Michelle Yeoh (left), who plays the legendary Suu Kyi in 'The Lady', with director Luc Besson.
One moment I said to myself “wish I could understand Burmese”. And the next moment, I thought “what I have seen so far in life seems so little, so less”. Of course, there were several other thoughts that came to my mind when I watched the movie The Lady.
In what seems like the first open-air theatre movie I ever witnessed in my life, I somehow felt my purpose of coming to Doha was justified when I visited the last day of the Doha Tribecca Film Festival. I love movies, but I had never been to a movie festival of this stature. What a debut it was!.. watching the yet-to-be released Luc Besson’s movie (slated for December first week release) was simply amazing.
Looking at Michelle Yeoh and Besson on stage was a life-time experience. I was impressed by Besson when I watched his Taxi series and the admiration was raised a notch higher when I recently watched Leon: The Professional, an action movie starring Jean Reno and Natalie Portman.
The open-air theatre located next to the Arabian Sea is a treat and the temporary structures that have gone into making this film festival were remarkable. Several high-profile movie dignitaries from the Arab World and Hollywood were present at the five-day festival which began on October 25.
Luc Besson and Michelle Yeoh with Amanda Palmer, the person behind the Doha film festival.
It was about 8.20 in the night on the last day of the festival and I somehow had this feeling I was in for a treat as the movie, titled The Lady and based on a true story of the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, began. It starts off with conversations of Suu Kyi’s father, the legendary Aung San, father of the modern Burmese army (the one responsible for the freedom of Burma from the British Empire in 1947) and his little daughter. Suu Kyi is all but two when Aung San along with his fellow men is killed by his rivals. Then begins the long rule of the now-infamous military regime which got worse in the late 1980s.
The Lady is about the recollection of the events that took place by Suu Kyi’s husband Michael Aris as he looks at some old photographs. The story gathers pace from 1988 when Suu Kyi, settled in Oxford with her husband and two children, gets a phone call from Burma. She decides to visit her ailing mother at Rangoon (now Yangoon).
At the same time, the student uprising is gathering pace. The 8888 uprising (it started on August 8, 1988), as it is famously known, doesn’t go very well with the military regime and they resort to public firing. Suu Kyi is reminded of her father and his incomplete mission of making Burma a democratic country, and she decides to fight for democracy against the hostile military environment. She will be house detained as the government fears killing her would cause public repercussions and would make her a martyr like her father. Over the next few years, there is constant pressure on her to give up her mission and go back to Britain to be with her family. She refuses and her husband takes up her cause with a gamut of international organisations. He also files an application for Nobel Peace Prize, which she is eventually awarded in 1991. However, she is able to only listen to it as the acceptance speech is given by her son Alex. Michael and the two kids make a few visits to Burma to visit her, the final visit being in 1995 when the Burmese government revokes the passports of the two children and refuses visa to Aris.
In spite of winning the elections hands down, Suu Kyi is still kept under house arrest. Not to be bogged down, she embodies this adversity with a hope for a new dawn in Burma. The inhuman treatment met to some of the students who are part of the National League of Democracy was first witnessed in John Rambo or Rambo IV (the last of the Rambo movies). Her perseverance for the betterment of her countrymen makes her stay away from the family. Aris meanwhile is suffering from prostate cancer and dies at 53r in 1999.
Born in 1945 in Rangoon to the famous Aung San and Khin Kyi. After her father’s death, Suu Kyi travelled extensively with her mother when the latter was appointed as the Ambassador of India and Nepal in 1960. She was educated in New Delhi’s Convent of Jesus and Mary School and graduated from the Capital’s Lady Shri Ram College with a degree in politics. She married Dr Michael Iris, a scholar of Tibetan culture and Himalayan studies and a British national, in 1972. Having secured a B.A degree in Oxford in 1969, she earned a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1985. She returned to Burma in 1988 and was instrumental in forcing the junta to go for election in 1990. However, she was placed under house arrest, and the chronicles of the same are the basis of the movie The Lady. She was finally released in 2010 and her fight for democracy is on going.
Watching the movie, reminded me of the adage “Behind every successful man, there is a great woman”. I paraphrased it to “behind every great woman, there is not one but two great men” — Suu Kyi’s father, who was instrumental in her making that conscious decision to take up the fight against the dictatorship, and her husband, who in spite of being a foreigner, emphasised her purpose and supported her till he breathed his last.
The Lady is a love story in some sense of a couple who shared a common vision for the betterment of one’s country and people — no matter how separated they were, no matter how difficult the means of communication barring letters and occasional phone calls were.
The movie shifts to 2007 and the scenes of Buddhist monks walking in large numbers come to the residence of Suu Kyi. She raises up the fenced gate, and up in the air goes a flower with a hope of a new dawn in Burma.
Michelle Yeoh, playing the role of Suu Kyi, captures the essence of “The Lady” in each frame. A few unforgettable scenes are the ones where Suu Kyi gives her first mass speech to the students in 1988 at the ‘Shwedagon Pagoda’, the moment when I wished I knew Burmese. And the second, when she plays the piano as her son is gives the acceptance speech for Nobel Peace Prize. Set in the most serious theme, the director unintentionally comes up with some humour on portrayal of some of the characters.
Directed by Luc Besson, The Lady is scheduled to be released in the first week of December this year and could be a sure contender for the Oscars.
well written once again. envy your opportunity to view the event from such close quarters.
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