Wanted: Border (Ray Gibraltar, 2009) December 15, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinema One, Indie Sine, Noypi.5 comments
Written and directed by Ray Gibraltar
Cast: Rosanna Roces, Publio Briones, Sunshine Teodoro, AJ Aurello
*
It can be called death by synopsis.
When someone wants to watch a movie but knows nothing about the screenings, synopses come to the rescue. That’s a requisite among Cineplex owners. Yet conversely, even if the moviegoer knows which movie to watch, he still reads the synopsis just to convince himself that spending on such film is right. Synopses, as far as utility is concerned, are tangible proofs that at least a story exists in the film. Even if a linear story is not present, at least, a paragraph’s worth is still said about the film. It will not be blank screen and white noise that’s waiting inside the theater, the audience is assured.
I bet even the first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery, made in 1903 by Edwin S. Porter, was accompanied by synopsis when it was first shown in the pre-nickelodeon days. I have no proof, of course, but I imagine the note that went along with the prints of the film in distribution—a note that mentions that the shot of the bandit firing the gun toward the camera could be put either at the beginning or at the end in the film—is already some form of synopsis, of putting into words expectations about the film.
A common synopsis introduces the film; it tells what happens in the story; and it ends openly, trying with seductive phrases to pull the audience in to pay for the ticket. Succinctly, it puts the film into perspective. Imagine how these few words can anticipate things for the audience; how they can determine expectations through mere description, or through looking at the photo that goes along with the summary; how they can make or break the film. Death by synopsis happens when this synopsis overtakes the film so much it kills it.
I am sure that the people who saw Wanted: Border read and re-read the synopsis before and after watching the film, and felt a certain disconnect between the description and the film itself, as if the words were not able to validate what they saw inside the theater. Not because the synopsis is not accurate, or it is for a different film, but because it explains and tells explicitly which is which, particularly Saleng’s background, the name of the agent she had a relationship with, and even how she feels about killing her boarders. Again, it is not a matter of accuracy—truth be told, why should I give a damn about synopses?—but a virtue of fairness, of providing the film what it deserves, of not ruining it.
That certain disconnect is mainly dependent on tone; and it happens because both camps are narrating in a completely opposite manner: the film is thoroughly suggestive, whereas the synopsis is downright explanatory (which, in all fairness to the art of writing synopses itself, is how it should be). While I doubt that Gibraltar himself wrote the synopsis of his film, I don’t also refuse to consider that he did. I think good writers are capable of writing in exactly opposite tones, and most of them are unaware of this ability until they do it and ask other people what they think. Though writing a screenplay is a much daunting task as opposed to writing a synopsis—my god, of course—I can’t see how impossible it is to summarize the film and write it the same way how the film is actually told.
But by all means I can hear you nagging at me! You’re rebuking this whole idea of mine on the nose! Marketing experience dictates that synopses should be clear enough for people to watch the film. I know that, and I have to give in, plain and simple. So much for five long paragraphs of not discussing Wanted: Border, I thank you if you are reading until here. I wish, even if I sound like nitpicking, I could help lessen the crimes of death by synopsis, especially on films like Wanted: Border, which really calls for every police in town, from the first image down to the last.
*
Inevitable is the mention of death. The film, after all, captures that somber mood of deathly living, that utter feeling of wallowing on morbidness. Though the characters are quite oblivious of it, or have managed to consider it a fact of life, the darkness emanates from every corner of the film, sustained in hopeful closure till the end.
Non-linear is a tricky structure, and the misguided viewer may find it disappointing especially if the director is too busy on his embellishments to trick the audience. But Gibraltar isn’t up for deception—it’s the way he is: telling the story in fragments, jumping from one plot to another, and letting the audience pick and connect the pieces all together. Not that he needs to prove anything, but since I managed to see When Timawa Meets Delgado and felt amused by such experiment, I think I could give him the permission to ruin me.
Indeed, Wanted: Border has reduced me to ruins, and even up to now I still believe that writing about it wouldn’t be enough to put into words what it has able to deliver.
It’s like a dream of a ridiculous man—say, like that Dostoyevsky’s story—Gibraltar, the ridiculous dreamer, and Saleng and her past and her present all but a dream. The dream is told in fragments, illogical yet teeming with its own logic. They work on their own; and they justify their own irrationality. We see Saleng and her boarding house/eatery and the various characters that surround her—who are not necessarily around her but seemingly just around her, Gibraltar wanting us to wait before this question about their relationship is revealed—the fat girl, the drug-dependent filmmaker, and the household of a lustful stepfather, subservient wife, and young college student. How they connect we are advised, but why they connect it’s up to us to interpret. There is that single physical event that connects them—a conclusion looming to satisfy our need for the tangible—but even that is close to dreamlike, closer to Gibraltar’s rejection of standard storytelling.
The structure of the film is similar to how we remember our dreams, mixing the past and present, the events caught up in its inconsistent timeline. They evoke a certain familiarity that is also distant and emotionally charged. While our personal dreams are often vague and subtle—never assuring us of continuation and certainty—Gibraltar’s film ends the dream, metaphorically, through a suggestion of those two. It never promises to resume, to go back, and to go further—it stops there as a dream, but it goes on to assume another form, that is to manifest in our unconsciousness. From that infection, so to speak, Gibraltar wants to reach our consciousness to facilitate an action.
Last year’s Yanggaw, which deals with the circumstances following the discovery of a family that one of its kin is a monster, goes farther on examining the nature of our beliefs on aswang. While the film earns its right to be dramatic, it stands out amid its predecessors for taking the concept of our folklore seriously and profoundly, breathing another life to the genre that has long been killed by unskillful hands. The aswang in Yanggaw is the aswang we met when we were young, when we listened to the stories of our elders, when we conjured their images in our minds, and when we gripped tightly on our pillows while listening to “Gabi ng Lagim”—whereas the aswang in Wanted: Border is the aswang we meet when we mature, when we start to get to know the people around us, and when we see ourselves in dog-eat-dog situations like they’re a way of life. It goes without saying that we are never new to the concept of aswang in the first place.
Somes’ film engages us through our basic knowledge of how an aswang looks, and the horror upon seeing it. It has managed to do so by creating an atmosphere of remoteness, of shock that is about to leap out of the screen anytime, of fear that gets into one’s mind and refuses to get out. Gibraltar’s film, on the other hand, uses the familiarity of his setting, the commonness of day-to-day life, to reveal a picture of bestiality, of actions we accomplish to satisfy our pleasures, and of crimes we commit to our society’s idea of morality. That this horror can happen any day, at any given time, and in any given place, is more terrifying than the moment these creatures—manananggal, tikbalang, duwende, mangkukulam, among other things—become visible in our eyes. The monster in Wanted: Border is ourselves; that can’t be disproved.
But there goes an argument: can a monster see itself as a monster? Can a monster justify its actions by telling that it needs to do these things to survive? With these two films, I am beginning to have this strange feeling, after all the misfortunes we’ve had in the last few years, that our rich folklore is really getting back at us.
Our borders are not geographical; as a group of islands, it is always safe to assume that the line that separates our people is physical space and nothing else, checkpoints, toll gates, water, airports, inability to travel. But in essence our borders are almost always moral, dictated by our beliefs, motivated by our ids. Violence happens when one of these borders is crossed—when one resorts to killing to live, when one decides to rape to fulfill carnal wishes, when one uses drugs to escape, when one eats to survive. The most terrible thing is that we all have our reasons, as philosopher Renoir once said, and we stand by them for convenience’s sake. That’s why we admit defeat, that’s why we believe that further struggle or effort is useless, that’s why we’re crazy. We all need to raise hell. And we are all defeatists in our own way.
It is easy to call Wanted: Border a violent film—a work that indulges in drugs, sex, and killing—but in all its severe observation on the extent of our capability to inflict harm on ourselves and other people, sometimes as violently as possible, it is driven by a pacifist motive, that individuals do possess the great ability to abstain from it, that violence, more often than not, is a work of man and not of circumstances. The parting shot says it all: the great impossible can always be done. But I remember myself saying after that shot, We are surrounded by fences! We are surrounded by death! We are surrounded by tragedies! How should we be able to get past those, for real?
One thing must be said, though: one should never forget these tragedies; otherwise they will all happen again. Like yesterday. Like the massacre.
Himpapawid (Raymond Red, 2009) November 24, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemanila, Essay, Festival, Indie Sine, Literature, Noypi.7 comments
The Force
English Title: Manila Skies
Written and directed by Raymond Red
Cast: Raul Arellano, John Arcilla, Sue Prado, Soliman Cruz
Shortly after winning the Palme d’Or, Raymond Red heard the news of a hijack. The passengers of Philippine Airlines Flight 812, on their way to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport from Davao, were stranded after a desperate man declared a hold-up. Holding a gun and a grenade, he asked for their valuables and kept them inside a bag. He ordered the pilot to descend six thousand feet above ground, went to the rear door, and jumped. He wore a ski mask and swimming goggles, in case of landing on water, and suited himself with a homemade parachute.
That was on May 25, 2000. His body was found three days later.
Our few relevant filmmakers know this: if there is a place where one can find the most important stories to film, they are on the papers. Read and everything is already there. The characters, the plot, the resolution. On his part, Red has a strong grasp of his inspiration, only he uses it to address a common problem, a problem so common it is easily ignored. He works on the same premise but makes his intentions clear: to put emphasis on the social perspective, and to make this premise relate without needing so much details. Not only he achieves credibility in terms of ambition, but he also delivers the image of poverty that we have long been wanting to represent us, fair and square.
Should we remember a meaningful statement released after the PAL hijack, these words from Rep. Roilo Golez could be handy:
I can’t understand why an armed hijacker would risk his life only for a hold-up. Possibly his main goal, besides robbing, is to deeply embarrass the government.
Considering the political climate that time, particularly the series of bombings in the city and the unending tension between the military and rebels in Mindanao, the incident could only be interpreted as politically-motivated, even if it sounds slightly uncaring to the hijacker himself, or more important than what provoked him to such limits. Red, however, wants to pursue the man, know him, get in touch with him, and identify with him. Red makes another story—a narrative less concerned about marital problems and dreams of skydiving—but he gives his character the same conclusion. After all, in light of our condition right now, there could possibly be more reasons to jump off a plane with a parachute with no ripcord than otherwise. It just takes an awful effort.
But an awful effort it is—Himpapawid.
