Film Review
On the face of it, Luc Besson would appear to be the least likely
person to recount the real-life experiences of Burma's pro-democracy
crusader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Besson's
field of expertise is showy crowd-pleasers which have immediate visual
impact but very little in the way of depth and dramatic realism.
He gave up any pretence to be a serious film auteur after
Le
Grand bleu (1988) - ironically his best film - was mauled to
death by the critics; since, he has largely concerned himself with
mainstream cinema, in the Hollywood-style blockbuster mould, be it in
the role of producer or director. What made Besson's decision to
direct
The Lady even more
improbable was that this comes in the slipstream of his
Minimoys films, impossibly cute
fodder for toddlers that somehow proved to be major box office
winners. The press reaction to Besson's ambitious biopic was
predictably hostile, although on this occasion much of the criticism is
entirely justified. Having watched the film it is painfully
evident that Luc Besson (arguably French cinema's most commercially minded film
director) was probably not the best person to give us a guided tour of
the life of Aung San Suu Kyi.
And you don't have to wait that long until your worst fears about the
film are confirmed. Within the first fifteen minutes, Besson's
aversion for understatement and his tendency for pumping dramatic excess
into every frame is painfully evident; any hopes that we may have
had that
The Lady was going
to offer some serious insights into the psychology and life experiences
of an exceptional world figure is pretty well decimated by the film's
midpoint (although, to be fair, the film does improve marginally
thereafter). Besson's attempts to play the auteur (through such
clumsy devices as the narrative flashback, which merely weaken the
storyline and give the spectator a headache) help to draw our attention
away from the weaknesses in the screenwriting, but do little to assist
the film's coherence. Eric Serra's score is just as heavy-handed
- this ladles on the sentimentality to such a degree that the film's
more genuinely stirring moments (and there are quite a few of these
towards the end of the film) are rendered slightly false and
unconvincing.
The Lady is by no stretch of
the imagination a serious biopic. For all its lavish production
values and cinematic grandeur, it does not even begin to scratch the
surface of Aung San Suu Kyi's complex persona and account for her
remarkable personal resolve and determination to see democracy take
root in her country. Rather, it is more in the line of an
old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, a powerfully moving tale of love and
selfless commitment in which two ordinary people have their lives torn
apart by extraordinary events. If Besson and his screenwriter
Rebecca Frayn had reined in their ambitions a little and focussed more
on the human story that lies at the heart of the drama
The Lady might have been something
very special. As it is, it is just too showy with its grand
set-pieces, too simplistic in its depiction of both Burma's political
crises and the protagonists' feelings to ring true - in spite of a
compelling central performance from Michelle Yeoh and the evident
sincerity which she and her director bring to the film.
The Lady's one saving grace is
that, being an unashamed piece of populist cinema rather than an
obscure art house offering, it has helped to spread awareness of the
plight of Aung San Suu Kyi and her troubled country, which can be no
bad thing. For those who like their film dramas to have some meat
on them, the film is somewhat lacking, unable to get much beyond
Manichean simplification, making its heroine out to be a latter-day
saint whilst portraying her opponents as little more than pantomime
villains. How frustrating that the film is content merely to rely
on tacky sentiment-milking instead of plunging us into a plausible
semblance of the emotional abyss that Aung San Suu Kyi shared with her
husband Michael Aris as they fought for what what they believed to be
right. The real story of Aung San Suu Kyi is one that has yet to
be told. Besson's film is a mere
hors d'oeuvre for the feast that is
yet to come.
© James Travers 2011
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Luc Besson film:
Le Dernier combat (1983)
Film Synopsis
It is a love story almost without precedent, involving a man, Michael
Aris, and an exceptional woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, who sacrificed her
own personal happiness for the good of her people. In spite of
the traumas these two people experienced - their separation, their
ill-treatment by Burma's brutal political regime - nothing could lessen
their love. It is also the story of a woman who was to become one
of the most enduring symbols of a nation's fight for
democracy...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.