More Mongkut

About a year ago, I blogged about Anna and the King of Siam when it was running in the FXM rotation. Some years later, of course, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a musical version, called The King and I. That one's been in the FXM rotation recently, and it's going to be on TCM this evening at 10:15 PM as part of 31 Days of Oscar.

Since the plots of the two movies aren't that different, this post is going to be a bit brief on plot and focus more on other things, like what's different in the musical from the older movie. Deborah Kerr plays Anna Leonowens, an English widow with a son who has been hired by Mongkut (Yul Brynner), King of Siam, to tutor his many children. Mongkut wants to modernize the country, but that brings all sorts of political challenges with it, as well as the repeated clashes between His Majesty and the headstrong Anna on how to achieve Mongkut's desires.

There's also a subplot involving Tuptim (Rita Moreno), who has been given by a Burmese prince to Mongkut, presumably as a concubine or a slave. Tuptim, however, already has a boyfriend in Lun Tha (Carlos Rivas), and has no desire to be pawned off to the King to be one of his zillion lovers. Interestingly, the movie handles the resolution of this subplot in a rather more muted way than in the earlier movie, in what is basically an aside saying both of the lovers have been found dead.

Part of that is because The King and I has to make room for the various musical numbers. Quite a few of the songs have become well known, including "I Whistle a Happy Tune" and "Shall We Dance", but probably the most famous of the songs is "Getting to Know You". Rodgers (the composer of the two) was quite adept at writing catchy tunes.

However, Tuptim does get a big production number of her own. As you may recall from Anna and the King of Siam, one of the big parts of the movie involves King Mongkut's holding a giant state dinner for all the Brits in Bangkok, where he can show everybody how modern and western the palace is. In The King and I, that involves Tuptim having written a play for the entertainment of the westerners, a one-act version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Even if Tuptim didn't break the fourth wall (at least the one in the palace theater, not the one in the actual movie), the symbolism of her not wanting to be a slave to Mongkut would have been obvious, and Mongkut would have understood it.

The strength of The King and I is in the production numbers, as well as the performances of Kerr (Oscar nominated), and Brynner (Oscar winner). There are the same issues I mentioned in my review of Anna and the King of Siam, namely that Hollywood didn't have anywhere near enough people of Southeast Asian descent to look like the Siamese. Some people might also have an issue with the Uncle Tom's Cabin scene, although the play is clearly stylized like kabuki, and to be fair, the royal palace wouldn't have had anybody of African descent in it to play black American slaves, or any whites to play Simon Legree for that matter. The movie also has a fairly abrupt ending.

But then, people don't watch The King and I for the subtleties of the plot; instead it's for the songs, and of course those shine if you're a fan of musicals. People who do like musicals are going to love The King and I if they haven't already seen it.