Hunger and misery go hand in hand, and often it is hunger that delivers someone to misery. The way Red shapes the character of the hijacker, hunger is numbed implicitly—or maybe hunger is something we don’t notice anymore, and can only be shown through the symbolism of rats and cockroach crawling unnoticeably—and misery is shown otherwise. What could have led him to hijack a plane, amid the little chance of accomplishment, points to a single cause, something that could only be deduced from the simple truth—that we are poor, that we have a history of poorness, and that we have a strong culture of poverty. Only we feel it more than we see it in the film. Himpapawid isn’t keen on persuading, but it is persuasive enough to attribute the hijacker’s actions to our diminishing regard for social responsibility. We cannot ignore the changing economy yet we try our best to do so; we find ways to make a living and think of the future; we reflect on our steps to get there, while the reasons why we strive—mainly our growing families—are still there, remaining, staying, depending on us.
Red may be talking about the same social cancer that Rizal, through Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, made clear more than a century ago, only in Himpapawid we have a hopeless protagonist to follow, his circumstances closer to recognition, and his fate already known to us. One arguable similarity though: Red unfolds his story like a novel, pacing it through a series of carefully structured rising action, involving supporting characters to further define the main character, apparently to allow his situation to be seen as critical, placing a clever plant and payoff device to render his argument intensely, and, in the writer’s command of words, making all the effort deliver a view of how things had been, and how things are going to be.
Himpapawid may well be the literary highlight of the year, but it is also its filmmaker’s return to the language that has nurtured him most. During those nine years between Anino and Himpapawid, the situations have clearly not changed for the better. We’re still like hamsters running persistently in wheels—running in one place and time, running till we lose the will to run—only in our case, we are running a life that doesn’t do us any good as time goes by.
*
Generations (The Young)
Generations (The Old)
More than forty years since its first publication, Mga Agos sa Disyerto remains a resounding piece of literature. The twenty-five stories that compose the collection—five shorts from Efren Abueg, Dominador Mirasol, Rogelio Ordoñez, Edgardo Reyes, and Rogelio Sicat—deliver a strong command of both language and subject that one can easily smell and taste their settings. The subjects are broad; the descriptions varied; the stories bleed fire and filth; and the characters.are so familiar they seem to walk right past the reader. There is more to poverty than being poor, the book is explicit in telling, and more to depression than not having a place to live and food to eat. Poorness is described the same way they are felt. The pressing depiction of the characters’ lives and their struggle to make out with the little things they have, as they face every day with an empty stomach, leaves its mark on succeeding generations of writers and readers, quickly establishing the book as a canon of short fiction.
Every story in the collection flows from the stream of social realities; each seems to emanate from a small opening of light that lets every observation cut deeply; yet it is in this little opportunity where hope springs forward—hope not only for Philippine literature but also for its inspiration, the poor society that continues to be poor, and the cruel situations that remain more and more cruel. But the writers are less concerned about solutions than problems—problems which cannot be ignored once one goes outside and observes. In these stories hope exists but it doesn’t come in the most appropriate time. Dire situations, however, give way to realities that can only come in such circumstances, a view of life that, for instance, can only be apparent to Ida and Emy in “Di Maabot ng Kawalang-Malay,” or to Impen after brawling with Ogor in “Impeng Negro.”
Included in the anthology is Sicat’s “Tata Selo,” a story that is widely read because it is required reading among high school students. Its language strikes the students first. Words like “istaked, “kahangga,” “gris,” and “nakiling” are new to their ears, or too old to be recognized that even their parents are not familiar with them. The clause “Kinadyot ng hepe si Tata Selo sa sikmura,” may elicit laughter, as the word “kadyot” is mostly used now to suggest sexual action. The names of the characters are also uncommon; “Tata” and “Kabesa” are rarely used in the city at present; and people now are more comfortable to say “Meyor” than “Alkalde.” This being a suggestion of difference in locality, one cannot discount the fact that the story endures because of its subject. Effort, then, is expected from the teachers to explain to the students not just the meaning of difficult words and its plot structure; but more importantly the author’s manner of description and characteristic language, the context and subtexts of the milieu, and how they still relate today.
Right at the very start it is clear that the tragedy of Tata Selo is his killing of the landowner who forces him to leave his farm. But his greater tragedy—if there is such comparative way of looking at it—is not being able to fight for his reason. The crime undresses him of respect, fair treatment, and humanity; and that crime is a cruel equalizer. In the eyes of the people who look at him in detention, he is an old man—and they pity him. In the eyes of the police and the mayor, he should not have killed his lord—and they also pity him. It is in Sicat’s absolute sensitive control that Tata Selo comes to life as a powerful representation of poverty—both of body and spirit—that is borne out of greed and injustice. The feeling of helplessness is incredibly felt; the thought that the poor will only become poorer looms, and the truth that the rich won’t give a damn about them becomes stronger.
Atrofia, Joey Velasco, 2005, Oil on canvas
One could imagine Tata Selo as he looks outside his cell and the people look at him back—only the old man isn’t aware of them, isn’t aware of their look of pity, isn’t aware of anything at all—and one of those eyes knows he’ll die soon, hungry and bruised. Sicat breathes life not only to Tata Selo but also to countless farmers and laborers who live in deprivation, them who are abused even more because of their situation, them who have to work hard and get less in return without complaining. This value for humanism that Sicat punctuates in his story—a humanism based on character and dignity—also predominates in Raymond Red’s Himpapawid.
Raul and Tata Selo suffer from similar fate—only in different situations and different company of people. Like in “Tata Selo,” age isn’t a virtue to be proud of in Himpapawid; in fact, the older a person gets, the less likely he is to settle down comfortably. The older he gets, the harder the situations can be. And the older he gets, the bleaker his future is. Getting enough food to eat for every day becomes a luxury. A good work is hard to find; and once work is found, keeping it is even harder. In the film Raul asks permission from his boss to leave work in the morning because he plans to complete his papers for his job application abroad. His boss refuses, despite Raul’s plea and display of desperation, at his wits’ end just to convince him say yes. His boss agrees, only he’ll lose his job—and Raul, alone in his dismay and hopelessness, goes home, jobless.
His conversation with his boss is the first instance of seeing him on edge. His anger is understandable; but his steadfast demeanor, revealed in his tone and manner of reasoning, is, for lack of a better word, bizarre. Certainly, the boss wouldn’t go out on a limb to yield to his request. Like he says, people line up every day just to get Raul’s job—a job that demands no rest day, no valid excuse for absence. Raul is just another worker that can be easily replaced. The boss reasons out to his plea like the decision isn’t coming from him. There is a sense of detachment; a feeling of higher control. The order needs to be observed, or else the other workers will follow suit and the whole business will fail. Raul loses his job because he isn’t privileged to have a better work environment, the same way Tata Selo is socked by the police while in jail because he is an old man who killed a powerful person in the community. Their reasons are irrelevant.
Important is the reaction of other people to Raul’s character. The boss maintains his cool as he talks to him, though he almost loses it if he hasn’t been busy. An emotional turning point, however, is seen when Raul goes to the agency to finish his papers. The day, unlike any other day, is a succession of mishaps. He loses his coins in the sewer; he is riled by a dismissive customer in the photocopying shop; he steps on a poop. In the agency he flares up when the clerk tells him that his requirements aren’t right, thus his application cannot be processed. He goes in a shouting spree, denouncing the applicants who will themselves to condescend just to get work, scaring them. He tears up his papers and throws them away. He curses the system; he curses the plight of the unfortunate. He tells the truth, but in the eyes of these people, he is a madman. He is a threat to their dreams of greener pastures. But in the eyes of the audience, is he really acting strange?
It is easy to see where Raul is coming from. He stays in a dirty house, an apartment whose rent he hasn’t paid for months. His father is ill in the province and he cannot go there to visit him. He just lost his job. He tries to apply for a work abroad only to find out that his papers are incomplete. He is hopeless; he would lick any dust of hope that comes along his way. In the company of his beer friends, though, he finds it. And in their group he isn’t different; he isn’t bizarre; he isn’t tense. The long talk in front of the store best describes the “Filipino inuman,” humorous, tacky, and honest. The audience becomes a listener to truthful rants and a witness to a crime that will yield grave misfortune. The group welcomes him. He becomes part of their plan. He agrees to help the heist.
Beer is salvation
Raul isn’t at the center of the plan but it is through his participation that the film has able to convey its strongest point. The life of the poor is like dominoes falling in longer intervals, but the effect and outcome are still the same: the fall of everything. However difficult the situations are, there is still one that will come after another, an action that will trigger another situation to happen.
Everything topples onto another until there is nothing left to fall onto, until the end of everything, until death. And Raul, in the middle of everything, refuses to be defeated by circumstances and loses himself—his sanity letting go and completely leaving him on his own—hungry and bruised, choosing death by deadening. He jumps with the parachute of workers—of strikers who fight for fair treatment—and that isn’t enough. He dies beside their protests, beside the wails of empty stomachs, beside the clamor for little food, beside the cries of the young, beside the dead cause. He lies on the mud with his feet up, still trying to stand.
The fate of the poor is living and dying all the same. Like Tata Selo, Raul could only repeat his words and no one will ever care to listen.
*
Halfway through the sequence inside the plane, before the hijack happens, Teddy Co points at the two flight attendants. “Look at that,” he says in the vernacular. “Look at that. Raymond is telling us that women now have become workers and men have become bummers. Good-for-nothing. Useless.”
The observation is spot-on, so truthful it hurts. The reversal of the set-up is not anymore unusual, though; male chauvinism, at least in the Filipino household, has become lax and impractical. A family that stays together starves together; that’s an acceptable principle. Pride breeds hunger; and that pride is something that Filipinos have learned to set aside and reconsider. If the husband is out of work and the wife takes care of financial support, the former is expected to take over her duties. In some cases, however, such swallowing of pride on the husband’s part harbors guilt, laziness, and misery.
Tom and Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, directed by John Ford, 1940
John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath sets a formidable example. At first, it has the impression of patriarchal solidarity—there’s Tom, Pa, Grandpa, Al, Connie, Noah, Uncle John, and Casy active in making important decisions. But when the family moves out of Oklahoma to find work in California, the said impression of fraternity slowly crumbles and each of these men has shown great weakness that leaves the family down-and-out. Ma, her mind clear and her voice stern and assured, now gives the orders and makes sure they are followed. She pulls the family together; when a member of the family dies, leaves, or gets killed, she is there, thinking, knowing what needs to be done, and doing what needs to be done after. She shows her strength to her husband, telling him in his face that gone were the times when he rules the family and when his decisions matter, especially now that he cannot give the family anything to eat. From pillar to post, she never gives up; she has elected herself to the position of not only being the head of the family, but its light—its direction.
