Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Manthast Absolutely amazing

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

MartinHafer While "Burma VJ" isn't the easiest film in the world to watch, it is a very important and brave one. Like such documentaries as "The Square" and "Karama Has No Walls", it consists of some amateur filmmakers risking their lives to record efforts to bring democracy to their nations by standing up to the thugs running the government. Unfortunately, while all these are very brave films, the Oscar folks have nominated them and yet DIDN'T give them the Oscars. Lesson learned--such films often seem to get nominated but also seldom win.This particular film is about the freedom movement in Myanmar (Burma) in 2007. After 19 years of being led by a repressive military junta, a mass movement of monks and the public took to the streets to protest. Unfortunately, the government didn't seem to have much problem with arresting and killing these people. Footage of the repressive soldiers doing awful things were secreted out of the country and the film is made up of this footage. The footage is quite interesting. The film's narration, however, seems very impromptu and could be better and less rambling. It could also have used a bit of editing to tighten up the film a bit. Still, it's an exciting film and one that is worth seeing.

Mike B I knew very little about Myanmar prior to watching this film, but learnt much from it. It shows vividly how a military dictatorship can brutally suppress demonstrators who want to have more human rights and freedoms. This occurs in front of our eyes as brave camera people clandestinely film the "freedom movement" demonstrations. We see that as more and more people rally to the cause, the government and military react severely to suppress the manifestations, showing no tolerance whatsoever to their people. At the end of the documentary we learn that several of the camera people were arrested and their current whereabouts are unknown. Watch the special features for interviews with monks who bravely participated in the rallies and another short film on the civil war in Myanmar. If you are from a democratic country like myself, you realize how fortunate you are.

poe426 Here in this nation of banksters and their middle men (the politicians), politics is a simple enough equation: Money = Democracy. People here willingly give up the very freedoms that people in countries like Burma are literally DYING for. Unlike this country, where religious leaders (especially televangelists, the guiltiest of the guilty) willingly spread the gospel according to The Party, in Burma, Buddhist monks urge the people to: "Abandon your fear." "People must die" for freedom, someone says at one point. And then the monks lead by example, walking at the forefront of protesting crowds marching into the gunsights of the government goons. The crowd is dispersed by rifle fire and we see the murder of a Japanese photographer. It brought to mind something I saw as a kid, on the telenews (this was back before the news channels were all co-opted and corrupted): a Buddhist monk immolating himself to protest the Vietnam war. The monks in Burma fared no better: we see video smuggled out of the country showing the bullet-riddled corpse of a monk floating face down in a river. There are others. There will be more.

paul2001sw-1 Burma (where, ironically, George Orwell was born) is perhaps the country in the world that most resembles an Orwellian nightmare, under the grip of a repressive military dictatorship for over 40 years. In the west, we don't usually hear much about it, which is, one suspects, much as its rulers would like. But this absorbing documentary tells the story of a (sadly failed) revolt that took place in 2007, as well as the story of those who reported it in defiance of the authorities. And it's a shocking film to see: if the monks protest against the government, the government has no qualms about killing the monks. When the army (for whatever reason) refused to break ranks with its generals, the revolution was doomed; fundamentally, no-one want to die. The generals' propaganda would almost be funny if it wasn't backed up by the utter willingness to use lethal force, even in the face of peaceful protest. 'Burma VJ' is an important testament to the grim reality of life in the country; but at the end, even the resistance leaders are despairing of hope.