July 31-August 6, 2003

movies

Fit for a Princess

PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION: The princess lounges in Prince Chatri Charlerm Yukolâs The Legend of Suriyothai.

The Legend of Suriyothai is a return to epic filmmaking.

by Sam Adams

Even for one of Thailand’s most popular directors, a film on the life of Suriyothai, a 16th-century princess who weathered coups, court intrigues and invasions before finally falling in battle defending her husband, was a high-stakes gamble. Coming in at the equivalent of $13 million, Suriyothai’s budget was astronomical for a Thai production, and there was little to suggest that Thailand’s moviegoing youth, apparently as important to good box-office returns as they are in the U.S., were about to develop a hitherto-unseen appetite for historical epics. So why would the movie’s director take the risk?

Simple, says Prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol. "My queen asked me to."

Prince Chatri, as he is known, is indeed a member of the Thai royal family, but it's as moviemaking royalty that he's best known in his homeland. Prince Chatri has directed a string of popular movies (including one, 1983's The Sister-in-Law, described as a story about "an assassin with a wooden leg and a heart of gold"), but The Legend of Suriyothai, as it's been retitled, is the first to be significantly distributed in the U.S. Conceived as a history lesson for Thai youth, with a director's cut that runs over five hours, the movie would seem an even harder sell here than at home (where, incidentally, it eventually became one of the most popular movies in Thai movie history). But Prince Chatri, who learned his trade at UCLA, had help from an old classmate in cutting the film to a manageable two hours-plus: Francis Ford Coppola.

Expressing no reservations about cutting his magnum opus in half, he says simply, "If Francis Ford Coppola offered to help [re-]edit your movie, wouldn't you say yes?" (Well, no, but then I've seen what he did to Supernova.)

Though the re-edited version requires lengthy captions and voiceover to make the plot (somewhat) intelligible, what's left is a display of the kind of filmmaking not seen since David Lean: battle scenes with hundreds, if not thousands, of extras clad in resplendent costumes, some riding elephants with elaborate designs painted on their sides. Though Prince Chatri and his producer and wife, Kamla Yukol, estimate the cost of making the movie in the U.S. at not much less than $100 million, the more likely scenario is that it would never have been made at all. Shooting, which began 10 days after the director had a cancerous kidney removed, lasted two years, "almost seven days a week." Prince Chatri estimates that, with actors, crew, costumers and animal handlers all told, as many as 10,000 people might have worked on the film at one time, "not including Teamsters." Even the smallest of plot points required a substantial expenditure of man- (and elephant-) power; "Just to have the queen travel from point A to point B, you need 100 people, to make it historically accurate."

The Legend of Suriyothai closes on Thursday at Ritz Bourse.