Ma talks with a lot of weight but never inconsiderately. She talks coming from her experience and observations, knowing she has gone through enough hardships to grant her the privilege of shedding enlightenment, of telling what she thinks is unavoidable about their plight. Her words sum up the truth of their condition:
I’m learnin’ one thing good. If you’re in trouble or hurt or need — go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help — the only ones.
Only ones. That will help. Poor people.
Strikingly, Himpapawid also makes the league of extra-unlucky gentlemen prominent. The men dominate the narrative, that aside from Raul there are also characters that the story takes time to explore, namely his beer friends and the father and son in the province. On the other hand, there is a particular woman that stands out, not just because she is the only woman in the crowd of men but because she appears in three personas, Red making sure not to tell whether or not they are the same person.
The suspiciously promiscuous woman, the clerk, and the stewardess—Sue Prado plays them with the required ambiguity to further emphasize the mental torment of Raul. Red may have the intention of keeping her characters worthy of probe, especially in relation to Raul’s resolve to hijack a plane, as each of them figures in his moments of utter defeat (first, when he got fired; next, when his application papers weren’t accepted; and last, when he was about to hijack the plane). The woman is primarily seen as the object of his sexual desire—may it be her image specifically or just her as the lone woman in the desert of unfortunate men the viewer is not really advised—but unlike Ma in The Grapes of Wrath, she does not help Raul in the course of the story. The only time she helps him is when she pushes him out of the plane door to his death. Instinctively, that is the culmination of her purpose: bringing him to his grand finality.
A teaser for the film, slated for release in February 2010
Should one think of Filipino novels in a similar vein, Edgardo Reyes’ Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag and Norman Wilwayco’s Mondomanila: Kung Paano Ko Inayos Ang Buhok Ko Matapos Ang Mahaba-haba Ring Paglalakbay come to mind. The former is adapted into film by Lino Brocka in 1975; and the latter is being helmed by Khavn dela Cruz and is set to release next year. Considering that local cinema and literature don’t have a wealthy tradition of working together, there is no question why both novels are picked up for the big screen. Both have strongly defined main characters—Julio Madiaga and Tony de Guzman—who are molded by their experiences in the city, changed by their ill fates, and scarred by their bloody encounters. Allowing these men to represent the proletariat, Reyes and Wilwayco have made their characters distinctly alive that the reader starts to smell them and feel the sweat dripping on their foreheads as they run for their life.
The characterization of the city is by all means integral to the writers’ social criticism, which in closer inspection goes deep into their personal background. Both Reyes and WIlwayco are sons of the streets, children of grief, and drunkards who know the way of the world better than the aristocrat. Reyes, with his understated and careful force of description—always putting importance on precision and truthfulness—is a deserving inspiration to Wilwayco’s savage control of language, whose style has always matched the filthiness and putridness that pervade his stories. They have come to regard the city as a character on its own, defining their human characters, and not allowing them to escape the truth of their condition. They offer no world of beauty, no make-believe world of happily-ever-after—because in reality no paradise can exist in a city that was built in hell. Their city has pushed the animal out of Julio and Tony; and like Raul in Himpapawid, the beast is a creature that evolves grimly and hopelessly.
Julio Madiaga, Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, Lino Brocka, 1975
Raul, Himpapawid, Raymond Red, 2009
Are they looking at the same person?
In Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag and Mondomanila, the clear conflict is man against society. Julio and Tony struggle to survive; they struggle to achieve their goal—Julio to finally be with Ligaya, and Tony to live a comfortable life out of the slums; and both struggle alongside their need to fill their stomachs with food. Himpapawid follows the same theme; scene after scene, layers pile up to reach the peak of Raul’s desperation. His primary need to go home in the province to visit his ill father blows up when he loses his job and gets involved in a failed heist. In a streak of luck (or unbelievable negligence), he has able to sneak his gun and grenade into the airport. He decides to hijack the plane, collect all the passengers’ valuable possessions and jump off with a homemade parachute. He hasn’t expected his death, for sure; he has overlooked it. Despair has numbed his mental state; he has lost his mind, though not fully. His logic is intact; only his plan isn’t. His distress has robbed him of the right frame of mind, proving the truth of his words, “Bato na ang utak ko!”
Red has gone literary without sacrificing the language of film. His literary devices—the flashback inside Sir Fernando’s office, the tripleganger character, and that particular scene when Raul has slept inside the taxi instead of looking out for his cohort—are woven seamlessly with the storytelling, allowing the images and sound to stand out without too much emphasis. The viewer gets to feel poverty without seeing similar images in the community—unlike, for instance, in Brillante Mendoza’s Tirador or Lino Brocka’s Insiang where the image of the community strongly appears and reappears in the narrative; instead, the emotional equivalent of these images is given: the behavior of Raul, the inebriated Lav Diaz mouthing “Wasak,” the interview of Pen Medina on television, the news clip of hostage-taking, and the numerous close-ups of Raul’s face, dripping with sweat. There is no particular place where Raul belongs—not the slums, not the workplace, not the store—except the streets. Red shoots Raul walking like he has walked these streets all his life, like he was born in them, grown in them, and slept in them every night. The pavement is his home, his last and only place in the city.
Like a flying vulture, Raul is always looking for something; but essentially, he is looking at something. He looks down at his feet; he looks up to see the plane approaching; he looks at his boss with contempt; he looks back; he looks at his side as he eats his crackers and drinks his softdrink; he looks daggers at the passengers of the plane, looking at them as if looking at himself, again, contemptuously. More than anything aesthetic, there is a reason why Red keeps angling towards the sky, from the audience’s point of view to Raul’s. Compassion—Red wants the audience to feel that—but really, is compassion enough? Will compassion help Raul ease his suffering? Will it alleviate his loss? (On second thought, could loss ever be alleviated?) Will it feed him? Will it give him hope?
It is no lie, however, that shared suffering does not guarantee intimacy. Having put the unfairness of human life into perspective, Red seems to say that Raul’s greater tragedy is indeed having us, all of us, as his companions. And around us, those who stay, tragedies like Raul are just waiting for the right moment—the right flicker of despond, and the right sharpness of knives—to happen.
Biyaheng Lupa (Armando Lao, 2009) October 27, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemanila, Festival, Indie Sine, Noypi.6 comments
English Title: Soliloquy
Written and directed by Armando Lao
Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Julio Diaz, Coco Martin, Angel Aquino
In an interview by Fanny A. Garcia, entitled “Armando ‘Bing’ Lao: Mula Mainstream Films tungo sa Indie Films, Mula Scriptwriter tungo sa Creative Producer,” Lao expresses his dismay on the lack of credit given to writers, of which he cited how local and foreign film communities regard directors as the sole authors of films. It is a culture, according to Lao, that even the academe is responsible for. Writers are often seen as secretaries of directors, they are obviously treated inferior to them, and most of the time they are neglected in the festival entourage. The writer creates the material, the director interprets it, so how come the director takes most of the credit?
Upon seeing Biyaheng Lupa on its premiere in the 11th Cinemanila Film Festival, I am both a proud student and a pleased audience. His attempt to prove his point in Garcia’s interview clearly shows his sterling ability not just as a writer but also as a director, as he risks to make his strengths and weaknesses visible. For a first film, it is always a good sign to see some weakness. Weakness dictates following, and weakness is truth. Once the disbelief is suspended, Lao starts to guide his characters one by one as their stories unfold and, interestingly, overlap.
The surface of the story initially rests on interest. The bus carries the characters from the city to Legaspi, Albay. Along the way, it picks passengers, halts at bus stops, and drops them off to their destinations. As far as the narrative is concerned, the story is just that, plain and simple. But here’s the trick, when the door of the bus closes, after that moment when the mute character gets into the vehicle, we get to hear what these passengers are thinking. We get to hear their thoughts, their intentions, their motives, their past and their present, their future, their musings on everything—their stories. Lao runs a risk in doing this, as it appears as a limited experiment, but the touch of quirk has made it serious and complex. There is the huge probability of failure—more likely if the material is not handled by the writer himself—but the sensitivity of the “dialogues,” the familiarity of the characters, and the relationship that comes out of them dominate.
What makes it work is that Lao did not take the writer’s cap off his head. He is practically in control. It is a writer’s film by all means, an exercise that shows his range and ability to share a world he created, to allow us to enter it, belong, and mingle with his characters. Through the unconventional storytelling, he has able to deliver a credible introspection of these people. He has also managed to study them more intimately, closer to their heart, and deeper to their soul. We respond to their thoughts—we laugh at them, we feel bad about their chances, we bully their stinking attitude, and we commiserate with their troubles. Lao not only gives them legs to stand, but also an extra pair to stroll around and have fun. The humor connects and pinches, making its style look effortless, believable—praiseworthy.
In Lao’s use of symbolic time, three important points become clear. First, time is very relative to the characters. Second, the characters are one with their realities. And third, the subject is equal to the environment. In our class, Lao barely discussed symbolic time since he was more concerned with real time, pushing us to explore more about our chosen milieus. But he left a short note about the subject, and here it is, in bullets:
> Story is phenomenological
> Timeline is condensed
> Plotting is rhizomic
> Character is subjectified
> Exposition is impressionistic
> Resolution is existential
There are theories involved in Lao’s writing process. He is scrupulous. He tries every possible turn that his story can take. He dresses his characters and puts them in different situations. He checks their credibility, if they speak right, if their problems are reasonable, if their actions are believable. These things are necessary regardless of time mode—dramatic, real, or symbolic—and regardless of the writer’s choice to overlap the three, which is what most of the time happens. Unlike his usual scripts, Biyaheng Lupa is essentially symbolic; the form is noticeable in its use of time, and the handling of the characters in relation to each other. While form is favored, content does not suffer. Each has a story to tell, and each contributes to the portrait that Lao is trying to paint. The tone is carefully sustained, especially when it shifts to “reality”—when the characters are out of the bus and start to talk, when we hear “real” conversations as opposed to meandering thoughts and private musings.
Only in the end it chooses to be dramatic. The execution is poetic, alright, but the effect is out of place. While it could have chosen to end in the long shot of the bridge—that slow, uncertain feeling of staying in the middle of something, the night clad in pitch black, the road ahead enigmatic, the moon and the stars sleeping—it chooses to awaken the emotions we tried to keep away while watching the film by ending with tragedy. It disturbs the beautifully-set mood with a drastic turning point, which pounds my ear with a bit of betrayal, of making the unpredictable and unsatisfying turn. Clearly, this is a writer’s decision.
