There’s a moment in the King and I when Yul Brynner, playing a king who’s just been told by a schoolteacher that he’s wrong about something, doesn’t yell. He goes still. You watch a man who’s never once been contradicted try to figure out what to do with that feeling. Everyone remembers the big ballroom dance, the hoop skirts, the row of children lined up by height. What you should really watch for is that stillness, because it’s the best thing in the movie, and it’s why this one has held up so much better than most musicals from its era.
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