Myanmar is portrayed all too rarely in films with genuine global reach – so rarely, in fact, that it scarcely ever happens at all. When a major movie does come along, then, it’s worth paying attention. On these grounds alone, Luc Besson’s The Lady, from 2011, very nearly demands examination. I saw it for the third or fourth time a few months ago, and am posting about it today to mark Aung San Suu Kyi’s sixty-ninth birthday.

The main negatives of this film are now well established. The history of 1988 and beyond is mangled to such an extent that it’s often impossible to work out quite where in time we’ve got to. Michelle Yeoh’s language skills, though very good for Aung San Suu Kyi English, are laughably bad for Aung San Suu Kyi Burmese. The ruling generals are so caricatured as to become, at times, cartoonish. Beyond these major flaws are minor ones that could so easily have been corrected. Aung San Suu Kyi’s return home in 1988 is signaled through a “Welcome to Yangon” arch on the road into a city still known in English as Rangoon. Yeoh has ludicrously elaborate flower arrangements flapping about in her hair. Virtually none of the extras employed as saffron uprising monks in the final reel has a shaved head.

All that said, I think this remains a valuable movie. It takes a real global icon, one of our most revered secular saints, and humanizes her. In a remarkable life, it focuses on the core tension between family and country and explores it in some detail. In an intriguing state, it homes in on the critical standoff between forces of tyranny and forces of democracy and again examines it at some length. Above all, though, The Lady is to be celebrated for the reason given at the outset. Quite simply, it does what few other films have ever tried to do – carve out a meaningful niche for Myanmar in mainstream public culture and discourse. The more often that happens, the better.