Although "The Lady," a feature film on Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, opened as scheduled, no one anticipated its release would coincide with the democracy leader's release from house arrest, as well as her election to a seat in Burma's parliament.
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The film was welcomed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who participated in a panel discussion on Suu Kyi, along with director Luc Besson and lead actress Michelle Yeoh.
"I did tell her in one of our recent telephone conversations she was moving from an icon to a politician," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Having made, sort of, the same journey, to some extent, I know that that's not easy. Because now you go to a parliament and you start compromising which is what democracy is all about."
The film came out as scheduled, but no one anticipated that - almost simultaneously - Suu Kyi would be freed from house arrest and poised to take a seat in Burma's parliament. That the film's release coincides with Suu Kyi's election to parliament is coincidental, according Besson.
Luc Besson's "The Lady" traces Suu Kyi's battle against oppression, recounting her bravery going back to 1947, when her pro-democracy father, Gen. Aung San, was killed by his opponents. Suu Kyi was two years old at the time.<!--IMAGE-LEFT-->
Decades later, Suu Kyi was a housewife in England and the mother of two boys. She traveled back to Burma to tend to her ailing mother. She expected to return within a couple of weeks but never did.
Instead, Suu Kyi became a political activist. In 1988, addressing a half-million people at a mass rally in Rangoon, she called for democracy. That speech, captured in Besson's film, was a challenge for lead actress Michelle Yeoh, who learned Burmese in eight months.
"That was the first time she spoke to her people to make them understand that she was her father's daughter," Yeoh says. "She is here for them and even though, yes, she married an Englishman, even though she's lived away from her country, her heart was always with them."
A year later, Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, where she remained for 15 years.
Besson says he had to recreate Suu Kyi's life in captivity with little information.
"She is under house arrest. You can't go in Burma, except as a tourist so it was very difficult to get the information," he says. "So we recreated the house with 200 pictures. We went on Google Earth, we measured everything, the distance from the lake, everything. So we recreated the exact same house, same curtains, same piano, same everything."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton watched the movie before meeting Suu Kyi for the first time.
"This is a terrific movie, one that I had the great privilege on watching on my way to Burma," she says. "And I particularly would like to thank the director for that honor. Movies have such a powerful voice in our culture, in every culture."
"The Lady" is also a love story. It explores Suu Kyi's physical separation from her husband, Michael Aris, who died of cancer in England while his wife was under house arrest in Burma.
The film and Michelle Yeoh, who transforms herself into Suu Kyi, offer audiences a good look at the Nobel Laureate's unbounded sacrifice.
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