DMovies - Your platform for thought-provoking cinema

The Road to Mandalay

Wear the shoes of the dirty immigrant: a sobering and harrowing film about the plight of Burmese immigrants living and working in Thailand - in cinemas

Being smuggled illegally into a country is hardly a romantic situation. Yet this is how Lianqing and Guo meet, and they develop profound fondness of each other, despite their very different personalities and the hardship of their predicament. The two Burmese citizens eventually find a job in their chosen destination of Thailand: Lianqing works as a dishwasher in a second-class restaurant, while her male dalliance works long hours in a textile factory.

The Road to Mandalay is not a movie pleasant to watch. It’s willfully bleak and dreary. It’s dark and harsh, much like the lives of these two illegal aliens (and many others around them). Darkness is central in every sense: spiritual, legal and physical. This darkness suffocates them, but in a way it also serves as a disguise, as a means of protecting them from the police. Such people must keep a low profile in order to avoid deportation, and their fear is is constant.

Lianqing is the more ambitious of the two, and she sets herself on an ambitious task: getting a fake ID. This would enable her to find a better job, away from the filthy walls of the fetid and dismal kitchen where she works. Guo is more indolent, and so the friction between the two begins to escalate.

At one point Guo gives Lianqing a piece of jewelry but he soon has to reveal that it’s fake. This comes as a major relief to Lianqing: she would perceive a real piece of jewelry as unnecessary squandering. She wants to waste no money until she has the much-coveted phony document. It costs 300,000 Thai Bahts (roughly £6,000). A large fortune for people in their condition. Will Lianqing have to engage in the sex industry in order to get this sum? This thought is at the forefront of Guo’s mind.

The camera is almost entirely static throughout the film, conveying a sense of stillness and even imprisonment. This is combined with humble and derelict settings. There’s some awkward beauty in the subtle details: a sticker behind a ceiling fan rotating very slowly, Lianqing changing behind a translucent white curtain, and so on. Overall, this is still a very gloomy and even laborious movie. But do stick to the end for a real punch-in-the-face moment, a sordid reminder of the harsh and desperate choices illegal immigrants often have to make.

What’s clear from The Road to Mandalay is that the legal status of human beings is almost always contingent on money. Immigrants are entirely dehumanised by the economic argument. There is no room for tolerance and altruism. You are worth what you have in your pocket.

Watch The Road to Mandalay just below:


By Victor Fraga - 25-09-2017

Victor Fraga is a Brazilian born and London-based journalist and filmmaker with more than 20 years of involvement in the cinema industry and beyond. He is an LGBT writer, and describes himself as a di...

DMovies Poll

Are the Oscars dirty enough for DMovies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Most Read

Sexual diversity is at the very heart of [Read More...]
Just a few years back, finding a film [Read More...]
Forget Friday the 13th, Paranormal Activity and the [Read More...]
A lot of British people would rather forget [Read More...]
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. [Read More...]
QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN A candidate’s [Read More...]

Read More

Taste of Cement

Ziad Kalthoum
2017

Art Haxhijakupi - 27-08-2017

The life of Syrians refugees in Lebanon isn't savoury at all, but dry and chalky instead; our writer Art Haxhijakupi, once a war refugee himself, writes about the film opening the Open City Docs Fest in London [Read More...]

Beatriz at Dinner

Miguel Arteta
2016

Maysa Monção - 25-01-2017

Salma Hayek is a Mexican immigrant who exposes the ugly face of the Los Angeles aristocracy, revealing that Trump's wall is already firmly in place - live from Sundance [Read More...]

We got diversity all wrong!!!

 

Victor Fraga - 30-03-2017

Liberals like myself like to embrace and demand diversity, but we often come up with flawed arguments; Fassbinder has taught me that this can backfire with catastrophic consequences - Victor Fraga reflects on the 1974 classic 'Fear Eats the Soul', as the film is made available on Mubi [Read More...]