Anna and the King (1999) on Netflix
PG-1319992h 28mDramaHistoryRomance
In the 1860s, widowed British educator Anna Leonowens comes to Siam with her son Louis to teach King Mongkut's many children. Their strong wills and different customs clash from the start.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.7/1040,592 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes52%
Trailer
Plot summary
In the 1860s, King Mongkut of Siam engages Anna Leonowens, a widowed British teacher, to instruct his heir, Crown Prince Chulalongkorn, in English and modern Western subjects. The king believes that modernizing his country will let it resist colonial powers while preserving its old traditions, so all of his children, born to his twenty-three wives, become her pupils. Teacher and monarch clash over their different customs and their equally strong wills, yet he comes to admire her intelligence and her kindness. He sees the good results of her methods, above all her wish to treat the royal pupils like ordinary school children. Anna's abolitionist views also influence Chulalongkorn's thinking about slavery.
Cast
- Syed Alwias The Kralahome, Prime Minister
- Kay Siu Limas Prince Chowfa, King Mongkut's Brother
- Keith Chinas Prince Chulalongkorn
- Mano Maniamas Moonshee, Leonowens' Indian Servant
- Shanthini Venugopalas Beebe, Leonowens' Indian Servant
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Anna and the King (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Thai government refused to let the production film in Thailand and later banned the finished movie from being distributed there at all, judging its depiction of King Mongkut disrespectful and historically inaccurate.
- Made on a $92 million budget, the film underperformed domestically with just $39 million in the US and Canada, but international audiences carried it to a $114 million worldwide total.
- Responding to the Thai ban, columnist Tony Dabbs argued in The Nation newspaper that any film taking major liberties with history, citing Braveheart and JFK as other examples, should be required to carry a disclaimer at the end.
- The film is a loose adaptation of the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam, which itself gives a fictionalized account of the diaries of Anna Leonowens.
