Film Critic: The King and I (1956)
When I first got the VDO tape of this movie in Thailand, I had to turn down the sound and draw the curtains in order not to bring trouble from local police because this version of the movie directed by Walter Lang. With Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, and Rita Moreno was banned in Thailand. In fact, I was more interested in finding out about where and how that film might have showed any disrespect against a king in Thai recent Thai history. The first impression one might obtain from that film might be a powerful, egocentric and stubborn person in the hero featured in that film. Many Thai would be offensed by the apparent forceful and unnatural positions and postures of the hero of that film in various scene. The part showing the Thai hero of that film played by Yul Bryner to be repeating some simple English language phrases would bring many Thai first time viewers up the wall. As I viewed that film two more time, I began to see things quite differently. 1) The apparent egocentric and stubborn characters showed was only a definition of a powerful persons in a high place unacustomed with any rebuttals against what he said or what he wanted might have been intended as a foundation of the characterization of a figure in that story. 2) The apparent rigid stances and posture showed by Yul Bryners, I found to be an attempt by the producers to imitate the stances and posture in the traditional Thai masked plays known in Thai as the Khon (⢹) rather than any intention to make fun of the hero character in that film. 3) As the story proceeded, the king in that story clearly had bent himself in his effort to understand and adapt to the culture of his foreign guest. I viewed this as a show of the open mind and generosity at heart of that king figure in the story in comparison to his powerful and unchallengeable authority. This should be consider to be an intention to praise the high level of openmindness and the eagerness to learn and to adjust of the hero and not any intimidation at all. Earlier, I was attracted by another earlier Broadway Play of the same story that showed the princes and princess to be a group of polite, curious, active and lovely children. My Thai girl friend at that time simply fell in love with those characters playing the princes and princess for their loveliness. The Chow Yun Fa version of the same story is by far the worse version of this story. It showed the uses of many Thai words that was not supposed to be in used at the time of King Rama IV, such as, "sawaddee." It showed the hero speaking broken Thai, which is bad, they should have used a dubbed sound of another person. Finally, it showed a mountain just behind the grand palace in Bangkok, which is rather unrealistic and funny. I would agree that Chow Yun Fa's version did not put in enough artistic effort worthy of such a great story and should be banned from Thailand. However, the two earlier version are highly interesting, entertaining deserving of a high place in entertainment art of movie. |
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