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Thailand on the big screenText: Marjo Rämö
Translation: Hanna Tarvainen Thai films have not won favour with the general public, but many of us have, consciously or unconsciously, seen Thailand on the big screen. The best feature of The Beach (2000), which was recently screened in the Finnish TV, is the scenery surrounding the actors. Round-the-year flourishing nature and splendent, turquoise ocean together with white sandy beaches and the coral reefs surrounding the island give the film its amazing colour scheme. It is probably also easy to get together a camera crew, when a film is set in a place familiar from travel brochures, such as Phi Phi Island, Phuket, Krabi, and the Khao Yai National Park, a national marine park located on the west coast of Thailand. The film is set in present Thailand, where thousands of backpackers escape from the routines of their everyday lives, trying to find their own paradise beach. The Thailand boom of the western travellers at its highest, finding your own beach is probably possible only in a film.
Until 1939 Thailand was known as Siam, which is the reason why the love story that has inspired many film versions and a musical is not always conceived as being set in Thailand. The first film version of the love story of an British governess and the King of Siam, based on the autobiography of Anna Leonowens, was screened with the name Anna and the King of Siam (1947). Part of the filming was done at The Royal Palace in Bangkok, which nowadays is crowded by tourists. The film, directed by John Cromwell, won Oscars for best filming and best artistic directing. The film is more or less based on the autobiography of Anna Leonowens, a British governess.
The film is set in the end of the 19th century, when the country that had been spared from western imperialism, was struggling in crossfire of the traditional Siamese feudal society and western influences. In the 1860s governess Anna Leonowens begins working at the court of King Monguti, the King of Siam, nowadays called Thailand. The obstinate governess wins favour with the progressive king and soon the two are passionately in love.
The significance of Anna Leonowens in the king's life and to the Siam's politics of that time is still under discussion. In 1999 the film Anna and the King of Siam spurred the discussion further. In this version Jodie Foster plays Anna, who saves the whole royal family from takeover/coup and execution. The huge settings of the film were this time set up in Malaysia.
Films concerning the tragic building of the Bridge on the River Kwai are easily classified as WWII war films. The River Kwai films are an essential part of Thailand's history, even though the most famous of them, Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), is actually filmed in the Sri Lankan jungle. The film, which is based on the novel by Pierre Boulle, and directed by David Lean, won seven Oscars. The film's course of events begins from when Japan had command over Thailand. The prisoners, who are being held in Colonel Saito's prison camp, are commanded to build an important railway bridge on the River Kwai. The building work becomes an obsession for the prisoners' ruler, the British Colonel Nicholson.
Besides telling an adventure story, the film also tries to depict the craziness of the war: the bridge that eventually will be, is being built at the cost of human lives and tremendous suffering. According to different estimations, 100,000-300,000 prisoners of war and civilians died during the building of the whole railway. Lean's film became a classic, and it generated a documentary on the filming of the classic film and also several other River Kwai films. Maybe even more famous than the film itself, the River Kwai whistling tune is now also a popular mobile phone ringing tone. The tragedy of the WWII that has been spread across the big screens has been profitable for the state of Thailand. The railway now serves the hundreds of thousands of tourists who come from all over the world, wanting to cross the rebuilt Bridge on the River Kwai, whistling the familiar tune from the film.
The Beach (2000)
Anna and the King (1999)
Anna and the King of Siam (1947)
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Return from the River Kwai (1988)
Documentary: Making of 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', (2000) Read more
Updated
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Festival News, Wednesday 3 March 2004•Documentary films are also interpreted information •The Extra shows only one side of Christoffer Slotte •Finnish animation in a nutshell •"Kabul Cinema tells the story of my generation"
•What happened to the micromovies?
•A film by two sisters was chosen to participate in the Videotivoli
•Children say that theme year's name Filmjam tastes like a VCR
•Primary school children turned the Ukranian folk tale into an animated film
•Irish folktales an inspiration for Kantola
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