But what I recognize as weakness in its conclusion is part of Lao’s growth as a writer-director—something inevitable, something natural and understandable. The annoyance to the culture of authorship has pushed him to wear both hats; and seeing him now control his own material, imagining him taking chances with the possibilities not only with words but also with sounds and images, is welcoming. It is every writer’s dream: his contribution to be acknowledged. And Biyaheng Lupa—with the ripeness of its concept and the completeness of its thought—makes every writer in this side of town happily proud.
Lola (Brillante Mendoza, 2009) October 21, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemanila, Festival, Indie Sine, Noypi.5 comments
Directed by Brillante Mendoza
Written by Linda Casimiro
Cast: Anita Linda, Rustica Carpio, Tanya Gomez, Jhong Hilario
Rumor has it that Lola was admired in the Venice Film Festival because the audience there was moved by the glaring similarity between their city and our own. The sight of the surrounding waters and the boats that transport people from one place to another in the film may have reminded them of the lovely canals and gondolas of their city. They may have been particularly impressed by our gondeliers who don’t wear shirts even if the weather is cold. Seeing the rows of houses built on these high waters may have caused them to cringe—because they lack the beauty of their own monuments and buildings, the bridges that connect them together, and the romantic feeling that one gets while looking at them. Surely, our Venice is no place to propose a marriage. The audience may have also related to the strong rains and flooding, which they have come to regard as common occurrences in their everyday life since their city was built. They know how it feels like living above water. They even have tourists visiting them just to look at their life. The stories about the sinking of Venice may have also crossed their mind. But supposing the rumor is true, what could possibly be wrong with their emotional familiarity with the film?
Just to clarify, we don’t call them gondolas. We call them boats because boats are used in our small rivers in the province. We don’t call them canals too. They’re just plain and simple “flowing water” to us, not “streets paved with water” because we really have streets—they’re just covered with water. What we refer to as canals are often clogged with garbage that has been there for thousands of years. “Estero” is often used, though it is pejorative, which apparently the Spanish origin of the word is not. We just love to address things in their pejoratives. When you live near the “estero,” you live in the shanty district of the city. Flies mix into your food, rats run beside you as you sleep, and you’re fine with it. It’s easy to get used to the smell. The rows of houses built on these high waters are houses for sure, mostly made of concrete and metal, but some are makeshift shacks made of whatever things their owners can find—scraps of wood, tin cans, cardboards, fabric, tarpaulins, anything to cover their homes from the sun and rain. Their foundations may be strong but we can’t be sure in ten years. We are not sure if Sitio Ilog in Malabon is sinking but aquifers are impossible to find there. We are not sure what the ground is made of because we haven’t really seen how it looks like for a long time. Interestingly, we call these shacks “barong-barong,” and we call our national dress for men “Barong Tagalog.” Furthermore, it is politically incorrect to call these people living in shanties “squatters.” We are advised to call them “urban settlers” because they really are urban settlers.
We have tourists, and they also come to visit us to look at our life but we’re sure they are not happy about it. Yes, they admire our resilience, our smiles amid the misery, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re pathetic. At the height of the relief operations for the victims of typhoon Ondoy, we see American soldiers stoked by the gleam in these people’s eyes as they receive the goods to feed themselves with after the disaster. But until when they’ll have something to eat we’re not really sure. We can only be sure that the relief goods are temporary. After a certain period of time, as if taken hostage by ailing memory, we go back to the state of calamity that is not caused by natural calamity, but by political calamity, historical calamity, and calamity by natural selection.
We also eat typhoons for breakfast—we have them all year long. Like Venice, we are used to periodic flooding, heavy downpours, and high tides, but we are more wary of tsunamis and landslides. We have landslides even in the city, and recently it is taking its toll on wealthy subdivisions. Flood is one thing; but flooded all year ’round is another. Sitio Ilog in Malabon, Metro Manila, which is the main setting of Lola, is one of our little Venices, with floodwater that never subsides even during summer. The film’s main emotional thrust comes from the mere sight of the place, and while it does not attempt to make the situation of its people dramatic, it appeals like a news story, made compelling just by its telling and the footage that comes along with it.
Brillante Mendoza has always been up for challenges, and among those challenges is either choosing a subject that will fit his location or choosing a location that will fit his subject. Whichever way, he gets the benefit of his interesting subjects. But unfortunately they don’t always work. The danger of his realism is knowing that it can break down any minute, that its fragility can open its doors to failure anytime. There are times when being fragile works though, if it is carefully sustained like Kinatay, but upon seeing Lola and looking back at the experience of seeing Foster Child two years ago, Mendoza seems to go back to that safe road of throwing in brilliant moments to make up for his inability to be terse.
When an argument is repeated, it is meant for emphasis. But when an argument is already sound, and this argument is repeated a number of times, it can only account for indulgence, which is not bad if the intention reaches out to emotions other than anger and depression. But what if that is the intention? And what if that has always been the intention? In the arts, realism often equates to the sordid. Fundamental to the realists are truth and accuracy. While realism, especially in the Philippines, is naturally depressing, it should also be awakening. But realism, if it still needs to be pointed out, should not only be reflected—it should also be interpreted. Unfortunately that’s when Mendoza takes his realism for granted, the part when he has to interpret, the part when he has to lobby the underlying advocacy of his films, the part when he not only needs to put his ear to the ground but also every part of himself.
He is an observer alright. But observers, to be effective, must relay their observations clearly and punctiliously. These observations are used to come up with assumptions—hypotheses which, no matter how far-fetched and maligned, help to find solutions to the problem. Mendoza has strong observations on old age, on human suffering, and on the dragging inefficiency of our political system in general. Suffice it to say that the details of Lola are overwhelming. Problems ooze from various directions: social (robbery and prison), economic (the grandmothers’ struggle for a living), spiritual (faith and resilience), personal (relationships of the characters with each other) and environmental (rains and flood). These are well-founded observations. These happen. These are real. But Mendoza has not able to put them to good use. He hasn’t able to capture the interest in their conflicting realities and the force to make them coherent—that while the theme itself is embracing these stories to drive his point across, the narrative suffers from his graceless hand, from his haphazard way of making us feel the agony of the grandmothers’s fate.
It is easy to be carried away by some of the scenes because they are really effective. The closeups of Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio are like images of endless grief, the lines on their faces trace every hardship they had to bear. The expression of weariness seems to be sculpted on them. Anita Linda walking in a small alley, calling out her grand-grandson, shouting, and eventually glimpsing at a corpse, is harrowing to the bone. The funeral procession also holds the same feeling, only magnified to achieve a cruel epiphany. The aerial shot of boats moving forward makes it poignant, during which the silence among audience members could only mean commiseration. Rustica Carpio’s tedious walk down the stairs, holding on to the rail in every step, validates our sympathy to her. That oddball sequence of catching fish in their flooded house—with every family member delighted by the strange discovery—seems more like an inadvertent parody of Mendoza’s popularity in foreign festivals. In Lola’s brilliant moments, clearly, Teresa Barrozo’s music becomes their life.
There is a reason why people advise you to take your time. There is a reason why some films take years to be finished, and ultimately there is a reason why some films are not finished. To finish a film just for the sake of finishing it—or to be able to participate in a prestigious festival, perhaps—isn’t criminal, in fact it’s mostly reasonable, but it also risks the respect of your peers. While foreign press will not be able to discern the cities of Manila, Mandaluyong, and Malabon, and how they are illogically connected in the narrative, your fellow countrymen will. Foreign festivals are gluttons for punishment, and sadly the film community in your country is slowly turning into that too.
Now we go back to our question in the beginning. What could possibly be wrong with the foreign audience’s emotional familiarity with Lola? Nothing. Film appreciation is interesting because it is personal,and not entirely cultural. It is solely dependent on the person’s taste—his individuality. And Lola is a good example to illustrate this, a pressing case that will fuel discussions on perception. It is impossible not to be moved by its reality, but it stops when it has already accomplished that reality. We ask, should a film cease from continuing its social study when its objective of representing reality is already done? Isn’t that hit and run? Is the film helping our condition if it only continues to dignify our resilience? Our patron saint of words Conrado de Quiros says, “The other face of resilience is a long-suffering people. Or worse, the other face of resilience is an uncomplaining people.” Because when the credits start to roll, we just sit back there and give the film a courtesy clap.
Sanglaan (Milo Sogueco, 2009) September 20, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemalaya, Indie Sine, Noypi.add a comment
English Title: The Pawnshop
Directed by Milo Sogueco
Cast: Ina Feleo, Tessie Tomas, Joem Bascon
Random journal entries – - yes I still keep a journal! – - about unnecessary things, obsessive dreams, and keepsakes of drunk conversations.
May 9
Hinahanap mo nga ba ako o ang kawalan ko? – Bob Ong
July 27
I just woke from sleep. Checked the time. 4:34. Shit. Either I go back to sleep or I try to go back to sleep. The latter is more likely than hell.
Trying to remember.
God, yes, I dreamt of Ina Feleo’s nose. Yes, Ina Feleo’s nose. Ina. Feleo. Nose. Nose. Nose. Dunno why. Saw Sanglaan two nights ago. With no one of course, so I’m still left with my thoughts. Dunno if I have thoughts about the film though. I can’t seem to react about it, either good or bad. Anyway. . .
Yes, Ina Feleo’s nose.
It was only her nose in the dream. How do I know it’s her? Or it’s hers? Of course when it’s a dream, those things are not supposed to be argued, you just know it.
I just know it’s her nose, OK.
I was staring at it for a long while, waiting for her to sneeze or something. But she didn’t sneeze. She just smiled. I know she smiled because her skin moved a little. Oh I wish I’d seen her face.
Her nose was lovely.
I remember in grade school, we used to write essays about anything in English class. I imagine I would pick her nose as my subject (hahaha I didn’t mean it that way) and I could go on and on and on describing every detail of it, and my teacher would probably complain again about how wordy my essays are. I would smile because at least she read it.
Okay, enough of daydreaming.
It wouldn’t be a nose without protruding, and hers protrudes like. . .like. . .like the way Thom’s ears stick out. It is just divine. Looking at it is calming, but it also grabs and requires your full attention. I imagine a TV looking for signals and the signal-meter stops when it reaches her nose – - it can’t stand a divine creation! It adorns her beauty. It beams me home.
Haaah, why can’t I just sleep? Instead of this.
When I meet her, I will tell her that. That she has a beautiful nose. I hope she doesn’t get conscious about it because it is a lovely, beautiful nose.
September 3
Oggs driving. Me not listening. Well I can’t help but listen of course. He’s talking about Milo. I thought Milo Tolentino, Hermann’s friend. Milo Sogueco pala. I complain about Tessie Tomas screaming, and he quips, Flor Salanga kaya! He sounds depressed just by telling it.
