Anna the governess
with some of the King’s 58 children.

Bringing the story to the screen posed problems every bit as major in their way as those facing Anna when she first arrived in Siam. The film could not be shot in Thailand, the modern Siam, for political reasons, but also because the royal palace which is its setting had been extensively remodelled by Mongkut’s son, Prince Chulalongkorn. He hired an Italian architect, which was doubtless very progressive of him but involved the destruction of much of the original oriental finery.

Production designer Luciana Arrighi supervised the biggest movie construction project in 30 years - something even bigger than the original royal palace, in which the marble surfaces alone covered 4,000 square metres. Costume designer Jenny Beavan likewise made hundreds of costumes from scratch, using a team of 20 Malay seamstresses and working her way through a staggering 15 kilometers of richly coloured fabric.

But Anna and the King is not about statistics: what was most important of all, says Tennant, was that the palace and the costumes look as though they belonged - as though the people who lived in the former and wore the latter did so on an everyday basis. “Our biggest challenge,” he says, “was to create something that didn’t feel like a soundstage. The palace is one of the stars of the movie: if you have to send Dorothy to the Wizard of Oz, you have to build Oz. And that is what we have tried to do.”

And then there were the elephants, 19 of them, ranging in age from a few months to 57 years old, which is about as old as an elephant gets.

“I love the elephants,” says Foster. “I have to say that’s probably been the best part for me. The elephants really were the emblem of the film. And they’ve been so co-operative: they have been the best actors in the movie.”

“Elephants like to work on a film set,” explains veteran animal trainer Rona Brown. “They love to be around people. It gives them a sense of duty and purpose.”

Meanwhile, some idea of the complexity of purpose lying behind the epic beauty of Anna and the King is provided by the subtly different ways in which Tennant and Foster sum up what is, for them, the final impact of the film.

For the director, it is, when all is said and done, a great love story. “It’s a romantic drama,” he says, “the story of a woman who changed the heart of a man.”

But for Foster, the real key to the movie is as much in the journey made by her character, Anna, as it is in the effect she has on the King. “It’s a film that really opens up the Western idea of what the East is,” concludes the star.

20th Century Fox. Prod: Lawrence Bender, Ed Elbert; Exec prod: Terence Clegg, Terence Chang, Jon Jashni; Co-prod: G Mac Brown; Dir: Andy Tennant; Scr: Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Andy Tennant, Rick Parks, Susan Schilliday; Ph: Caleb Deschanel; Prod des: Luciana Arrighi; Cost des: Jenny Beavan; Animal consult: Rona Brown; Ed: Roger Bondelli; Mus: George Fenton. With Jodie Foster (Anna Leonowens), Chow Yun-Fat (King Mongkut), Bai Ling (Tuptim), Tom Pelton (Louis), Keith Chin (Prince Chulalongkorn), Mano Maniam (Moonshee), Shantini Venugopal (Beebe), Syed Alwi (Kralahome), Deanna Yusoff (Lady Thiang), Randall Duk Kim (Gerald Alak). International distribution: 20th Century Fox.