I was just reading the external reviews for this movie and as funny as roger ebert may be on the chicago wutever it was (times, sun?) i dont believe this movie was that bad...in my opinion i quite like anna and the king. What he said about the king was pretty funny (and really mean) but yea...i still don't get why the critics hate the movie so much when so many people like me like it.
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totally agree. when i saw it i thought it was fine, even "a good one".
but then i read the reviews, and simply thought it was unfair.
was a nice one.
Why bad reviews? Maybe its because this is the racist story of a perfect white woman who teaches the true way of life to "savages." Why Jodie Foster agreed to this is beyond me. The movie has no respect for the beauty of other cultures and looks upon Foster's trampling of the native culture and pigheaded assertion of her own values over anyone else's as somehow noble, grand and something to look up to, This movie is sick. Oh, and its also just plain boring, when it isn't being offensive, that is. Later!
Mike
If you notice in the movie she learns to love the ways of the Siamese and even turns against those of her own country in favor of the king.
I don't think that they should say it's a "true" story if it's not and I can understand why someone might be offended by that, but if it's considered a work of fiction it's a great movie. Beautifully filmed and superbly acted. I honestly didn't think Foster and Yun-Fat would have such great chemistry, but they pull it off quite nicely.
Why bad reviews? Maybe its because this is the racist story of a perfect white woman who teaches the true way of life to "savages." Why Jodie Foster agreed to this is beyond me. The movie has no respect for the beauty of other cultures and looks upon Foster's trampling of the native culture and pigheaded assertion of her own values over anyone else's as somehow noble, grand and something to look up to, This movie is sick. Oh, and its also just plain boring, when it isn't being offensive, that is. Later!
as far as I know, this movie was far more equalist (is that a word?) than the previous versions. the two cultures were portrayed as equals. and Anna not only taught the Siamese people, she also learnt one thing or two.
shareas far as I know, this movie was far more equalist (is that a word?) than the previous versions. the two cultures were portrayed as equals. and Anna not only taught the Siamese people, she also learnt one thing or two.
the two cultures were portrayed as equals??? please excuse me for being not so smart at this time ... could you please explain more?
[deleted]
Yes, they were portrayed as equals. The fact that you didn't detect might be because you were carrying your own prejudices into the film, either against Siam itself, or against the filmmakers by stereotyping and generalisation.
Yes, she was proud, she doesn't follow protocol. She stupidly asks why is she being called Sir in front of the Prime Minister. But then, neither did the audience know that. (That rule may or may not be true historically, but it's really beside the point. Really.) In many ways we do act like Anna Leonowens does when we enter a foreign country. Take the Chinese - for the most part, where-ever they immigrate into, they lived on as if they are still in China. (I would know.)
But Anna slowly begins to see, how her own country may not always be morally superior, how there are things to love even in Siam. First impressions are proven wrong - the king is different from who she thought he was when she first met him, before she met him. And what many don't see, perhaps, is how the kind and his ministers have a parallel behavioural arc, in that they first find her as annoying as a mosquito, then later came to respect her point of view. This is not a simple silly-white-woman-barging-into-territory-and-changing-things story. At least, I hope that wasn't how the director saw it ...
What I respect most in the film is that they chose not to force the two leads into a romance. That Anna and the King fall in love with each other is only ever suggested, never truly acted upon except for that one last dance they did. And then it vanished forever - it's only ever inside the head of Chulalongkorn. Now that is an emotionally poignant moment. Meant to be anyway.
Yes, they were portrayed as equals. The fact that you didn't detect might be because you were carrying your own prejudices into the film, either against Siam itself, or against the filmmakers by stereotyping and generalisation.
Yes, she was proud, she doesn't follow protocol. She stupidly asks why is she being called Sir in front of the Prime Minister. But then, neither did the audience know that. (That rule may or may not be true historically, but it's really beside the point. Really.) In many ways we do act like Anna Leonowens does when we enter a foreign country. Take the Chinese - for the most part, where-ever they immigrate into, they lived on as if they are still in China. (I would know.)
