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Look Again: Re-Review of Anna and the King

ANNA AND THE KING
Costume Drama, 1999
US, 147 minutes
Directed by Andy Tennant
With Jodie Foster, Chow Yun-Fat, Bai Ling

3 specs out of 5

Headline: PALACE COUPLE

Anna and the King’s opening credits claim it is based on the writings of real-life Anna Leonowens, elegantly waltzing around the royal issue of primogeniture. Everyone knows this film’s a pretender to the throne, a remake of beloved classic The King and I, indelibly starring bald Yul Brynner as the eponymous potentate.
This actually signals an important, politically correct shift in the script. In hindsight, there’s something a little less charming and more than a tad awkward about an imperious British schoolmarm taking an Asian ruler to task over how to be more “civilized” - given colonialism’s barbaric legacy.
In this revisionary version, Anna’s relationship with the man she works and falls for - King Mongkut (Yun-Fat) - is put in context, and she appears in the unflattering glow of the British East-India Company - a transimperial corporation to make Empire-mad Kipling proud.
Fortunately, the story’s heart stays intact, since desire and duty are forces that have not changed much since the 19th century. A prim and by-the-book English teacher, recently widowed, arrives in Siam to tutor for the King, and they soon are in a love that cannot (because of the time’s social and racial barriers) be consummated in more than a formal, albeit passionate, dance.
The romance is believable, and the “cry now” subliminal messages pop up several times to teary effect, especially during well-choreographed death scenes. The Romeo/Juliet sub-plot involving concubine Tuptim (feline Bai Ling) and her pining monk lover, is unexpectedly powerful. Surprisingly, there is an even more riveting sub-sub-plot with megalomaniacal General Alak (Randall Duk Kim) nearly worthy of Ran. Duk Kim’s gnarled face and veteran’s growl makes him the most fun villain in ages.
The lead actors are less successful in their roles. Jodie Foster’s pinched features and strained British accent are more mannerism than from the manor born. Chow Yun-Fat, marvelous in his hard-boiled roles in the Jon Woo actioners that inspired Tarantino, is not a fluent English-speaker (hardly his fault) and so is often unintelligible. Still, the on-screen chemistry experiment works (nature abhors a vacuum) and their acting strengths soon sweep aside such quibbles.
The film’s generally high quality - costumes, location and cinematography are all first-rate - is marred by the insipid child actor Tom Felton, whose constant cheerio-pip-pip demeanor is like five fingernails scraping Anna’s schoolroom chalkboard. Further undermining the cinematic class act is a childish climax (with Bedknobs and Broomsticks flare) whose resolution makes "The Charge of the Light Brigade" seem like brilliant military strategy. When Anna and the King teaches us adult lessons about life, it is superb; when it stoops to conquer the kids with jolly-good-fun, it is poor - a pauper where once was a king.

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