The Maw Naing’s MA-Cry of Silence might be set in contemporary Myanmar, but it took me back to several Hindi films—right from the 50s to the 80s—that, like it, have dealt with the exploitation of the working class and the workers’ fight for their basic rights, fair wages and adequate working conditions. Like Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Namak Haraam (1973), Yash Chopra’s Kaala Patthar (1979), Ravi Chopra’s Mazdoor (1983), and many more.
While reality may have been mediated with liberal doses of drama and emotions in these films, Naing’s cinema is all about kitchen-sink realism. It presents the truth for what it is—unvarnished and unpleasant—while placing the struggles of the labour class in the context of the political unrest in the country—the recent coup and the anti-government protests and the uprising of 1988.
The Myanmar/Korea/Singapore/France/Norway/Qatar co-production, which is part of the competition lineup in the Marrakech International Film Festival this week, had its world premiere in the New Currents segment in Busan and played in India at the Dharamshala International Film Festival. The film is set in the aftermath of the coup d’etat of 2021 when the democratically elected government in Myanmar was brought down and power was seized by the military junta.
Thousands of civilians were arrested, killed or went missing, families and communities were systematically torn asunder and innumerable villages were razed to the ground in the guise of quelling resistance. With their parents gone, many young people were forced to grow up overnight, take charge of the family and leave their native place to move to cities for work.
The film’s protagonist, 18-year-old Mi-Thet (Su Lay), is one of them, compelled to look after herself and her siblings after their parents go missing in the political chaos. She gets a job at a garment factory in Yangon and lives in a dormitory with other co-workers, trying hard to find a balance between regularly sending money back home to her younger sister, paying the rent and managing to live decently herself, amid power cuts and food and supplies shortage.
The entire film, like Mi-Thet, moves primarily between two key spaces—the factory and the dormitory. Both are equally grimy, bleak and joyless and lend an element of confinement to the visual design of the film. In turn, it reflects the limitations of the young lives—that of Mi-Thet as well as her co-workers and friends. The young women are like caged birds.
The production, sound design, and cinematography go hand-in-hand in creating an enveloping sense of place, an architecture of claustrophobia. An overwhelming sense of suffocation pervades the film’s frames; it reaches out and can be felt by the audience as well.
Things only get worse when their wages are not paid for over two months. It leaves them with no other option but to come together and go on strike. Mi-Thet is reluctant initially with the fear of the shadowy supervisor and of losing unpaid wages. There’s also her own past trauma coming in the way but she eventually joins the workers’ resistance despite the threats and violence from the boss and his henchmen.
While the film draws compelling parallels with the political history of Myanmar as well as the global workers’ movements and unionisation at large, it is emotionally most affecting and satisfying as the story of the young people coming of age, politically speaking.
The awareness of injustices and exploitation, human rights violations, the assertion of their rights and demands, their voices growing from mere whispers to loud shouts, the knowledge about the power that can be drawn from solidarity and the faith in protest culture. At its best MA-Cry of Silence is about the much-needed politicisation of the apolitical. The denouement, though real and plausible, does feel dispiriting and, as one of the characters asks, it makes one wonder whether “we are coming out of the darkness or directly heading into it”.
Cinema Without Borders
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Film: MA-Cry of Silence