Bangkok Post
A scene from the Luc Besson film, ‘‘The Lady’’, starring Michelle Yeoh, above, as Aung San Suu Kyi.
It is also available on pirated DVD in Myanmar.
Luc Besson, the director, said he did not want to focus on her life as a politician and instead he chose to portray The Lady on a very personal level, focusing on how a woman as a politician deals with her family life.
I went to see The Lady with a big group of my Myanmar friends; some were actors who actually played roles in the film such as General Aung San, General Than Shwe and an NLD member. Others in the group were filmmakers from Myanmar who happened to be in Chiang Mai for the Lifescape Film Festival organised by Payap University.
After the first few minutes, I was surprised to hear my friends giggling. The Lady is supposed to be a serious movie about contemporary Myanmar history _ a history these very people were a part of, about events in which they had participated and which eventually drove them into exile. They were supposed to be crying, not laughing. What was going on here?
As the movie progressed, I came to understand why my friends thought The Lady was a joke.
Luc Besson may have intended to make The Lady personal. It is not wrong to focus on the tragic love and incredible life of one woman who has stood up against one of the most brutal regimes in the world. What was disappointing about the film was not the plot, the acting or the cinematography, but Mr Besson's cultural ignorance and misrepresentation of Myanmar's history.
Below are examples of what the Myanmar actors who played roles in the film, feel reflected the cultural ignorance of the director.
On Mrs Suu Kyi's personal life, The Lady gets perspectives about her personality wrong. She appears to be crying a lot, which was not quite the case in reality. On Aug 26, 1988 when she speaks in front of a large crowd at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, she appears nervous and tells her husband that this is her first ever public speech. In fact, this was her second public speech and she was confident enough to do this without the presence of her husband, Michael Aris.
The most serious historical inaccuracy lay in the fact that Michael Aris was not even there during the mass demonstration in Yangon. Mrs Suu Kyi had come to Myanmar to nurse her sick mother; her family had not followed her. She was there alone during the protest.
While placing emphasis on the role of Michael Aris in her life, the film simultaneously makes her look less intelligent.
Other things which the Myanmar audience sees as a misrepresentation of Burmese culture include the lip-kissing scenes between Mrs Suu Kyi and her husband, which appear often in the movie.
Second is the scene where protesters of the Saffron Revolution walk to her house and stop there. Mrs Suu Kyi walks to the gate of her house and steps up above the gate to throw flowers to bless the monks, and the monks clap their hands. In reality, Mrs Suu Kyi opened the gate surrounded with security and paid her respects to the monks. My friends from Myanmar complained that, ''We Burmese never kiss publicly, and Burmese people never stand above monks.''
Luc Besson may have wanted to dramatise Mrs Suu Kyi's love and family life, but in so doing he has portrayed the Myanmar people as ''savage and primitive''. Gen Than Shwe is presented as a stupid tyrant who believes in fortune-tellers. It is true that Myanmar's generals seek the advice of fortune-tellers, but they are not stupid enough to believe in everything these seers tell them.
In the scene where they take NLD members to sweep for landmines, I too could not help but laugh to see the director portray Myanmar soldiers half-naked, with tattoos covering their faces. Some of my friends were riled by this. 'The army may be brutal, but they are not that savage. That scene makes them look as if they were from the Stone Age.''
Pho Zaw, a Burmese migrant who stars as Gen Aung San, said he discovered many inaccuracies. For example, the sign of the NLD party that was written in Burmese contained misspellings. He also thought the scene when he gets assassinated has been wrongly represented. He said he told the director that this was wrong, but the reaction from Luc Besson was: ''This is a feature film, not a documentary.''
To me, personally, one of the most disturbing aspects of the film is that Michael Aris seems to play a very important role in Mrs Suu Kyi's political life i.e. being with her during her first public speech, being present all the time during the student demonstrations, and lobbying for Mrs Suu Kyi's Nobel Peace Prize. The movie also presents him as a man unable to do anything when his wife is not around to cook and care for the family. It is true that this is not a documentary, but at least, could not the director have respected the fact that Mrs Suu Kyi is an intelligent woman? She has chosen her path. She would never ask the security in front of her house, ''Can you speak English?'' She is not a woman who cries all the time because her family has been torn apart. By making Michael Aris more important, Luc Besson has made Mrs Suu Kyi less intelligent. She is depicted as a simple housewife whose life is turned upside down.
In the end, however, no matter how much cultural ignorance the director displays, how much he misrepresents Burmese culture, or how he displays Myanmar soldiers as savages, I must thank Luc Besson for making this film.
Michelle Yeoh's performance is outstanding. And despite the flaws, I hope the film generates a sense of awareness for this corner of the world in which many problems are still waiting to be solved.
