Beyond Rangoon

An American doctor comes to Burma as a tourist to recover after her family is killed. One night she leaves the hotel and finds herself inside a crowd marching against the military government. She loses her passport, and unable to leave the country she has to pass through what she has seen. The subject is not a tourist's transformation but the question of who stays at the centre when a country's violence is narrated through an outsider's eye. The film knows about the problem without fully solving it; the narrative remains attached to the American woman's journey. The form stays close to the real events. The 1988 uprising, the crowds in the streets and the army's intervention are shot to resemble documentary footage. Aung San Suu Kyi appears as a character, and the scene in which she walks through the soldiers in front of the crowd is based on a real incident. It could not be shot in Burma, which was closed; the production went to Malaysia instead. John Boorman directs. Patricia Arquette leads. U Aung Ko, who plays the guide, is not a professional actor and was himself an exile from Burma. Frances McDormand is in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like thrillers with a political background and are curious about Burmese history. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by the outsider-narrator problem; the objection is fair.