The Lady – review
The Lady: 'a love story that shows exemplary courage'.
The eponymous lady is Aung San Suu Kyi, the brave, charismatic Burmese dissident and non-violent proponent of democracy, who was nominated for the Nobel peace prize that she won in 1991 by another of the great political dissidents of our time, Vaclav Havel. The deeply moving film unfolds in flashback from 1998, when her husband, the Oxford don Michael Aris, is diagnosed with terminal cancer but refused a visa for a final reunion in Rangoon by the vindictive military government that had been holding her under house arrest.
There are vivid scenes of life in Burma, but the movie is neither a biography nor, except in a broad sense, a political film. We don't get any significant account of Suu Kyi's political development and inner life over the years after the moral leadership of her country was thrust upon her in 1988. The film is essentially about the love between Suu Kyi and Michael and the exemplary courage, resolution and dedication to democracy they showed over the years in the face of a totalitarian regime nearly as mad as North Korea's. Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis are impressive.
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