some elephant warfare

Historical dramas are a favorite genre of mine so I was curious to see if I would like the Asian film The Legend of Suriyothai. Now having seen the movie, my first response would be yes, but there were some drawbacks in watching it.

Not having any real knowledge of the history of Thailand, the movie was something of a struggle for me to follow. Oh, there were captions that gave quick descriptions of new people whenever they first appeared on screen and their role in the drama, but it was all very abstract to me. With no prior knowledge of what had happened, the characters were more fictional to me than historical. I suppose that someone growing up in Thailand would feel the same way about Betsy Ross as I did about Suriyothai.

I suspect that my confusion was further compounded by the names of the people. I am guessing that the names were the Western pronunciations, but that didn't make them any easier for me to remember. It almost became easier for me to remember people by what they were wearing instead of their name. Quite honestly all that I knew for certain was that one province was allied with another province and all of them were vying for power while trying not to get defeated by Burma.

One hundred forty minutes later I probably couldn't name more than one or two characters from the movie, but that confusion didn't take away from the overall spectacle of the film. Almost everyone was dressed in these colorful costumes that were amazing and I can't say that I have seen too many movies that have battle scenes involving elephants. Plus all of these events took place before Jamestown was even founded. American history was yet to happen, when these events were current.

 
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