The long-awaited film The Lady, a biopic of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has now been shown in Thailand.
A scene from the Luc Besson film, ‘‘The Lady’’, starring Michelle Yeoh, above, as Aung San Suu Kyi.Luc Besson, the director, said he did not want to focus on her life as a politician and instead he chose to portray The Lady on a very personal level, focusing on how a woman as a politician deals with her family life.
I went to see The Lady with a big group of my Myanmar friends; some were actors who actually played roles in the film such as General Aung San, General Than Shwe and an NLD member. Others in the group were filmmakers from Myanmar who happened to be in Chiang Mai for the Lifescape Film Festival organised by Payap University.
After the first few minutes, I was surprised to hear my friends giggling. The Lady is supposed to be a serious movie about contemporary Myanmar history _ a history these very people were a part of, about events in which they had participated and which eventually drove them into exile. They were supposed to be crying, not laughing. What was going on here?
As the movie progressed, I came to understand why my friends thought The Lady was a joke.
Luc Besson may have intended to make The Lady personal. It is not wrong to focus on the tragic love and incredible life of one woman who has stood up against one of the most brutal regimes in the world. What was disappointing about the film was not the plot, the acting or the cinematography, but Mr Besson's cultural ignorance and misrepresentation of Myanmar's history.
Below are examples of what the Myanmar actors who played roles in the film, feel reflected the cultural ignorance of the director.
On Mrs Suu Kyi's personal life, The Lady gets perspectives about her personality wrong. She appears to be crying a lot, which was not quite the case in reality. On Aug 26, 1988 when she speaks in front of a large crowd at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, she appears nervous and tells her husband that this is her first ever public speech. In fact, this was her second public speech and she was confident enough to do this without the presence of her husband, Michael Aris.
The most serious historical inaccuracy lay in the fact that Michael Aris was not even there during the mass demonstration in Yangon. Mrs Suu Kyi had come to Myanmar to nurse her sick mother; her family had not followed her. She was there alone during the protest.
While placing emphasis on the role of Michael Aris in her life, the film simultaneously makes her look less intelligent.
Other things which the Myanmar audience sees as a misrepresentation of Burmese culture include the lip-kissing scenes between Mrs Suu Kyi and her husband, which appear often in the movie.
Second is the scene where protesters of the Saffron Revolution walk to her house and stop there. Mrs Suu Kyi walks to the gate of her house and steps up above the gate to throw flowers to bless the monks, and the monks clap their hands. In reality, Mrs Suu Kyi opened the gate surrounded with security and paid her respects to the monks. My friends from Myanmar complained that, ''We Burmese never kiss publicly, and Burmese people never stand above monks.''
Luc Besson may have wanted to dramatise Mrs Suu Kyi's love and family life, but in so doing he has portrayed the Myanmar people as ''savage and primitive''. Gen Than Shwe is presented as a stupid tyrant who believes in fortune-tellers. It is true that Myanmar's generals seek the advice of fortune-tellers, but they are not stupid enough to believe in everything these seers tell them.
In the scene where they take NLD members to sweep for landmines, I too could not help but laugh to see the director portray Myanmar soldiers half-naked, with tattoos covering their faces. Some of my friends were riled by this. 'The army may be brutal, but they are not that savage. That scene makes them look as if they were from the Stone Age.''
Pho Zaw, a Burmese migrant who stars as Gen Aung San, said he discovered many inaccuracies. For example, the sign of the NLD party that was written in Burmese contained misspellings. He also thought the scene when he gets assassinated has been wrongly represented. He said he told the director that this was wrong, but the reaction from Luc Besson was: ''This is a feature film, not a documentary.''
To me, personally, one of the most disturbing aspects of the film is that Michael Aris seems to play a very important role in Mrs Suu Kyi's political life i.e. being with her during her first public speech, being present all the time during the student demonstrations, and lobbying for Mrs Suu Kyi's Nobel Peace Prize. The movie also presents him as a man unable to do anything when his wife is not around to cook and care for the family. It is true that this is not a documentary, but at least, could not the director have respected the fact that Mrs Suu Kyi is an intelligent woman? She has chosen her path. She would never ask the security in front of her house, ''Can you speak English?'' She is not a woman who cries all the time because her family has been torn apart. By making Michael Aris more important, Luc Besson has made Mrs Suu Kyi less intelligent. She is depicted as a simple housewife whose life is turned upside down.
In the end, however, no matter how much cultural ignorance the director displays, how much he misrepresents Burmese culture, or how he displays Myanmar soldiers as savages, I must thank Luc Besson for making this film.
Michelle Yeoh's performance is outstanding. And despite the flaws, I hope the film generates a sense of awareness for this corner of the world in which many problems are still waiting to be solved.
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