Oggs is always the nice guy. Even when he sounds depressed, he still looks jubilant about it. We need a critic like that.
Hannah Montana, LFO, croissants, Khavn and Sherad walking from afar. . . Why am I writing this?
Even the wind is telling me how sad it is.
I wish I hadn’t looked. But it was open. How can I not say goodbye.
July 24
Saw Ang Panggagahasa Kay Fe, Sanglaan, and Last Supper No. 3. Straight. I feel very tired. Lord, please, skip the dreamfest tonight. I just want to sleep a long sleep.
May 25
“Aren’t you giddy today?” I asked when the news of Kinatay’s win came out, as I’ve been asking everyone I know.
“Only slightly! The nationalist part of me says nice to hear the recognition, the critical part of me says I’ll only be truly happy for a film’s success if I’ve seen it and liked it.”
I texted back, “Ang purist mo naman!! Hehe.”
Was there a time when Alexis wasn’t unintentionally sincere?
December 13
Tonet, not drunk.
“Sabi ni Direk Joyce, IF YOU CAN’T SOLVE IT, DIS-SOLVE IT!”
Napahandusay kami sa lapag. Pang-film major lang ba yung joke?
In fairness sa joke, hindi ko napanood ang Paano Kita Iibigin.
September 19
The artlessness works for me – - the restraint, the distribution of drama, the walking subtlety and vagueness of Ina Feleo, her nose that distracts me from focusing, the often-reserved tone of the film – - but only up to a certain extent.
The script leaves you wanting, for more or for less? I guess for more. But there is acuity in its “lessness” that is difficult to ignore – - it may be a masterpiece in modesty for all I know – - but should I trust my thoughts as I walk away after seeing the film, I may have to lean on the half-empty side.
Its loud points are really loud. Its soft points are like a whisper. Is it confused? Is it experimenting? Is it following a seismograph of emotions or something? The way it shakes at first, then nothing, then shakes again, then nothing, then the big earthquake comes. Or it could have been made with more time? More time to fine tune? More time to check if the AV jacks are connected accordingly?
The film screams “I could have been better” when it ends. It leaves a taste that I cannot decipher – - which is good if it lasts for days, but two months? I don’t know. I thought if I had more time to think it over. . . Sanglaan still puzzles me.
“If you can’t understand it, misunderstand it!” There goes a principle.
July 29
Dreamt of Ina Feleo’s nose again!!!! Haunting me? If ever I find the right frame of mind to write about Sanglaan, it should start with this dream. There is no other way. Making sense is overrated anyway.
September 15
“Hindi dahil sa hindi mo naiintindihan ang isang bagay ay kasinungalingan na ito. At hindi lahat ng kaya mong intindihin ay katotohanan.”
>>Buti pa si Bob Ong, comforting.
Kinatay (Brillante Mendoza, 2009) September 8, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Indie Sine, Noypi, UP Screening.8 comments
Directed by Brillante Mendoza
Written by Armando Lao
Cast: Coco Martin, Mercedes Cabral, Maria Isabel Lopez
BEST DIRECTOR, UP PREMIERE, POLITICS
Though seemingly too obvious to mention, it is important to point out that the Cannes Film Festival jury gave recognition not to the film Kinatay, but to its director Brillante Mendoza. Like awards given to actors and technicians such as cinematographers and editors, the Best Director prize is specifically bestowed based on the director’s contribution to the film, and does not necessarily signify that the film as a whole is as equally exceptional as its direction.
It is a valid query, however, that if the film is recognized for its direction, how can the entirety of it not be good. Of course there are things that need to be considered: the performances of the actors, the story and screenplay, the art direction, the visual language, and the sound design and music. Inside these categories there are still smaller areas that the director, with the help of his crew, needs to decide upon to contribute to the overall look of the film. The bottom line is, cinema is a collaborative art. As much as the director fervently holds the vision of the film, he still needs people, and if this crew turns out to be the best people he could ever work with, then the award given to him is more of an achievement in keeping these talents in proper tune and making good use of them in his film.
Thus, it is just great that after the Philippine premiere of Kinatay in the UP Cine Adarna, there is a discussion that followed. Mendoza and his actors were present to share their experiences in Cannes and tell us more about the film than what we already know. UPFI Theater Coordinator Yason Banal, UPFI Faculty Director Ed Lejano and filmmaker Carlos Siguion-Reyna also participated in the discussion. When asked why he thinks the jury liked his film, Mendoza humorously answered, Siguro kasi madilim siya. Hindi nila nakikita. (Maybe because it was too dark. They can’t see it.) The audience laughed not only because it is true, but also because there is more to it than being consistently dim. Mendoza added matter-of-factly that the one they showed in Cannes is less dark compared to what they showed here, something he attributed to the quality of the projector that the UP Film Institute has.
During the Q&A, questions were fired one after another. People actually volunteered to ask questions, unlike in usual circumstances when a long dead air is anticipated as the emcee begs for audience participation. Though it is not completely unforeseeable, considering that Kinatay marks the first time that a Filipino won in feature-film competition in the festival, it is still remarkable how the audience members were inspired to ask various questions and interpreted both the content and treatment of the film differently, and surprisingly opposed to what the foreign critics, especially Roger Ebert, had to say.
Gabriela Women’s Partylist Rep. Liza Maza remarks on how she was reminded by the story of Melissa Roxas while seeing the film. Roxas is a Filipino-American abducted in La Paz, Tarlac last May 2009 by alleged members of the military. She was kidnapped, along with two other men, tortured, and forced to admit her participation with the New People’s Army before finally getting freed. Her story hit the headlines as local and international human rights groups supported her claim of military torture. Roxas is also an American citizen whose government funds the military exercises to train Filipino soldiers. Former major-general Jovito Palparan, on the other hand, claimed that he received reports, a photo and a video, that allegedly confirm that Roxas is indeed a member of the New People’s Army.
Commending the film, Maza was impressed by how it succeeds in creating the atmosphere of fear and putting us in the troubling shoes of its main character. She goes on to relate the subject of the film to the issues largely blamed on the present administration, namely the extrajudicial killings and recent abductions of activists, the appalling cases of graft and corruption, the visiting forces agreement, the campaign for charter change in favor of term extension, the countless numbers of unresolved human rights violation cases, and the affronting debasement of academic freedom.
Even before the screening started, College of Mass Communication Dean Rolando Tolentino boldly raised these issues, in constant reminder of what we can do to fight them, as well as the timely comment on the president’s conferral of National Artist for Visual Arts and Film on Carlo J. Caparas, which elicited cheers from the crowd. The valiance of this sector of the UP community, in light of the political rule of viciousness in the Philippines, is always something to be admired.
When the news of Mendoza’s victory reached the web and the broadsheets, the pressure to show the film to the public becomes understandable. With a few exceptions, it is already an accepted cultural fact that a Filipino artist will only start to gain attention locally when he is noticed by the foreign people, something I would like to call the Charice Pempengco complex. Take her case. When she got licked by Oprah and Ellen Degeneres, people down here started to adore her, as if they all voted for her to win in the local singing show she had participated, which crowned her a loser. In Philippine cinema, however, that’s like expecting Halley’s comet to arrive fifty years early. Mendoza is no Manny Pacquiao or Charice Pempencgco; the Palace sees him as the filmmaker of ugly Manila. No hero’s welcome is reserved for him, well at least, a hero’s welcome flagged by the Arroyo government. But Mendoza isn’t keen on the idea of sucking up to have his films shown to the public. No sensible Filipino filmmaker would do that, even with all the golden palms, bears, and lions in his hand. Now, after the cuts given to Serbis last year, Mendoza is also not keen on letting other people decide what parts of his film are deemed “morally objectionable” and therefore unfit to be seen even by fifty-year-old babymakers. Welcome home, Brillante, hails the MTRCB.
MTRCB AS A VESTIGIAL ORGAN, CENSORSHIP, APPROVAL
The subject of the abolition of the MTRCB, through the years, has started to tire me out. While being hopeful is a trait that will get you through life in every hurdle it gives, the hopelessness it often bears as a result is leaving me sick. We have lived with it in decades, it has been involved in many controversial issues and survived five presidents, so in the throes of accepting defeat, why can’t we live with it now? Indeed, why can’t we? Hopelessness, at least for me, is not giving up. Perhaps we can continue our fight under a less narrow-minded administration, but I just don’t know when would that be. Asking for MTRCB’s abolition is beating a dead horse, slaying the slain, and helping the crows and vultures eat the corpse. In a random twist of fate, however, as stated in the press release, it has approved the public screening of Kinatay without cuts. It seems to me like giving us a candy and caressing our backs after a childish fight.
Any classification is selective. It is not as if the board is strictly following a code of conduct or a bushido to implement and justify its rulings. Everything is still wholly subjective, depending on what is perceived as fit or unfit to its members. That’s why it has members not only from the film industry but also from the academe and private sectors: to provide a different perspective. The wider the perspective is, the fairer it will be able to tell what is objectionable or not. That’s the idea at least, the alleviation of guilt in the context of fairness. The occasional change of members is done for this purpose too; so the judgment won’t be limited to a select group of people, so it won’t be too homogenous, like orders coming from a dictator in blindfold. But unfortunately, in all the millions it has contributed to the national budget (earning 50 million annually in recent years according to PCIJ), it only results in inconsistency and fallacious judgment.
From the X-rating given to Lav Diaz’s Death in the Land of Encantos just because of an exposure of genitalia and Adolf Alix’s Aurora due to Rosanna Roces’ moving breasts, or even Raya Martin’s Next Attraction because of Coco Martin and Paolo Rivero’s passionate kiss, to the wave of approved public screening of gay films that show moving genitalias of different sizes, it is either politics or plain stupidity. Or maybe a lethal combination of both. Like the issue with the recent National Artists, we are not crying foul over the choices, but with the process and the deliberate lack of consistency, and sometimes the inconsiderate disregard of it.
With the approval of Kinatay in full, it only proves the fact that the MTRCB is riding on the circumstances and not acting upon the merits of the film on its own. For one thing, the subject of Kinatay is more “objectionable” than Serbis. It covers a more sensitive political arena and presents its criticisms head on without sacrificing the style of its filmmaker. While Mendoza is clearly benefiting in his choice of subjects, there has been an improvement in his latter works in terms of direction, specifically the way he lays out the subject and lets it breathe and decide where it wants to go. There is still intervention – - the screenplay of Bing Lao overpowers the terrific improvisation – - but in a more tolerant eye it can be seen as significant to the ideology of the film. The experiment becomes less obvious and the real time scenario more “realistic”. Whereas Serbis is more graphic in sex, Kinatay resolves to the unequivocal and unwavering confluence of its form and content, with more hits than misses, and with the right combination of lower and upper jabs and straight punches.