But Anna slowly begins to see, how her own country may not always be morally superior, how there are things to love even in Siam. First impressions are proven wrong - the king is different from who she thought he was when she first met him, before she met him. And what many don't see, perhaps, is how the kind and his ministers have a parallel behavioural arc, in that they first find her as annoying as a mosquito, then later came to respect her point of view. This is not a simple silly-white-woman-barging-into-territory-and-changing-things story. At least, I hope that wasn't how the director saw it ...
What I respect most in the film is that they chose not to force the two leads into a romance. That Anna and the King fall in love with each other is only ever suggested, never truly acted upon except for that one last dance they did. And then it vanished forever - it's only ever inside the head of Chulalongkorn. Now that is an emotionally poignant moment. Meant to be anyway.
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Why bad reviews? Maybe its because this is the racist story of a perfect white woman who teaches the true way of life to "savages." Why Jodie Foster agreed to this is beyond me. The movie has no respect for the beauty of other cultures and looks upon Foster's trampling of the native culture and pigheaded assertion of her own values over anyone else's as somehow noble, grand and something to look up to, This movie is sick. Oh, and its also just plain boring, when it isn't being offensive, that is. Later!
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If that's what you truly think about this movie, you clearly missed the point of it. Do you not remember the scene of the party where Anna stands up for the King and his country, or were you sleeping because you deem this film so boring? Obviously you should know (and actually pay attention to) a movie before trashing it.
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RIGHT ON LASTTIMEINPARIS!!!!
it's not rascist anyone can be like the anna in anna and the king. anyone can stand up to what they believe in no matter what race they are. and in the movie the king did agree with some of her opinions like when tuptim was going to be executed he didn't want that to happen at all. o and by the way i thought that this was a really good movie!
shareLook it's only fiction based on true story. While it is historically inaccurate and Anna's own past was a fabrication, see
http://www.thaistudents.com/kingandi/owens.html
A movie is about entertainment. Either you like the film or you don't.
If you want social documentary, that is best left with going into history books and you will find it quite boring sometimes
Movie have to make it entertaining, otherwise people won't watch it, and this is where fiction and non-fictions blurs distinctions.
I cannot argue about Anna's good or bad side because all the information the movies which is hardly historically accurate.
We can criticized all we like whether we like the movie or not, whether the characters fit in, whether the theme is so and so and or camera angles are bad, or CGI special effects, but to criticize history based on the movie is best we just go to history channel or other history website. This movie is all about entertainment, no critical reviews of history please. It is o.k. to criticize Jodie Foster bad English accent, or other things, I can accept that. We waste time using the movie as historical fact.
[deleted]
You are a person who absolutely didn't get this movie at all. If it was racist it was racist against the white English people. The white woman and her son were the only English people portrayed positively at all in the entire movie and even she was far from perfect. She was unbending and generally shown to think that her views were always right and then proven to be wrong. The King was portrayed as more wise and willing to go to great lengths to for the betterment of his country. The worst thing I saw was the King's son Chulalongkorn having a superior snobby attitude, but he was also a very good person who just didn't know better. Incredible movie even if it was 95% untrue.
shareIf you read the review, then why don't you understand why it got bad reviews?
Here is a man with 23 wives and 42 concubines, who allows one of his women and her lover to be put to death for exchanging a letter, and yet is seen as basically a good-hearted chap. And here is Anna, who spends her days in flirtation with the king, but won't sleep with him because--well, because he isn't white, I guess. Certainly not because he has countless other wives and is a murderer.
She arrives in Siam, a widow with a young boy, and finds herself in the realm of this egotistical sexual monster with a palace full of women.
Credits at the end tell us Mongkut and his son, educated by Anna, led their country into the 20th century, established democracy (up to a point) and so on. No mention is made of Bangkok's role as a world center of sex tourism, which also of course carries on traditions established by the good king.