Though its heart is in the right place, this biopic of Burmese democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi never really does justice to its subject
One of those agonisingly well-intentioned films whose heart is in the right place, but everything else is wrong. Michelle Yeoh plays (but ultimately fails to illuminate the enigma of) Aung San Suu Kyi, the calm and dignified Burmese democracy campaigner, who for years was confined to house arrest in Rangoon by a brutal and reactionary military junta, and met their bullying threats with non-violence. David Thewlis plays her British husband, the Oxford academic Dr Michael Aris, who had to leave his beloved wife behind in Burma and was finally reduced, poignantly, to waiting by the phone for news. The central, painful moment of drama comes when Aris is diagnosed with inoperable cancer, but the junta still refuses to let him come to Burma for a final reunion; instead they cynically attempt to use his illness as a lever to dislodge this troublesome revolutionary figurehead. They offer Aung San Suu Kyi a visa to leave Burma to see him. Aung knows full well they would never allow her back; she chooses instead her political destiny and stays put. Luc Besson's film, with its "TV movie of the week" aesthetic, never does full justice to the heartwrenching agony of this final decision, and the international politics of the matter are passed over pretty lightly. I recommend instead Anders Østergaard's 2009 documentary Burma VJ, about the continuing courage of Burma's democracy campaigners.