THE FIRST ACT, THE WEDDING, INTIMACY
The first few minutes establish the setting through short glimpses in the everyday life of its people. Shots of children playing in the street, women washing their clothes and gossiping, men drinking beer in the heat of the morning, a chicken whose head being excised, the sound of a long and busy day about to begin. The camera moves impatiently, the different noises overlapping and indistinctly creating an uncomfortable and annoying tonality. Slowly it follows the couple Peping (Coco Martin) and Cecille (Mercedes Cabral) inside their house, in an imperfectly remarkable long take as they tend to their child and leave. There is something graceful and haphazard in that shot that makes it difficult to forget, with the couple teasing each other and the camera looking after them from the window as they walk away.
Peping and Cecille leave their child to a neighbor to go to the city hall to get married. As they travel we observe how they possess an air of carefreeness brought about by their youth. From their community the camera now moves out to a larger setting: the city. We hear the whirring of cars stuck in traffic, the shouts of jeepney barkers, the drone of the factories and food stands nearby, and the cacophony of urban noises. This is Manila by day in all its broiling and dizzying glory. We see a man in a huge billboard along the highway about to jump, with his mother and some news reporters in sight. We feel the tension, but for a city dweller who is used to turn on the TV and find out another unusual thing becoming very usual, it is something that can understandably be ignored. Mendoza leaves the drama in the periphery, especially the different faces of the social condition we often see in the news, and we follow his characters’ response to them with less concern than usual.
We get to see a “kasalang-bayan” officiated by the city mayor, with the couples feeling the occasion as nothing different from a church wedding. Peping and Cecille arrive at the room where the exchange of vows will be held, along with their godfathers and godmothers, and friends and family members. It is a simple yet sincere occasion, observed with the humor of the typical wedding homily and capped with a lunch together, light but close. Peping goes to his criminology class right after, and when night comes in, he embarks on a long journey in the police sideline. His friend convinces him to participate in a shady operation, in the bait of earning extra money for his nascent family. When he gets inside the car, that’s when everything starts to be noticeably dark, literally and figuratively.
The first act speaks of authenticity – - “realistic”, if you’re more comfortable with it. Mendoza lays out the important details in his protagonist’s life with sharpness. You get the feeling that he is holding everything with his bare hands. He opts to define his present life and actions through his social involvement, the people in his community, his friends, and his response to them, things that are mostly external. There is also a sense of immediacy in the first act, providing a pressing hook on the turning point of the plot about to follow. And just like that, we feel suddenly intimate with the main character.
LUNETA, THE LONGEST DRIVE, ARCHITECTURE
The racket, as Peping finds out eventually, is to kidnap a woman who owes the boss big-time money because of drugs. Madonna (Maria Isabel Lopez) works at a night club, and the group parks the car and waits for her outside. The club sequence, as short as it is, gives an alienating and memorable grip of fear. Inside we see topless women dancing and flirting with their audience. We see Sarge (John Regala) humiliate another woman and call her a squid. The mix of the visuals and the music is a little bizarre. The vibe exudes a sublimity of a forthcoming tension, like it is the natural atmosphere of the place. Furthermore, in our point of view as the film’s audience, the casual display of uncovered breasts in public is supposed to be disturbing, but it feels more like we have stepped into the point of view of the club’s audience. The sight is enticing in its strangeness.
The intention of the group unknown to her, Madonna agrees to come with the men inside the car as it drives away. They talk about things, dealings that they have done in the past. Suddenly an intense feeling breaks in. We know the deception and have become part of it. Next thing we know Madonna is being gagged, her hands tied as she struggles, and the tension blows up. Expletives are thrown left and right as Madonna continues to fight back and wrestle. Peping realizes the felony about to happen, and with just the look in his face we know that he wants nothing to do it. But he can’t. He’s part of it already. And from there it starts to be relentlessly cruel.
The long second act, to wit, the drive from the dark city to an even darker one outside it and the murder that comes after, is the film’s pivotal moment. It is also the most fundamental, the most likely to be misinterpreted by people, and the most transcendent sequence in Mendoza’s career as a filmmaker. As there is a story to follow, Mendoza is keener on piling atmosphere on atmosphere, reinforcing it to the point of suffocation. The dim and grainy shots inside the van are interspersed with the shots of the road it travels outside, the city at night grappling them without knowing the crime they are about to commit. It alternates among the close-ups of Peping and the other men, the reflections in the mirror, the shots of the highway, the exits in it, and the lights of the cars and the lamp posts along the way. The contrast of the fussy interior and the calm, quotidian exterior works very well.
But the cinematographer is not the only one who is busy. The sound design and the music contribute a mercilessly fitting tune to the brutal preparation to the murder. When you listen to it attentively, you can differentiate which are the real sound, the created sound, and the score. The layers the three of them create, along with the lightlessness of the visuals, are intense and, in most parts, asphyxiating. I can even call its atrociousness poetic. Mendoza chooses his words in all their grueling vigor to create an evil in past, present, and future tenses, with us tortured yet anticipating what happens next.
Quentin Taratino’s comment, that the film is a complete “eyewitness account of a murder”, accords not with the architecture of the second act but with how it connects with the first and the third. After the drive, Madonna is brought into a rundown house where she is tied-up in bed, raped, and, despite her plea for mercy, killed. But she is not only killed; she is dismembered. Peping, aside from being a witness, becomes an accessory to the crime. Kap (Julio Diaz) denies Madonna’s request for life and continues the verdict given to her. Sarge executes the plan as ordered, and with the help of his men, cuts parts of her body off, her arms, her legs, and finally her head, puts them in the sack, and cleans his bloody self in the bathroom.
MUTILATION IN HISTORY, LUCILA LALU, SARGE
In the dictionary of crime, mutilation is used as punishment in seventeenth century England for offenders of religion, mostly writers who attacked the views of the Anglican episcopacy. The ears were the common target, and there were times when pillories were used to slit them loose. In the Philippine setting, when crimes of this nature became rampant, murder by mutilation was called “Chop-chop”. Possibly the most known and controversial Chop-chop murder case happened in May 1967, with Lucila Lalu as the maimed lady. Her legs were found first near her business place in Sta. Cruz, and her headless body was discovered a day later in a vacant lot along EDSA in Makati. It was one of those sensational stories that the media feasted on and that the public responded to with fear and surprise, particularly because of the murderer’s skill to kill.
Unfortunately, despite the attention it gathered, the case remains unclear up to now. The fingers were first pointed to Lalu’s nineteen-year-old lover, but the case was eventually dropped due to the witnesses who verified the whereabouts of the suspect when the crime was committed. Less than a month later, Jose Luis Santiano surfaced and admitted the crime, only to retract his statements several days after. Despite his plea for innocence, further investigation reinforced his involvement in the crime.
Reading the news clippings at that time, it surprised me that the people then described the crime as bizarre. Clearly it was an unusual case, a strange way to kill a victim as opposed to gunning someone down or stabbing with a knife. Dismembering requires expertise, and the effort it takes to have it done, not to mention the scattering of the body parts in different cities, is something done with a certain abnormal personality. But was bizarre more fitting than heinous? Or beastly? The tag “mystery of the year” likewise affirmed the idea that the reporters then were a bit disparaging the nature of the crime, as if it was only something that actualized a murder serial they used to read. Furthermore, it was inevitable that Lalu’s life was probed to the smallest detail, particularly her relationships with other men aside from her husband.
It is not impossible that the Lucila Lalu Chop-chop Lady Murder Case was in Bing Lao’s mind when he was writing the script for Kinatay. With Lao being a curious researcher whose scrupulousness works wonders, the film may be inspired by the story, along with the other chop-chop ladies in the 80s and 90s, which he took time to study to come up with a visibly able plot and characters that stand vividly with their actions.
Santiano, with what I recall, is a dental student, something related to medical practice, which familiarizes him with the use of knives or any sharp instruments and the anatomy of the human body. The “bizarre” description used by the reporters to the Lucila Lalu case comes with a genuine admiration to the act of mutilation, the manner that requires the killer to do it. Not that admiring it commends and glorifies the crime, but you have to concede that the act itself is no no-brainer. It requires an exceptional personality. (If I may digress a bit, it is also worthy to note the success of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter novels, particularly the TV series that is currently serialized based on them.)
Apparently this is not the first time that Sarge has done it. When he asks for a sharper tool, he knows what instrument will work efficiently or not. He also doesn’t hesitate – - he simply is a man with no heart, or he possesses the great big heart of darkness. Being the “hands of the crime”, he may well be the only person that Kap trusts in these things. Thus there was prior experience, and possibly the reason why the plan was carried out successfully – - meaning the victim was killed and mutilated and her body parts scattered to give the authorities a hard time – - is because it has been done before. The percentage of failure leans on the negative. Lao and Mendoza imply that what happened to Madonna is something that has been happening many times before, and the people behind this, who take matters of brutal justice in their hands, are still at large, walking under the same sky as we do.
FAT CHANCE, LOOPS, THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
We feel the length not only through its running time but also in the texture and feeling of boundlessness, the mood driving only towards a certain direction. Being the film’s protagonist, it rests on Peping to steer the wheel, and in one moment he almost has taken it to another route, only to be overcome again by his fear. By the time when he is asked to buy balut and finds a chance to escape, we become aware of the danger that he is getting himself into. But we root for him to get away. And when he didn’t – - when he has made his way to the bus only to change his mind the last minute – - we know his position in the crime is aleatory. He didn’t seem to have much choice.
What impresses me in that crucial scene is that while it is part of the suspense of the narrative, it isn’t treated as such. There is nothing extreme about the use of music, yet what stays in your head is a ringing sound, like losing your sense of hearing. You don’t notice it looping, even if it does so for a lot of times, and even if you do, it isn’t much of a bother. Meanwhile, the camera follows Peping in different distances, much like following him in person without him knowing it. The darkness of the night clad in unpretentious curse cooperates secretly with the unavoidable attainment of the murder.
“Anything happens anytime you go out at night.” I may have imagined Mendoza saying that in an interview. In his films, the night is a character as important as their protagonists. The ending of Foster Child wouldn’t be as striking as it was if Cherry Pie Picache breaks down in broad daylight. Tirador, despite having more day scenes, has more sense of panic in its night sequences. And was the movie theater in Serbis ever bathed in light? The night has always given Filipino films a character of its own, and Mendoza’s depiction of it captures an evil of come-hither filthiness.
