ipl-logo

Anna And The King Analysis

1375 Words6 Pages
Anna and the King is a 1999 biographical drama film loosely based on the 1944 novel ‘Anna and the King of Siam’ (and its 1946 film adaptation), which gives a fictionalised account of the diaries of Anna Leonowens. Anna is a schoolteacher from England who went to Siam, now Thailand, in the 1860s to teach the fifty-eight children of King Maha Mongkut. Anna had preconceived ideas of the East, while the King also had identical ideas about the West. In the beginning, Anna and the King had conflicts with each other as she becomes involved in his affairs. As time passed, they both had mutual respect for each other and they learnt from the opposite’s cultures. Soon after, their mutual respect turned into love for each other. This film has a theme of love with cultural differences. The main characters in the film are King Maha Mongkut, played by Chow Yun-Fat, and Anna Leonowens, played by Jodie Foster. Chow is Asian with distinct yellow skin, black hair, and black eyes while Foster is Western with pale white skin, brown hair, and green eyes. Judging from their distinct appearances, it may reveal that cultural conflicts are bound to occur between King Mongkut and Anna. In the film, Anna wore 17th-century British clothing while the King wore Siam’s cultural garments. Even the Siamese servants were topless whereas Anna’s servants donned clothes similar to hers. This shows there were larger social class divisions in Siam than that of Britain. Social class is primarily determined by
Open Document