[Roofs (Bangkok). Foto Rb]
Midi Z, The Road to Mandalay. Taiwan, 2016. Con Ko Chen-Tung e Wu
Ke-Xi
Young
Burmese Lianqing migrates to Thailand from the town of Lashio in the Shan State
without proper papers, smuggled in by illegal mediators to whom she pays a sum
of money. One of the passengers of the combo car that drives them to Bangkok is
Guo, a young man who takes to her at first sight.
The
two gradually start a relationship. Guo works in a factory away from the cities
in a place where documents are not requested and the police does not seem to interfere.
Lianqing does a number of jobs but she eventually has to quit, due to lack of a
work permit.
Guo
finds her a job in the factory. His plan is to save as much as possible, go
back to Myanmar, marry Lianqing and open a shop. She has a different plan,
she wishes to live in the city and eventually, in order to pay corruption money
for a regular residence permit, she works as a prostitute.
In
the shocking ending scene, Guo kills Lianqing and then commits suicide.
From
a social angle, there are of course several themes which can be related to the
Burmese and Thai situations as well as to world migration. The illegal networks, the
corruption of the police, the difficulty to have a regular life in the host
countries are all topics which have sadly become common in the last few years.
Interestingly,
Midi Z shows the plight of migrants without overtones of didactic conceit and
arrogance, but rather through the eye of the camera levelled to the subjective
experience of each character, so what they do, how they react, and what they
think comes out as natural instead of being presented as the over imposed ideology
of the director.
The
result is a timely combination of document and story in which images play the
dominant role and words are spared.
The
love story takes place with much restraint in an introverted psychological
atmosphere. Even Lianqing’s decision to change her life, and Guo’s anger, are
represented mostly through images. Guo overworks at the furnace of the factory,
almost a kind of hell. Lianqing’s prostitution experience is rendered via
allegory by showing an iguana on the bed that slowly climbs her dressed up
body.
In
an interview, the director reveals that his film is based partly
on the experience of migrants he knows (and he is himself a migrant to Taiwan
where he eventually acquired citizenship), and partly on a true fact which took
place in 1992 when a migrant, after going back to Myanmar, killed his
girlfriend who wanted to return to Thailand against his will. The committed
explanation Midi Z gives for the ending of the film is based on his observation
of behaviour. In his view, it is common in Asia that a girl makes compromise to
reality as Lianqing and some of her friends do in the film. The director also
observes that tragedy comes from the different views of the two characters, and
from the wrong idea that women are considered men’s possession.
The
film is visually rewarding for its scenes of nature and some details of the
processing of raw materials in the factory. Wu attaches depth to her character, and Ko acts energetically
yet in non-narcissistic manner.
A
good film, I think.
PS.
Why is this film called The Road to
Mandalay? How does this title relate to Tod Browning’s 1926 silent film,
to Kipling’s poem Mandalay,
and to Oley Speaks’ song “On the Road to Mandalay” - three texts which have rather
different connotations from Midi Z’s?
[Roberto
Bertoni]