THE THIRD ACT, THE CURIOUS TAXI INCIDENT, ANXIETY
The dawn breaks. The group throws the body parts in different places as the car drives away. In complete exhaustion, they stop by to eat. They order beef. They order meat. The parallelism is too casual it doesn’t seem to bother. They are back in the hustle and bustle of early morning Manila. The sound of impatient cars in the impatient city. Just like nothing happens. Just like nothing will happen. Just like the first act.
After puking in the bathroom, Peping decides to leave. He can’t eat. He asks permission and gets paid for the job. He gets into the taxi and for a while we feel that the film is about to end, just waiting for everything to sink in for Peping and us. Maybe in a minute the credits will appear on the screen, and probably a clap from somewhere will start the applause. But the credits don’t appear here yet. The drive continues. And – - as if challenging our belief in perfect timing – - the taxi breaks down. Peping gets out to find another one, which takes him forever. We look at him as he waves at every occupied taxi that comes along. The driver fixes his taxi nearby. A lifetime has passed and the driver has finally changed tires and Peping gets into the car again. He hesitates, but he just wants to go home, sleep off the long night he just had. Good for him – - his wife is cooking him a nice breakfast. And the film ends.
Peping in the third act is filled with anxiety. After the fear that he experienced during the operation, he is now encumbered by angst, fearful of what may happen in result of his involvement in the crime. What physics has to say about the law of action and reaction now applies to his state. The unpleasant jolt of conscience leaves him in a debasing situation, cornering him in the uncertainty of things out of control. If we haven’t known what he has been through we can tell that there is nothing wrong with him. He looks like any city person who copes with the everyday stress of getting from one place to another. But we know that he is bothered. It is something that Mendoza has achieved in his storytelling – - our emotional connection to his character who is not communicating – - what Liza Maza has said about putting us in his shoes.
It is often taken for granted but anxiety connects the past, present, and future. Dealing with it is a personal undertaking marked by dreadfulness, particularly in response to the unforeseeable and unavoidable things that comes after the troubling experience. Not to be overlooked is the fact that the urban setting is a melting pot of anxieties. The various factors that contribute to psychological and behavioral disproportion make the city dweller more vulnerable to anxiety, precisely because the city is more exposed to conflicting social relationships and political and economic instability. The dweller, therefore, in coping with the stress of urban life, has to keep himself in steady emotional restraint to bear the effects of this kind of depersonalized and individualistic lifestyle.
His anxiety is morally motivated. His guilt acts as catalyst to the prolonged uneasiness he feels. What Søren Kierkegaard refers to as the “dizziness of freedom” also describes his distress. Even before the murder takes place, he longs to break free from the group. As he sees them gag Madonna he knows he is getting himself into trouble. And when the murder finally took place, he thought the guilt he has will be shared by everyone. But as they order food he realizes otherwise. These people don’t have any guilt. They believe Madonna just deserves it. If the police don’t find all her body parts, the better, that bitch. So the freedom he now has from the group, which by all means is temporary, is making him “dizzy”, making him lose his marbles.
Coco Martin’s charm has always given him an excuse to be liked. In his films, you never hate him. When he is stabbed in Tambolista you wish the guy who killed him be run over by a speeding truck. When he ponders in Daybreak you follow his deep stares into nowhere. When you see his boil popped out in Serbis you feel his pain, and swear never to drink from a Coke bottle ever again. When he plays a crook you wish he runs faster than the police. Even in his daily soap you root for his deranged evil character. Sometimes his woodiness gets annoying too. But his commanding presence in Kinatay, not to mention the deviant nuances he has given Peping, scales him farther from his generation of actors. The collaboration that started with Masahista, incidentally his first major role and Mendoza’s first film, not only opened doors and windows for his talent to be recognized, but also gave the independent community the opportunity to step up and raise the game.
ROGER, SIONIL, BRILLANTE
Roger Ebert mentions: “If Mendoza wants to please any viewer except for the most tortured theorist (one of those careerists who thinks movies are about arcane academic debates and not people) he’s going to have to remake his entire second half.” And I ask, why should he?
Mendoza has never been into this whole pleasing-the-audience business, and his films would prove that. He never had any commercial success, though in the Philippines “a commercial success” only happens among studio films, whose producers can afford to set-up interview sessions after the premiere night and broadcast it in national television. He certainly doesn’t care if he receives a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down from Ebert, or deprive him the four-starred review for that matter. But assuming it would be better, would remaking its entire second half still make Kinatay a Mendoza film? Or just an Ebert-inspired one? It may be my fault to take the dare seriously in defense of Mendoza but that argument is just too arrogant a thing to pass. Ebert mistakes his idea of the Idea for the Whim.
The intention to make a film for the foreign audience, in light of Mendoza’s unpopularity among common Filipino moviegoers (again we go back to the Charice Pempengco complex), seems too easy an argument to throw. With the news that he received boos after the film’s screening, which reminded some people of L’Aventura fifty years ago, it is sure that he will gain huge following especially from the West. And inevitable is the perception that the films that will follow Kinatay are meant for them – - to please them, and to help them reach artistic orgasm.
But most recognized artists are always accused of such. Of philandering in the mask of nationality. Admit it or not, pleasing is always in the filmmaker’s mind, and it has always been a dead-on signature to quip, perhaps with a cigarette in the middle of two fingers and a cap on, “my films are never meant to please”. There. Not pleasing is the new way to please. And that has become the standard principle of contemporary filmmakers not only from Asia but also across the world.
Kinatay isn’t for “arcane academic debates” and it certainly isn’t for the uncompromising. It is, like the pundits would say, a film that would find its audience. If it is good, then it is likely that more people will try to find it. Otherwise it will still be a staple of discussion. From there, many branches would grow, interest would be widened, and, holding some big balloons of hope, more people would be curious on our idea of cinema. Local filmmakers would be inspired to continue what they are doing, thinking that cinema is not just about winning in festivals abroad – - it is a culture that records time. Masturbatory as it is, Kinatay owns a character that only Mendoza as a filmmaker can shape, and morbidly, that is Filipino culture.
It forces you to experience the whole thing. The running time of 100 minutes feels more than a day to bear. The real-time scenario is filled with stylish devices meant to drive its points across, its treatment following a formula of shock and awe. The way it sticks to its style from start to finish asks for a debate whether it is just powerful because it is consistent or it is just consistent because the only thing it has is the power to shock. But coming from me and from most people I have spoken to about the film, Kinatay isn’t even close to sickening. In fact I find it revealing of Mendoza’s seriousness as a filmmaker. It punches its layers of shock controllably, one by one by one by one. Jessica Zafra isn’t exaggerating when she says, “I don’t know what the enraged critics saw. Kinatay is not as horrendously violent, gruesome, or sexually explicit as their reviews have led us to believe. What the hell were they watching? This cannot be the same movie.”
Likewise, it has been pointed out before that Mendoza favors unconventional storytelling because he isn’t really a good storyteller at all. The story slowly develops and ends with a little rising action, his closures not even close to being called a “climax”. Sometimes he puts different characters together, make a little plot to connect them, and there: a film. Or he figures to have the camera follow his characters behind their backs, improvise, immerse in the environment, and there: you have an incisive look at poverty which you lived through long takes and jarring camera movements. That’s true. But should the drama be always favored? Isn’t one way of focusing on the drama is not focusing on it? In Kinatay, Mendoza does a lot of defocusing, particularly towards his characters, but the way it has put us in Peping’s shoes without leaving the third person point-of-view makes it a difficult experience, whose reward is knowing that having one is a wrong thing to ask. There are more important things to see. Great art always has nationality, Sionil José observes, and Kinatay wears on its sleeve the nation that has sauntered through the woods and has never come back since.
POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE, BROCKA, ALEXIS TIOSECO
I am appalled, however, by how Mendoza treats the subject of politics outside his film. In the Q&A he mentioned that he is just a filmmaker, and as much as possible he wants to distance himself away from the political issues that his films are dealing with. If his films have political significance then it is up to the people to interpret them or make some sense out of them. But how could that be? How could you make political films and not live up to what they are saying? How could the films be radical and its creator a wimp? I know it’s itching its way out of your head so I might as well give my two pence worth on the subject of Brocka and Mendoza. Bear in mind I am forced.
Brocka should be admired and championed in context. He should not be carelessly and irresponsibly brought up whenever a realist filmmaker starts making films on the same vein, or even just political films for that matter. Brocka not only directed Bayan Ko : Kapit Sa Patalim and Orapronobis; he also filmed Tubog sa Ginto, Tinimbang Ka Nguni’t Kulang, Insiang, Bona, and many others that are more driven by his force and brilliance as a political observer than as a political activist. It is annoying when comparisons come up, not only with Mendoza but also with Jeffrey Jeturian or any other directors who have gained prominence through their so-called poverty films, because it undermines Brocka’s greatness – - for his legacy should not stand as a mere litmus test to qualify the filmmakers that come after him. It is ruthlessly unfair to both parties but more especially to Brocka because he is being boxed into a solely political filmmaker which he isn’t. His films show many faces of politics, and not just the one that drives people into streets to protest. Brocka is not the tribunal; let go of him. He and Mendoza are different, and they have lived in different times and circumstances, and we should consider their merits in proper perspective.
One of Alexis Tioseco’s wishes is “I wish older commentators would understand: Lino Brocka is dead,” and that is true, Brocka is dead, but his vision is not. Filmmakers are not just makers of film. They are also makers of political discussion. It is like saying writers just write, they don’t think. Brocka, along with Ishmael Bernal, Mike de Leon, Mario O’Hara, Joey Gosiengfiao, and Celso Ad Castillo, made films not only to depict the tumultuous years of the Marcos regime and its after effects but also to awaken the minds of the people by not just being political, but by being real and honest. The seventies and the eighties were the years of unrest, but not all films made during those decades were expressions of dissent. Gosiengfiao, Elwood Perez, Danny Zialcita, and O’Hara wrote family dramas, comedies, and sex films. Peque Gallaga, O’Hara, and Castillo had ambitious historical productions with Oro Plata Mata, Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos, and Pagputi ng Uwak, Pag-Itim ng Tagak. Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos reached the peak of their careers. I am only mentioning textbook notes, and clearly not helping the obscurely worthy things that deserve the space, but as you can see, there is diversity, and people all know then that Philippine cinema is not only about Lino Brocka.
