Filming of Anna And The King has courted trouble with the authorities
Singapore Straits Times of August 11th.
The mass kowtow is not going well. A young woman marches down a long corridor, barking into a megaphone in Malay.
She is trying to get 896 extras -- farmers and traders from surrounding Malaysian villages -- to fall to the ground in sequence, like a wave.
Dressed in traditional Thai culottes, hair shaved in 19th century -style mohawks, the courtiers are milling about in front of a sparkling Thai palace made of Styrofoam and real marble.
This is the set of Anna and The King, the fictionalised story of the English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens, who travelled to Siam in 1862 to teach in the court of King Mongkut.
The extras are supposed to show their reverence for the king, played by Hong Kong star Chow Yun-Fat, as he walks towards Anna, better known as Jodie Foster. Instead, they look as if they are collapsing in the blistering Southeast Asian heat. "The wave is on Prozac," director Andy Tennant says with a sigh.
If attention to cultural detail makes a great epic, Anna And The King will be a blockbuster. Its creators insist that it is not a remake of The King And I, the 1956 movie musical, which was also based on the Leonowens diaries.
While the real Anna may have met the king only a few times, both Hollywood movies cast the two in a love story. But the similarities end there. As played by Yul Brynner in the musical, the Siamese king was charming but buffoonish.
The creators of Anna hired Thai consultants to ensure that their love story portrays King Mongkut the way Thai historians do: as a visionary who fended off colonialism by launching his country's modernisation.
"There will be no king saying 'et cetelah, et cetelah, et cetelah'," says Tennant, mimicking Brynner's comical English in the musical.
"This is a movie about the arrogance of the West meeting the alternative of the East," says executive producer, Jon Jashni.
That didn't prevent Twentieth Century Fox from meeting trouble in Thailand, where the story takes place.
Thai film authorities hated The King And I so much that it has been banned for 44 years, and they refused to allow Tennant to film in Thailand. Anxious to protect the image of Mongkut, whose heirs are still in power, they fear the new film will also offend the monarchy.
Hoping to win approval from the National Film Board, Tennant did five rewrites to address a long list of objections.
According to the Thai press, the board didn't like a scene in which the king's daughter climbs a tree and drops fruit on his head. It didn't like Anna's son, Louis, making fun of the way the king walks and talks.
It didn't like comments about the king's concubines and children (according to Thai books and records, he had 82 children by 35 different mothers, and a harem of more than 100 women).
"They were adamant about everybody crawling around on all fours around the king," says Foster.
In the end the board refused Tennant, so he shot in Malaysia instead. The budget soared to US$70 million (S$112 million), much of it to build a re-creation of Thai royal palaces.
The film board is one of the most conservative institutions in Thailand, and wasn't about to take chances. It sent a copy of the script to the imperial palace, which sent it back, saying the decision was up to the board. It was a tough position for any Thai official. Even Tennant's Thai advisers say the original script was unacceptable.
Thailand's monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, is a direct descendant of Mongkut, and no-one knows what he thinks of the flap over Anna. But he once described Yul Brynner's portrayal of Mongkut as a "sympathetic character".
Supinda Chakraband, a film producer who represented Fox in its talks with the film board -- and whose great-grandfather was one of King Mongkut's sons -- says she and other members of the royal family urged the board to give Fox a second chance.
She says the family also assured the board they would advise the film-makers on historical accuracy -- and accept public responsibility if the final cut stirred up controversy.
But it was no-go. One film board member said he feared the eruption of "a political crisis" if it had allowed filming in Thailand.
Publicly, the board's main complaint against the final script was that it portrays Anna as "far more superior than the king in every way".
Leonowens's account of Mongkut has always been controversial, and it is still unclear just how much of it shows up in Anna. The final script is still under wraps. But Leonowens was known to have embellished at least parts of the books she wrote after returning to England.
She casts the king as a mercurial figure, alternately kind and cruel. She tells of harsh punishments, including a royal concubine burned at the stake for keeping a secret lover.
Reinventing Leonowens as a difficult but likeable character was a challenge. So was bringing emotional life to her relationship with the king, while also capturing the stiff restraint of 19th-century manners.
"It's a bitter romance," says Foster. "It's true to the period, but also messy, and interesting, and emotional."
The role that may draw the most heat, at least in Asia, is that of the king. Chow has made his name playing tough villains in Hongkong action movies, but he is stepping out of his old character to become the first Asian film star to play a complex, romantic leading man in a serious, big -budget Hollywood movie.
It's a role that will offend at least some Thais, who argue that no foreigner should be allowed to play Mongkut.
At the end of the day, Foster and Chow take their places for a final shot. The kowtow wave has been perfected, and the king's procession has reached Anna, where the only lines of the day are spoken.
It is a close-up shot, filmed from the waist up. In the tropical heat, Foster stands stoically in her bonnet and bolero. Underneath, hidden from the cameras' view, she has dropped her hoop skirt. She is wearing yellow and white polka-dot boxers. After all, this is just a movie.
-- Newsweek Copyright (c) 1999 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.
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