This documentary has a concept that I like, the concept of the daughter pushing her mum to admit her past. Lindsay (director) is the daughter, Bill the brother, and Sally the central character and the mum are a family. Sally who originally is from Burma refuses to accept her past and admit that she has her roots there. He inquisitive daughter wouldn’t let her mum throw away a perfectly good piece of family history just like that insisted that they all take a trip to Burma to see what really is out there.
Sally who claims to be English because she has stayed in England for quite a long time was reluctant and unwilling to play along with the daughter to dig up there history and trace their roots. Sally agrees to go to Burma with the daughter and her brother. When she visited Burma memories came back to her, she got emotional at one point and cried. She remembered her mum and the good old days. Her mum was a major influence in her life, but still she refuses to admit her past, which is sad.
While she was in Burma, she met old friends of her mum who narrated to her how her mum died. She obviously misses her mum and broke down and cried at the cemetery. While all this was going on, Bill was also busy exploring Burma and trying to remember lost memories. If it wasn’t for the unwillingness of Sally to accept that she is part of the Burma community, the whole trip would have been a more memorable one for all of them that went to Burma, especially Lindsay who initiated the whole thing in the first place.
For Lindsay, being born in United Kingdom and having learnt of her connection with Burma the whole experience means a lot to her. She wanted to meet folks who remembered her grandparents and to be able to feel that she belongs to and is also part of the Burma community. But her hopes were dashed by her mum’s refusal to accept the fact that she is even from there. The mum’s insistence that she is English had provoked not just Lindsay, but Bill as well.
One thing that is certain is this, if the war that happened in Burma didn’t take place. And Sally had no reason to migrate to the UK, would she still deny her ancestral heritage? Her stubbornness and open denial of her birth place is frustrating to me. I m sure a lot of people especially in western countries would love to trace their roots. But here, Sally stands in Burma she still remembers most of her child hood days in Burma, but she still denies her roots. What a waste. She should at least have the decency to admit that she is Burmese, even if it’s just to make her daughter Lindsay and brother Bill proud to be from Burma.
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While I agree that Sally's refusal is frustrating I think there is a position from which we can empathise with her. What's not elaborated but eluded to at the end of the documentary is the character of Britain itself, the racism, the pressure to conform and fit into anglo-British society and Sally's ability to "pass". "Passing" is a very interesting phenomenon where individuals of mixed parentage resemble their "white" ancestry to the extent that their other heritage is nearly invisible. They, as it were, pass for white.
ReplyDeleteFor a literary expression of this you might want to read or watch The Human Stain.
From Wiki:
"The Human Stain (2000) is a novel by Philip Roth. ... Roth had to have been at least partly inspired by the case of Anatole Broyard, a literary critic who, like the protagonist of The Human Stain, was a man variously identified as Creole or black who spent his entire professional life more-or-less passing as white. The Human Stain was a national bestseller and was made into a film in 2003 starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman.
There is also a huge scholarly literature on questions of race if you are interested to pursue this line of enquiry.
The documentary is quite rich for analysis and because of my own intellectual and personal interests in Myanmar/Burma I find it fascinating.
I think however that Merrison isn't attempting to cast her mother in a bad light. There is something deep in Sally's resistance that requires EMPATHY on the part of the viewer to negotiate successfully.
I am in total agreement with your notion and it has helped in making me look at it from another point of view after watching the human stain as you suggested..
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