Review: The Lady (2011) film
Directed by French director, Luc Besson, to portray the epic story of the woman who is at the core of Myanmar’s democracy movement.
The Lady is starring Michelle Yeoh, one of Asia’s popular actresses, who played as Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and current State Counsellor of Myanmar, and David Thewlis (popular for his role in Harry Potter series) as her late husband Dr. Michael Aris, an Oxford academic. It is a movie based on true events up to 2007 that captures highs and lows of love story set in the darkness of authoritarianism, and violence in Myanmar throughout years of detention.
The story begins with a flashback of late 1940s when General Aung San, father of Aung San Suu Kyi, was assassinated by the military. She fled to Oxford, England after her father’s death, where she met with Michael Aris and had a beautiful family of two children. During those years, Myanmar was in a period of tyrannical dictatorship under military junta.
In 1988, the news of Suu Kyi’s mother suffering poor heath led her to return back to Myanmar. It was also the timing of the 8888 uprising (nationwide protests for democracy) where she saw many injured people while visiting her mother in the hospital.
As the daughter of assassinated General Aung San, she became figurehead in National League for Democracy (NLD) to support democracy in fight against the military regime. With the support of millions of people, the NLD had a landslide victory in the 1990 election. The military refused to accept the election results. They kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for 15 years and banned her husband and children from visiting Myanmar.
The heartbreaking moment comes when Aris was diagnosed with cancer, however, the military junta still refused to give a final reunion with his wife and denied his visa request. Instead, they offered Aung San Suu Kyi a visa to leave the country to visit her husband.
It was a tormented choice between family and country. She fully understood that they would never allow her to return to Myanmar once she leaves. This led to the heart-wrenching final decision of choosing country to serve her people over her family.
Her husband died in 1999 and she was unable to see him even for one last time.
The Lady is the extraordinary movie that shows viewers the unseen side of their love story in addition to the political affairs and the struggles they had faced. Despite being in long separations, and having a perilously antagonistic dictatorship, their love remains stronger till the very end.
