The Road to Mandalay

Directed by Midi Z

Starring: Kai Ko, Ke-Xi Wu

Country: Taiwan,Cina, Myanmar, Germania, Francia

Year: 2016

Author review: Roberto Matteucci

Click Here for Italian Version

“Mille bath, no burmese kyat.”

Thailand is a country with high economic growth. Its GDP is USD 1.299 billion (1), compared to USD 287.95 billion in Myanmar. (2)

There is practically no unemployment in Bangkok and tourist areas. Instead, in neighbouring Myanmar, unemployment and low wages are a civil catastrophe.

The two countries have a long common border, kilometres without surveillance, easy to overcome.

In Bangkok, the problem of Burmese emigrants is strongly perceived. They find employment in a short time but create disagreements among the locals. Furthermore, police behaviour toward illegal immigration is quite brutal.

The film, The Road to Mandalay by director Midi Z, born in Myanmar and moved to Taiwan as a teenager, narrates the human drama of a couple in the environment of the Burmese immigration. The Road to Mandalay was presented at the 73 Venice Film Festival.

“I, too, was born in Burma and moved to Taiwan, so I had a similar path to the film story. It is a true story which happened in 1992 and concerns two illegal migrants, a boy and a girl, who entered Thailand to work. After three years they returned to the motherland to get married, but after three days of marriage, he killed her and then himself. The reason was that the girl wanted to return to Thailand, while he did not. From this happening, I started to narrate the story of The Road to Mandalay. From Burma there are three million workers who move to Thailand to work, about two million are illegal.” (3)

In the first shot, there is a river and two teenagers emerge from the forest. A dinghy is waiting for them. They are two immigrants, trying to get to Thailand. The slave traders organize the escapes. A group of illegal joins, a truck takes them on board, the lowest prices are those in the boot.

They can only reach Bangkok thanks to the corrupt Thai police.

Guo is naïve, but is a good adolescent, He works and saves to return to Myanmar. He has no ambition.

Different is Lian Quing. She seeks a better life, fulfilment, well-being. Guo is in love with Lian Quing. He would like to come back to his homeland, so he pushes her to accept a modest existence.

The human theme is represented by a young couple.

The social one is the harsh experience of aliens in Bangkok.

They are hired in a factory far from the capital. They work a lot, they can even send money to their family. Security inside the plant is poor. When a labourer is wounded in a leg, the management gives him a little cash.

The author depicts other subjects related to irregular immigration.

The first is prostitution:

“Prostitution is the only way to climb the social ladder, but showing a fat old client in that scene would have been too cruel. I preferred to use symbolism to suggest what usually happens rather than showing it. But what it sees could also be a nightmare, perhaps for Guo, induced by the use of amphetamines." (4)

Prostitution is the easiest shortcut for the desperate. Lian Quing's roommates are whores and earn a lot without spending endless hours on an assembly line. Lian tries but has a disgusting reaction at the last moment.

The second is drugs:

“Amphetamine is very cheap in Thailand, half of the price in Europe. Unfortunately, it is also of worse quality, so the workers use it to work without sleeping and often the drug makes them crazy. I had a classmate, arrested by the police, who was addicted to amphetamine and crystal meth: when he ran out of it, he returned to Burma, and he was always worse off mentally." (5)

Drugs, crystal meth, are further topic already treated with by Midi Z in Ice Poison. Hallucinogens are the psychological support for a pitiful life. They alienate the head and mitigate the distance from home.

The language is linear but direct. The director films with a fixed camera. Many scenes have a slow, reflective movement: the two boys are seated next to each other in a tuk-tuk or on a pick-up, framed from the front, rarely speaking. It is the sense of their bond. It is the director's characteristic to describe the interactions of two people and their difficulties. In Ice Poison, he used the same minimalist dialogue and limited body sexuality.

Midi Z inserts unreal sequences, he wants to prove the impossible reality of immigrants. Lian Quing enters a room and sees a snake on the bed. Another one is the copulation with an alligator.

The mind of a distressed stowaway is restricted by suffering.

They can discover help to their anguish only in imagination and illusory drugs. When misery prevails, also the relationships lose humanity.

1 https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/thailand/

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/burma/

2 http://www.asiaexpress.it/interviste/interviste-cinema/1271-intervista-a-midi-z.html

3 http://www.asiaexpress.it/interviste/interviste-cinema/1271-intervista-a-midi-z.html

4 http://www.asiaexpress.it/interviste/interviste-cinema/1271-intervista-a-midi-z.html