Brave performance here by Patricia Arquette, making up somewhat for any lack there may arguably have been in her being cast for the part. The rest of the cast as well as the photography keeps the film at an acceptable level. Not so the music from Hans Zimmer, which, as often happens in other films with his music, one senses the plagiarism as he wanders about from cuasi-Isham to almost Vangelis forms; Boorman's directing was rather loose at times and some poor editing did not help. Notwithstanding all this, the film maintains interest precisely because it is Burma now Myanmar which is the true protagonist of the unfolding story not the actors. It is the tragedy of Myanmar, hardly ever in the headlines, that keeps interest for the discerning viewer.
A second viewing of this film recently confirmed this way of watching the film for me.
I was in Burma (then) in 1971: rebuilt Japanese war vehicles converted into little buses ran the streets of Rangoon; nearly a quarter of a century later Boorman was filming the same vehicles! From the fabulous insult of Shwé Dagon north to Pagan and Mandalay and east to Karen country around the lake at Inlé, repression was evident at all times. The poverty of the filthy streets in the capital with open drains and sewers .. and amidst all this the incredibly beautiful British colonial architecture of the Government house presiding over the mess. The Shwé Dagon pagoda displays that magnificent heritage of 10th and 11th Century Burma as well as many others around the country, but is an insult to the peoples striving to live in the ruins of a despotic régime.
If Boorman sought to illustrate this, pity indeed he did not do it 25 years earlier. But whilst the mixture of races Indians, Bangladeshis, Laotians, Karens and other indigenous Burmese races continue to suffer, but the repression does not affect interests of other nations, above all the US, there is no Nobel Prize which will change the course of events, and no film will do it either. With its back to the world, shut in inside its frontiers, the tottering régime stumbles on in no direction, stagnating in its own mire, and shunning anything anyone may say or do about the situation.
So you can see that my interpretation of the film is rather tainted, a very personal point of view. But do not be dissuaded: the story line maintains a certain coherency, though at times Patricia Arquette running and running and running at times had me almost laughing.
A second viewing of this film recently confirmed this way of watching the film for me.
I was in Burma (then) in 1971: rebuilt Japanese war vehicles converted into little buses ran the streets of Rangoon; nearly a quarter of a century later Boorman was filming the same vehicles! From the fabulous insult of Shwé Dagon north to Pagan and Mandalay and east to Karen country around the lake at Inlé, repression was evident at all times. The poverty of the filthy streets in the capital with open drains and sewers .. and amidst all this the incredibly beautiful British colonial architecture of the Government house presiding over the mess. The Shwé Dagon pagoda displays that magnificent heritage of 10th and 11th Century Burma as well as many others around the country, but is an insult to the peoples striving to live in the ruins of a despotic régime.
If Boorman sought to illustrate this, pity indeed he did not do it 25 years earlier. But whilst the mixture of races Indians, Bangladeshis, Laotians, Karens and other indigenous Burmese races continue to suffer, but the repression does not affect interests of other nations, above all the US, there is no Nobel Prize which will change the course of events, and no film will do it either. With its back to the world, shut in inside its frontiers, the tottering régime stumbles on in no direction, stagnating in its own mire, and shunning anything anyone may say or do about the situation.
So you can see that my interpretation of the film is rather tainted, a very personal point of view. But do not be dissuaded: the story line maintains a certain coherency, though at times Patricia Arquette running and running and running at times had me almost laughing.