Most people now would know the story of English schoolmistress Anna Owens and King Mongkut of Siam from the 1956 movie of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical starring Yul Brynner.
Now, I dig Rogers and Hammerstein, but their version just doesn't work for me as a movie. They wrote some catchy songs, but the story suffers. I've never quite managed to sit through the whole thing.
By contrast, I was immediately caught in chancing across the original 1946 movie version on cable. It took this version to put across to me the character of King Mongkut (Rex Harrison's first American role).
Now, I don't know how much these or the recent Jodie Foster version reflect any kind of relationship to the actual historical figures. However, this movie version of the king shows one of the most perfect representations of man struggling to overcome our animal nature that has ever been committed to film. All the millions of years of development Kubrick represented in 2001 from the bone throwing ape to the Starchild are reflected in the King of Siam.
The king is learned, and committed to being "scientific," honoring reason and learning above nearly all else. Yet being the king, he does not have the luxuries of an academic. He's responsible for the whole country and everybody in it RIGHT NOW. Thus, he has the critical second circuit territorial defense imperatives welling up from our lower mammalian brain circuitry tugging at him in a most highly concentrated manner.
The most striking behavioral trait of the king was his constant late night reading of every book of the Western civilizations he hoped to join. Behind the mostly cute displays of royal arrogance, the real soul of the man is consumed with having to catch up to civilization for his whole country.
The king very consciously recognizes the harsh and unreasonable behavior his privileged situation allows him to create under these exceptional pressures- the arrogance and arbitrary self-indulgence. Thus, the main dramatic point of the movie is the king's heroic internal struggle to understand, and put the leash of enlightenment on his own animal nature.
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