The setting is the real star of the show
While Thailand flooded the world of BL with more than 50 series, and Japan produced the best BL quality in 2023, some countries that are not usually in the focus of BL fans have landed some surprise successes – Vietnam with the series from O2 Productions and RL Studio, Cambodia with ”The Memories” from OxygenZ Station, Singapore with the ”Pure Vanilla” short films from 250 Films, and last but not least Myanmar with Trust Entertainment's great short film ”Bus Stop” and the series ”The Star Season 2”. Trust Entertainment have also produced the series ”Bagan Beginning”, which is unique among the numerous BL series as it puts the breathtaking cultural heritage of the ancient Burmese capital of Bagan into the focus.
The plot revolves around three young men – Mani (Vita Min, who also starred in ”Bus Stop”), Hlyan (Zaw Shine Htet) and Walar (Min Nyein Chan), who form kind of a love triangle, as both Walar and Hlyan like Mani. The love triangle isn't the main subject of the series, though – it serves more as a means to display the generation gap between the traditional parents and their sons, who are torn between living their own lives and pleasing their parents.
Mani is a tour guide in Bagan, where his parents own a shop of rattan items. He spends his free time hanging out with Hlyan, whose parents run a shop with traditional craft articles. Walar, who has just arrived from the USA, hires Mani for a month to show him the ancient temples of the city. He has come to Bagan, because his American adoptive parents told him that his family used to live there. Walar says that his father was killed, so he is now looking for his biological mother.
Hlyan is jealous from the very moment that he sees Mani and Walar together, and Walar actually tries to flirt with Mani, who does not respond to his approaches, though. Things become dramatic when Hlyan's mother reads Hlyan's diary where he confesses that he is gay and loves Mani. His mother arranges a marriage for him with a woman Hlyan doesn't even know.
At the same time, Mani decides to give up his job as a tour guide to take over his parents' shop, which he doesn't really like, but he wants to please his parents. He also encourages Hlyan to agree to the arranged marriage, because for Mani it is most important for children to obey their parents, which leaves Hlyan devastated. Thae Thae (A Sai), Mani and Hlyan's childhood friend, who has returned from training to become a make-up artist in Yangon, acts as Hlyan's love doctor, but cannot really help him escape his mother's grip.
The most beautiful of all the beautiful scenes of the series comes in episode 6, when Mani and Hlyan meet at a temple amidst hundreds, if not thousands of candles. It is the most heartbreaking scene, too, because Hlyan tells Mani that he has agreed to marry the woman his mother has chosen for him. When Mani and Hlyan pray to Buddha, it isn't hard for viewers to imagine what they are praying for.
The day before Hlyan's arranged engagement, there is another argument between him and his mother. She forbids him to leave the house and hits him again. When Thae Thae and Mani come to see him the same evening, Hlyan quarrels with Mani, as he is jealous of Walar. Mani still promises him to be back from a tour with Walar in time for the engagement ceremony. However, during that tour a completely unexpected plot twist occurs that casts a new light on everything that happened in the first 6 episodes.
I won't spoil the final two episodes here, because some readers may not have watched the series yet. Just so much – the plot twist I mentioned before makes the series turn into drama, if not tragedy. There is crime, violence, even death, but at least for Mani and Hlyan there is a happy ending.
The story of this series is much more realistic than the stories of most Thai BLs, where parents more often than not agree with their sons dating boys, which does not exactly mirror the real situation in Thailand. In ”Bagan Beginning”, however, the clash of the generations, which is also a clash of traditional and modern life, is displayed in a way that is shocking and sometimes even brutal, and thus the series underlines the hardships gay men have to face in a society like Myanmar.
For Western viewers like me it's easy to scold Hlyan's strict mother, and hard to understand that both Hlyan and Mani don't confess their love to each other and don't try to live together. But in Germany, things weren't much different some decades ago, and the struggle for LGBTQ+ people is still very hard in many parts of the world, and unfortunately getting harder again in some countries. Trust Entertainment needs to be praised for making movies like this in a country that isn't very open for this subject (yet?).
The three leads, Vita Min, Zaw Shine Htet, and Min Nyein Chan are all good actors, and very handsome, too. In the final episodes, some of the support actors are overacting, but given the drama and tragedy of the incidents, this may be appropriate for Myanmar viewers. Let me add a personal remark: as much as I love Min Nyein Chan, who is a good actor and a very handsome guy, I hope we'll see more of the latest Burmese BL dream couple, Vita Min and Zaw Shine Htet.
However, the real star of the show is the setting. I had no idea that Myanmar has such a rich cultural heritage, and many of the shots of the Bagan temples are sensational. The series breathes the pride the makers have in the history of the city and its culture, and it was obviously filmed with a deep respect of the holy places of Buddhism.
The quality of the production has improved compared to Trust Entertainment's previous works. The cinematography is good, as is the directing. The background music matches the plot, and the OST song composed by JS Joseph and sung by Bik Te is beautiful.
There's only one thing I have to complain about: when Mani and Walar speak English, the music is sometimes so loud that it's hard to understand what they are saying, and as the subtitles in these scenes are Burmese, they don't really help international viewers. But this is a minor flaw in a series which conveys an important message, and which shows the world the enormous wealth of Burmese history.
All in all, this is a beautiful BL series, with a talented cast, and the ancient buildings of Bagan being the star of the show.
