The Lady

Last night I watched a movie called « The Lady ». I never read summaries, or grades or critics a film has been given before I watched it. The only thing I look at is the poster. If I like the poster I will watch the movie; if not, I won’t. This is a very peculiar way to determine whether you will watch or not a movie, I know. But critics, grades and summaries have the tendency to spoil the suspense. So I chose to watch “The Lady” thanks to its poster. By looking at the poster I knew just enough about the movie: Aung San Suu Kyi.

Indeed, the movie is about Aung San Suu Kyi. This made me quickly understand that the film was biographical. If you have never heard about her (which is very unlikely), Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese opposition politician and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma.

I really enjoyed that movie. I have to say that I am a fan of biographical movies (some examples of other great biographical movies: J. Edgar, The Iron Lady, A Dangerous Method, The Queen, The Young Victoria [movie that gave me the will to write my thesis about Queen Victoria]). They are really true, because everything that is said in these movies is true. Moreover, they are the source of a lot of knowledge because most of the time, these movies depict the life of a big personality, people that have marked the history.  “The Lady” shows how Aung San Suu Kyi was divided between the will of freeing and saving her birth country, Burma and staying and being with her husband (Michael Aris) and her two children. It is an epic love story as well as peaceful quest of a woman being at the core of Burma’s democracy movement.

The movie was directed by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, Leon, The Big Blue). Michelle Yeoh (Aung San Suu Kyi) perfectly plays the duality the woman encounters, being tormented between the distance, long separations she has with her family and the hostile regime Burma is facing.

It is pretty obvious that I really recommend this film to anyone as essential viewing, whether or not you have an interest in political affairs or not. The politics in The Lady is so simply set out and self- explanatory that anyone would understand the issues at hand.