, King Chulalongkorn, who has taken over the "diarist's" function in this film), that "Anna had shined such a light on Siam." The film implies — none too delicately — that religious freedom, a justice system, and the abolition of slavery were all a direct result of that "light." And, because of his own not-very-repressed desire for Anna, the King apparently comes to understand "for the first time, the superstition that a man could be satisfied with just one woman."
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