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Myanmar, Taiwan · 2016
1h 48m
Director Midi Z
Starring Wu Ke-Xi, Kai Ko
Genre Drama
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Lianqing and Guo are two Burmese immigrants who flee their country’s civil war and try to begin anew in the bustling cities of Thailand. Their relationship is sweet, but reality is bleak, especially for Lianqing, who struggles to obtain her Thai ID in this compelling migration drama by Myanmar-born director Midi Z.
Midi Z’s control of mood, pace and performance builds an engrossing drama that works on the intimate level of a moving human tragedy whilst also providing an insight into the much bigger picture of the problems and heartaches facing the people of Burma.
Compassionate and honestly told, it is a real empathy machine of a movie.
The Hollywood Reporter by Clarence Tsui
With his nod to the sparse mise-en-scene of his mentor Hou Hsiao-hsien (who produced his first short film Huashin Incident) and the philosophical reflections embodied in the films of Edward Yang — there's also a certain, faint echo of A Brighter Summer Day in the narrative here — Z has proved that the spirit of the New Taiwan Cinema remains very much alive.
Both Wu Ke-xi and Kai Ko were phenomenal in their performances and Midi Z has probably in Mandalay his best work so far.
Combining a realist setting with a dreamlike style, The Road to Mandalay could easily have become a well-intentioned polemic, yet thanks to Midi Z’s brilliant command of visual metaphors and compassion for his subjects it’s elevated into a an unnervingly immediate portrait of the human cost of displacement.
Midi Z has now delivered a tightly edited and emotionally rewarding drama that places him in the top rank of Asian social realists.
I found this parable a tad pokey for my tastes, almost sleep-inducing in the middle acts. The title promises a picture with more momentum, a longer “road” journey, and I was disappointed when it settled into how hard it is to get work and get by in Bangkok.
The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide
A combination of tender details – the way Guo carefully picks the fibres from his girlfriend’s skin after a gruelling shift at the factory – and a strikingly surreal approach to a scene in which Lianqing prostitutes herself for the first time makes this unflinching picture a notable addition to the ever-swelling list of films that deal with migration.
The Film Stage by Zhuo-Ning Su
Even at its least convincing, The Road to Mandalay is a film firmly grounded in humanity and the many unpleasant truths about our world. Neither topically nor technically does it aim for the populist or fantastical.
See the music. Hear the dance.