The Lady is the story of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese lady whose father died during a military coup in Burma when she was young, who spent most of her life away from her home country (for fairly obvious reasons) and who upon returning to care for her sick mother became a political figure that the country rallied behind in the fight for democracy. During all this she had to endure years of house arrest, separation from her husband and children who were denied access to her, even when her husband became ill himself. She was by all accounts a remarkable woman who earned herself the nobel peace price for her efforts. The Military continue to harass her and little has changed in Burma, but the fight continues.
She is a woman who deserves a great film about her life and struggles. Unfortunately though this film is not it. I don't quite know where to begin with the faults of this film, so I'll just dive straight in. Firstly on a general note, for a film that concerns itself with a very political issue, the politics in this film are incredibly lightweight. Indeed pretty much the only things we are told are that the military dictatorship kill people, and that the Democratic party want democracy. Now obviously I, and probably everyone else watching this film, side with the democratic party, for the simple reason that they are peaceful instead of murderers. However there are always two sides to every story, with both the military dictatorship and the democratic party having deeper policies than those on display on the screen. I'm not asking for a full manifesto, just some context and vague ideas would be nice.
Another thing this fails on is basic logic. One example that I found infuriating throughout the film was the language thing. Now I'm not fussed what language a film is in, as long as it is a constant thing. This film begins in Burmese with English subtitles, as the young Aung San Suu Kyi is talking to her father in Burma, this is fine, it makes sense. Then we cut to England where they're speaking English, again, no issues here. However later in the film when she returns home to visit her mother she is talking English to her mother. Both her and her mother speak fluent Burmese, and her mother having lived in Burma all her life would surely be more comfortable talking in Burmese, why on earth would they be talking in a language that was neither of their first language. Then at various times Suu Kyi would be talking to other people in English and Burmese, and at the end of the film, when writing down quotations from Gandhi around the houseshe chooses to write them in English, when the only people besides herself who are going to see them are the Burmese soldiers, most of whom don't speak English. It just seemed completely illogical.
It's not just the language they're speaking, it's the languages they seem to understand. At one moment in the film, Suu Kyi's husband is asking her to translate what the Dictator is saying on the television (he's announcing his resignation), presumably because he doesn't speak English, but in the next scene he's intently listening to his wife speaking in Burmese at a rally with no translator in sight, seemingly understanding every word. It seems as though the initial lack of understanding was only included so that the audience wouldn't read the subtitles telling us that the General was resigning. Like I Said, illogical and infuriating.
Other faults include, but are not limited to, the script. It's really lightweight and fluffy. Considering that this is a pretty dark and serious issue, I never once felt the seriousness of the issue from the script, besides early on when a soldier shoots a member of the public in a hospital, I never got a sense of the weight of the issue. It also included numerous references to Gandhi, which just seemed a little ham fisted, as though we couldn't possibly make the link between the two matters on our own. Even some of the acting was bad. I'm not saying that the people in this film are bad actors, far from it. Michelle Yeoh is a wonderful actress, and is usually wonderful. In this film she is easily the best thing in it, but somehow her performance feels flat, I suspect because of the films other weaknesses. David Thewlis too I usually enjoy his acting, but his portrayal of an Oxford Professor turned political activist simply felt like a caricature that you'd portray in charades or something.
This film was very disappointing in so much as it didn't do the cause it was trying to help promote any favour whatsoever. And I think that was one of the reasons I disliked it as much as I did. Aung San Suu Kyi deserves much better than this.
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