The Lady - Aung San Suu Kyi.

"The Lady" is a worshipful film about the Myanmar opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi by Luc Besson. Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese dissident and pro- democracy leader who is now the opposition leader of Burma. 

The film follows Suu Kyi's long journey towards Burma's Democracy, the years she spent under house arrest, her message of nonviolence in the face of a violently repressive regime, and the sacrifices she made for her political passion.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was played by Michelle Yeoh and referred to as Suu in the movie. The movie starts with a scene which depicts the death of Suu’s father, Aung San, a nationalist hero, who was assassinated by rivals in the Burmese army in 1947, when his daughter(Suu) was a child. Aung San Suu Kyi is first presented as a housewife and a scholar, wife of an academic, Michael Aris, who is a leading western scholar on Bhutanese, Himalayan and Tibetan culture. 

She gets a call that her mother is dying  in Burma and  Suu Kyi returns to Rangoon, Burma to care for her. Her country (Burma)  is ruled by a military junta, at that time.  Back in Burma, Suu Kyi gets shocked by the violent army response to student protests: shooting point-blank into unarmed crowds.

 Being the daughter of the father of Independent Burma, Suu’s presence causes discomfort for the ruthless, paranoid and superstitious generals who rule the country. They wanted to get rid of her, but her prominence and her international connections  prevent them from using the usual violent methods. So, they asks her to leave the country and  when she refuses, she is placed under a house arrest which stretches, in various forms, over decades. 

Initially, her family are allowed to visit her in the house arrest but gradually they are not allowed to make visits based on various excuses.  The film is also a love story, illuminating the remarkable relationship between Suu and her husband. He strives to promote her candidacy for a Nobel Peace Prize hoping that this international title would help loosen the grip upon Suu by the Military Junta and succeeds. 

Their separation is made more painful when Michael is diagnosed of having prostrate cancer. Micheal tries to get a visa to come to Burma but it gets rejected every time.  Suu tries to come out from the house arrest to be by her love's side in the last days of his life but that could mean spilling water over what she and her husband did so far. Micheal dies on his 53rd birthday when Suu is still in house arrest.

The movie does not include very recent developments, so it triggered me to browse and read more about the International heroine.  On the evening of 13 November 2010, Suu Kyi was released from house arrest. The film is reliably inspiring but also frequently unsatisfying.

Burma is a resource-rich country but one of the least developed countries in the world especially due to political instability. Burma is one of the highest rated country in terms of human rights violation and injustice.