Worth: $12.00
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Cast:
Aung San Suu Kyi, Thein Sein, Win Htein, Soe Thane
Intro:
...vaguely patronising and exasperating documentary...
The best reason to see On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship is its level of access. Documentarian Karen Stokkendal Poulsen, directing her second film, scores interviews across Myanmar’s political spectrum, from Aung San Suu Kyi to former president Thein Sein, military generals turned politicians as well as colourful characters from the governing National League for Democracy. Technically, the documentary is well constructed, assiduously assembling archival footage from both local and foreign newsreels. And there are some stunningly beautiful postcard shots – including, at the very end, the temple complex at Bagan, thrown in without any exploration of its historical context or place in contemporary Burmese society.
The pretty imagery is unhappily symbolic of this vaguely patronising and exasperating documentary, which adds very little to our understanding of either Aung San Suu Kyi or Myanmar’s tortuous democratic transition. Myanmar itself is painted in Orientalist terms as a superstitious hermit state; loaded words like ‘kingdom’ and ‘throne’ are bandied about in the narration, even though the country is a republic; the constitution is described as a ‘sacred book’, although the national religion is Buddhism. The film sticks subtitles under all its interview subjects: even Aung San Suu Kyi, with her crisp Oxford accent. The disembodied voice narrating events seems, at the beginning, to be Burmese, but is later revealed to belong to the (Danish) director.
On the Inside’s argument is that Aung San Suu Kyi has failed, and Daw Suu is herself subject to ‘gotcha’ techniques to nudge the argument along. The film frontloads an outtake of the interviewer asking her, ‘Can you look me in the eye?’, quick and dirty cinematic shorthand to imply lack of trustworthiness. No comment is included from her at all on developments since 2017, the point at which the most recent Rakhine crisis began, and her international reputation collapsed. In fairness to the filmmakers, it’s possible she refused to discuss those matters – but, if that was the case, it should have been acknowledged.
Of the other interview subjects, politician and Aung San Suu Kyi ally Win Htein is probably the MVP, supplying a freewheeling and irreverent survey of the Myanmar political landscape. From the other side, Soe Thane prosecutes a cogent case that the military has been underestimated. And the film does manage to land a few blows arguing that it was a severe error of judgment to open up the Rakhine crisis to international scrutiny. It also peels back some of the mystery surrounding the ‘court intrigue’ of Myanmar politics, such as the overthrow of parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann, and the assassination of Aung San Suu Kyi’s chief legal advisor.
But there are baffling omissions. The film includes ample footage of Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s official capital since 2005, while barely touching on the weirdness of that city as a place, or reasons for the relocation from Yangon (it was allegedly due to fear of Western intervention and regime change). Coverage of the situation of Rakhine state amounts to a regurgitation of headlines and soundbites, with no examination of the issues at stake. Information is needlessly repeated: for example, the difficulty of changing the Constitution, or the fact that US sanctions are the ‘toughest in the world.’ Finally, there is a fundamental lack of voices from Myanmar, beyond the political elite and a few journalists.
Films about Myanmar are rare enough, and the opportunity to hear from all the country’s political heavyweights pulls this across the line to make it worth seeing. But only just.
