Cinemanic: Will Anna be a Crowning Achievment or an Epic Disaster?

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Anna and the King

Directed by Andy Tennant

Starring Jodie Foster, Chow Yun Fat

20th Century Fox Pictures

Opens nationwide November 24

Anna and the King

Directed by Andy Tennant

Starring Jodie Foster, Chow Yun Fat

20th Century Fox Pictures

Opens nationwide November 24

There are several times in the calendar year over which the executives of big Hollywood studios--Sony, MGM, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, etc.--just seem to salivate. This past summer, the prime time to release big-budget and sometimes quirky films, box office receipts totaled a touch over $3 billion, the biggest ever in the history of movie making. Summer is one season where the amount of hype and advertising simply inundates various forms of media; but Christmastime and the preceding period is no less intense in film circles when various movies with varying appeal play (to variable degrees of success) in theaters across the country.

One such production seeking to capitalize on the free spending and general consumerism of the holiday season is Anna and the King, starring Jodie Foster and international star Chow Yun Fat (A Better Tomorrow, The Killer) under the direction of Andy Tennant, who is last known for his sweet treatment of the Cinderella tale in Ever After. So, in order to entice people into theaters in the winter months, what do studios do? They advertise when most people will be sitting in theatres to hype the next big film season. So, for those who saw Star Wars: Episode I this past summer -- and judging by the $792 million in box office receipts, many did -- you might have noticed a few of the trailers preceding the film promoted movies scheduled for release late in the bitter winter months. At that same screening, you might also have noticed a conspicuous lack of substance in these preview slots. One, hyping an animated feature called Titan A.E. simply featured Matt Damon voicing over images of a futuristic Earth being attacked by vicious bug-like creatures ripped off from Starship Troopers. Another, for the aforementioned Anna and the King was no less grandiose, featuring sweeping scenes of tropical jungles, ornate palaces and royal processions. Unfortunately, like Titan, Anna was similarly vague in it's promises -- it looked damn gorgeous to be sure, but was scant in dealing out specific details.

Anna has a long and somewhat troubled pedigree. The story originated with the experiences of a then unknown schoolteacher, Anna Leonowens who was hired by King Mongkut of Siam (now Thailand) to teach English to his children. Leonowens chronicled in detail her supposed experiences in Siam, and the memoirs written by this self-titled "governess" served as the basis for a novel by Margaret Landon entitled Anna and the King of Siam. In these memoirs, she claimed -- it turned out later, falsely -- that she developed a deep relationship with the King, and this is the central focus of the upcoming film. Landon's work was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1946, which in turn inspired a Broadway musical The King and I. Hoping to capitalize on the success of the theatrical version, the show was then produced into a movie starring Yul Bryner in 1956, followed by an abysmal animated feature released by Warner Bros. this past year. All the different versions of the Anna to date have been banned in Thailand due to gross historical inaccuracies and ethnic stereotyping.

By all evidence to this date, Anna seems like a curious production. Although Jodie Foster's talents have long been well established, Chow Yun Fat's popularity is questionable (he's best known for two mediocre movies in the states, The Replacement Killers and The Corruptor). This not to say that Chow Yun Fat is not a well known commodity in some circles. Aside from Sean Connery and Steve McQueen, Chow is probably the manliest man you would ever want to meet, having collaborated with director John Woo in brutal yet poetic action films like The Killer and Hard Boiled in their native home of Hong Kong. He has not, to date, had much success in acting in English, hence the middling success of his recent forays into the North American market. Having said that, Chow is far from being a one dimensional actor. In his native land of Hong Kong, Chow has performed in comedies and soap operas, having won several awards for his dramatic work to date, but news of his diverse acting prowess have not passed to the Western world. So, the casting of Chow Yun Fat is an intriguing choice for the studio, because the people who know him love him as a gun-toting, toothpick-chewing tough guy, which is completely the antithesis of his role as King Mongkut.

The same question might be posed of director Andy Tenant. It seems that Hollywood today seems to be bringing in a new generation of hack directors to usher in a new, more clichd and stale era of movie making . For example, Antoine Fuqua, directing a feature for the first time in The Replacement Killers (another Chow performance) had only commercial and music video directing credits before taking the helm of a full feature length film. The result was high-gloss and largely empty cinema, concentrating largely on impressive visuals but yielding flat and dull content -- which brings us to Andy Tennant. This is not his first film, and I dare say it won't be his last, but his previous efforts have been for the most part rather uninspiring. Ever After, his most recent work, had all the costumes, pomp and circumstance that you could wish for, and provided some lovely cinematic images, but again, was sorely deficient in any deeper meaning or weight. It seems a shame that Tennant has been selected to guide this project, because with such talented stars as Foster and Chow, Anna could be something special and meaningful in examining two contrasting cultures. However, Tennant's visuals are probably the reason he has been brought in on the project; the studio probably doesn't want to tax the viewers' intellects too much or alienate them from the story. After all, if an audience can be placated with pretty cinematography, why bother supplying content?

This brings us to the thrust and bearing of the movie. Precious little about the progress of the film has been revealed to the public by 20th Century Fox. Along with vague trailers, promotional material released to The Crimson doesn't divulge much as to what the story is about, but the director and stars seem to be continually lauding one aspect of the film: it will be epic. I don't just mean an epic, but the epic love story that attempts to bridge the gap between two very different cultures at the same time. Consequently, it is normal to be very skeptical when a studio concentrates its publicity efforts on the "grandeur" of one of its projects. We aren't told about the quality of the acting performances or the superb writing of the script. No, all the information disseminated is that Anna is epic in it's sweep and scope. The directing may be poor and sloppy, but the five thousand costumes built from scratch look really, really nice. The acting may be flat and wooden, but the studio employed enough elephants and horses for a single shot of the mile long royal procession. The plot may be incoherent, trite and full of holes, but a horde of carpenters and artists were hired to build an ornate five acre replicate of a Siamese palace in Malaysia (the reason not filming in Thailand, of course, is that the Thai government resents the butchering of the story and refuses to endorse the project). Even Jodie Foster--wearing a skirt in a film since what seems like ages--seems to be towing the party line. She relates, in a typical promotional interview, "Anna really is an epic. You see all the beauty, and the architecture and pageantry and landscapes that Siam was at the time." So, above all, in the broken English of Chow, "it's a tremendous romance, big epic, love story," and don't you ever forget it.

Because little information has come our way regarding Anna, coupled with the fact that there are four screenwriters credited with formulating the script (the more writers, the worse is my opinion), caution is advised before spending upwards of two hours in the theater. To see Chow Yun Fat finally in a North American dramatic role is tempting, but, like special effects, fantastic costumes and elaborate art direction are not sufficient criteria to spend upwards of five dollars on a film. Anna looks to be tepid, trite and filled with it's own self importance.