Unfortunately we have come at this point in our national cinema when we resort to look at the past for comfort, and sometimes for a reason to criticize our present filmmakers on what they don’t have than what they do. We should move beyond comparison, we should bear a critical eye without missing the bigger picture, and we should consider the political landscape that these filmmakers are in while trying to finish their films. Being independent now is different from being independent twenty or thirty years ago. The importance of being a filmmaker now is never commensurate with the efforts that our greatest directors gave during their time. Though one thing hasn’t changed for sure: no matter how much we (d)evolve, cinema still depends on what you say and how you say it.
The risk that Mendoza takes to show the socio-political condition in the Philippines is the reward on its own. His latter films – - Foster Child, Tirador, Serbis, and Kinatay – - are fueled by the desire to depict the state of the country, and whether he exploits this realism or not is less relevant compared to the response that they have provoked from the audience. With the niche that he has found in world cinema, capped by his win in the Cannes Film Festival, it is certainly hoped that he would be guided to the direction of utmost responsibility. Because more important than the award itself is the initiative to help the country realize the significance of cinema not just as a political tool, but also as an indicator that reforms could be made and achieved. The distance he prefers to have from his subject collapses the bridge, though it is not too late to fix it.
*With thanks to Karl Castro, Bolix Ortega, and Ayer Arguelles
Last Supper No. 3 (Veronica Velasco, 2009) August 21, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemalaya, Indie Sine, Noypi, Queer.4 comments
Directed by Veronica Velasco
Written by Veronica Velasco and Jinky Laurel
Cast: Joey Paras, Jojit Lorenzo, JM de Guzman
It is not a series of unfortunate events. It is the unfortunate event in itself: life. Tragicomedy, from Shakespeare and Beckett to Renoir and Dr. Horrible, is more tragic than comedic, but we’re all at it for laughs mostly. It is a clever genre, one that entertains without giving the sullen taste of social apathy. Tragic is too common; it’s everywhere. Tragedy is a way of life; comedy isn’t. It is a response to tragedy. It maybe is the most creative thing that the thinking human ever thought of since building a fire. Or the periodic table of elements. Or deforestation. Or the color bars. Or the aperture of cameras. If we can’t see the hilarity in misfortunes we are doomed. If we can’t find the tragic in the absurd we are foolish, and we are wasting our short stint here on earth. It’s a funny game, life. And we all die and those awfulness and ridiculousness don’t mean a thing when we take off. Like Greg saying, We can live with dignity, we can’t die with it. Replace dignity with any catholic word and that would suffice. It’s a tragic ordeal, life. And we have to go through the odds to dispose them. Act like they never happened, live like they never changed us. Homosociality – - or iso-sociality, if you’re a political-correctness-geek – - is of no use and defense, unfortunately. We are in the modern medieval, where knights are not anymore as gallant as they used to be. The modern knights accept their fate mild-manneredly, amid every bureaucratic improbability and amid every absurd policy, and are just happy to have lived life the way generations before them did, without questioning why or how, the two most dreadful in the 5Ws and 1H, it has to be.
Colorum (Jobin Ballesteros, 2009) August 20, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemalaya, Indie Sine, Noypi.2 comments
Directed by Jobin Ballesteros
Cast: Alfred Vargas, Lou Veloso, Archie Adamos
You hear the clinking of the ice. The screech of the butterfly bicycle. The tsk-tsk of the projector. Even the rain that hasn’t come down yet. When you listen intently to Colorum you hear lots of things. Figments, truths, cries and whispers. It is a road movie that tells less about roads than passengers, the doors that open and close for them, the trap door of fate that sets them up. It holds strongly on unpredictability, the unknowingness of turns, and the delandscaped drama it inconsistently and roughly delivers. Holes are everywhere, but never mind, continue. Absurdity is the new beauty. The relationship between the two tramples out other things, the young lady wanting to have an abortion, the deranged writer, the corrupt religious leader, the Ro-Ro trip to the south, the parking violation, the phone call to a loved one we never see, the sound of gunshot from somewhere. There are cue cards willfully hung in almost every scene, like a history book flipped page by page by the wind to denote movement, but you don’t really notice them, you see them and you notice them, but you don’t really notice them, ignoring them is fine, they don’t matter in the narrative anyway, at least not much, just some devices to thicken it, texturize it maybe, or add some depth, but not perspective. So you see, history is there but the story is telling us another thing. It essays to fit the little pieces on the canvas of history, but how come we don’t manage to see the supposed bigger picture? Is history really the bigger picture? Is Colorum telling us that it’s our fault not to really see it even if it’s there, begging to be noticed? Or is it the film’s lack of coherence and steady direction that puts us off and misleads our focus? For one thing, I have cared so much for the two characters till the end. They have come to grip me, and even that annoying staging of Lou Veloso being shot in the end is up for forgiveness. The culminating series of shots of the various characters is exempt from the forgiveness rule though. I realize I can make the infinite number of ways to flinch when that scene was shown. The Ninoy juxtaposition, however, is in the waiting list for sympathetic amnesty. I get it, I get it. It was juxtaposed to parallel his death to Ninoy, right? Right! It didn’t go overboard but was it necessary? Or just to push for more guilt? Anyway, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. The way that it’s imperfect and inconsistent, and at times weakly executed, Colorum’s impact overshadows the bug.
Manila (Raya Martin and Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2009) August 18, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemalaya, Indie Sine, Noypi.add a comment
Directed by Raya Martin and Adolfo Alix, Jr.
Cast: Piolo Pascual, Rosanna Roces, Jay Manalo, Alessandra de Rossi
This is not failure borne out of failure. Perhaps something envisioned with nothing but failure in mind. Hoped that failure would work. Hoped that failure would be understood. But failure is failure. The skin peels off and the others still see the next skin as failure. But does failure equate to Sitak? Or Lalamunan? Or Izza Ignacio? Not failures but geniuses in disguise, or failures of failures in disguise.
Origins reek of. Greatness. Immortality. Importance. Stark Vision. Both share the city, the other renamed after the First Lady’s ire on foreign image, the other entered Cannes and lost to Fosse and Kurosawa, but still. Origins reek of. What do origins seek? They never seek, never find anything, get the nothing out of everything and remain whole. Portraits of light without vision, dark with blood on tracks, dirt on every inch of the frame, spilt dreams, testicles and ovaries in a knot. Never look for escape. ‘Tis like asking where god is when you can’t see him. Nowhere. Now where?
Would it appear here, an hommage. A tribute slash eulogy of encumbered youths. Origins are the load it carries. The failure wearied. The failure produced. The failure befitted. Martin isn’t up for the challenge, goes around it, and concedes to failure. Bang. Has fun. Has fang. Has pun. Dreads it every second. Every piece fails to connect. Martin always has the defense of pointlessness. He turns the Light into lightlessness. Alix works it out and in and above and under and beyond. Faith, fate, fake. Looks good. Smells swell but too theatery. His Night owns a night of forgetfulness.
Narrowly pleased press are oversensitive. Overreacting, too. A wave of mutilation, nevertheless. But doesn’t every director owe everything to someone? Brocka to de Sica and Rocha? Bernal to Sartre? Méliès to the Lumiere? The Lumiere to Edison? Edison to Daguerre?
But Piolo is trapped in his own commercial. In his multivitamins. In his coffee. In his abs. In his skyscraper of cheekiness and silk bridges he built to the public, charms turned off to favor boldness, courage that identifies with defeat. It feels chemically derived. He greases himself with glamor. His idea of deglamorized is still in glamor. But you got to give the man some props. Reaching out is reaching less. Riching out and riching less.
Works and not. Textures. Contours. Colors. Planet pit. Not Bernal against Martin. Alix against Brocka neither. Pit Martin against Alix. Pit them. Pit Piolo against Himself. The battle of the pittest. It ain’t working as hommage – – – all but callous – – – and ain’t working alone – – – quite sinuous, but undeservedly. The Golden Rule never fails, Expecting is one way of hurting yourself. Or the only. The test is over. The experiment in failure bears the result. Yet, what is the sound of one hand clapping again?
Astig (GB Sampedro, 2009) August 8, 2009
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Cinemalaya, Indie Sine, Noypi.21 comments
English Title: Survivors
Directed by GB Sampedro
Cast: Dennis Trillo, Sid Lucero, Arnold Reyes, Edgar Allan Guzman
Boy Abunda and his garish league of stars penetrating Cinemalaya is like Mother Lily asking John Torres to make a film with Regal with all artistic freedom. It simply doesn’t work. One way or the other there will be conflicts of interest, and there will be questions that will mock its integrity. Nonetheless I fully understand that a festival like this is also a business. Monetary issues should be taken care of to sustain its activity, but I’m sure it can be attained without sacrificing its very vision. Right now, for all it’s worth, Cinemalaya just betrays my hope for a tradition of quality. Bit by bit it is starting to shelter itself from criticism, and probably from now on I will just be the cheerful and optimistic attendee who is just glad that a festival like this is happening every year, and promises to be with it through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, from its hopeful birth to its unfortunate death.
As expected Astig rakes in the most earnings in this year’s fest, thanks in part to the numerous showbiz personalities who appear in cameo, and to its producer who, as his job, plugs the film in his daily, weekly, and primetime programs. Its commercial viability is unquestionable. Its four main actors are considerably famous in their field. It is visually pleasing, tightly narrated, and edited with intensity and right pacing. But what gives? Granted it is well-made, it is still as horrible as the idea of its producers wanting to represent us in Cannes next year. It is as horrible as the idea of turning this festival into a religion whose surface is all too calm but inside there is that human evil waiting to erupt anytime. Astig is less a film than a two-hour commercial of frenzied testosterone overflowing everywhere, in complete accordance with its producers’ idea of the role of the gay community to stupid straight men.
How lucky GB Sampedro is. He gets a grant from Cinemalaya and he receives further support from Boy Abunda, who in turn secures that his film will be immensely known to the public. Thirty seconds, twenty seconds, or even ten seconds of talk time is an absolute blessing of publicity. Does every filmmaker get that chance? No. Does he get the “euphoric feeling” of being called “independent”? Yes. For his film to have its premiere in the festival is delightlessly cruel to his contemporaries.
Sadly, Cinemalaya is not anymore standing on its feet. It had its time, and as it turned out, it’s not this year. It is still missing that important bullet to prove that immense difference between “digital” and “independent”, the proof that its means is only a way of reaching its more important goal, to make way for stories that express a unique vision, a Filipino experience that is worth telling, and not just turd copycats of overused themes. Every independent movement in music and cinema does not avoid cages; in fact they live inside them. But they know when to slip through their cages and how to do it. It spreads itself; it sets an example of freedom within freedom, and camarederie among peers that it sincerely enjoys. In its selfish claim for the rebirth of Philippine cinema through digital films, I hope its meaningful enlightenment comes near before a film like this gives it another stroke.
