‘Anna and the King’ Honors Thailand’s Strength, Beauty

As a Thai woman who has grown up in America, I was surprised that your usually perceptive film critic, Kenneth Turan, missed the boat when reviewing “Anna and the King” (“AMore Real, Regal Siam,” Dec. 17).

The film is the first serious treatment of the deep issues that arise from Anna Leonowens’ account of her experiences as a teacher to King Mongkut’s children in the 1860s. The earlier stage and movie musical “The King and I” was just so much Hollywood fluff and fun, and Yul Brynner’s portrayal of the king as a piggish buffoon was an insult to the people of Thailand, not to mention history.

Yet Turan’s main critique of the new movie is that there were no songs! “If only his majesty could be taught to whistle a happy tune,” Turan writes, “he’d probably feel a whole lot better about everything.”

To trivialize the film in this way is to willfully ignore its true subject: How does a small Asian country protect its ancient, delicate, highly refined culture and political independence from the onslaught of Western powers who see it only as another commercial opportunity to be exploited and who are annoyed at its “backward” tradition?

“Anna and the King” provides no cliche answers. It explores the question with subtlety and nuance uncommon in Hollywood movies. It finds both good and bad in both Eastern and Western values. But it does side with Thailand in its struggle to stave off the rapacity of the West, and King Mongkut is depicted as the intelligent, learned, humane ruler that he actually was.

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He and his successors shrewdly kept their country free from Western colonization during an era when Britain, France and the United States were chopping up Thailand’s neighbors.

Modern Thai governments don’t seem to be doing as well in preserving Thai culture. They have given in to the economic thinking of Western financial institutions and the World Trade Organization, resulting in the kind of go-go “progress” that unravels tradition and destroys the environment. Hollywood is reflecting this in a microcosm.

Ironically, the current Thai government refused 20th Century Fox permission to film “Anna and the King” in Thailand, fearing a repeat of “The King and I.” But the government welcomed the filming of the same studio’s “The Beach,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which will be released next year.

The Royal Forestry Department gave permission to film on a pristine beach in a national park. Finding the beach not pristine enough, Fox shifted sand dunes with bulldozers, removed some plants and brought in 60 temporary palm trees.

Environmentalists protested and urged a boycott of “The Beach.” A lawsuit is pending in Thai courts alleging that the beach was illegally destroyed. Fox and DiCaprio say they see nothing wrong with what they did, an attitude that should earn them the Ecological Illiteracy Award on Oscar night.

I suggest that everyone who is opposed to arrogant Western imperialism and who supports survival of the rich beauty that is Thailand boycott “The Beach” and see “Anna and the King” twice.

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Malissa Drake, a resident of Los Angeles, is president of the Forever Love Foundation for Medical Aid to Thai Orphans. She can be reached at foreverlove@forever-love.org.