Leftist Déjà Vu in John Torres’s Years When I Was A Child Outside (2008) June 24, 2008
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Indie Sine, Mogwai, Noypi.add a comment
Filipino Title: Taon Noong Ako’y Anak sa Labas
Written and directed by John Torres
Cast: Donna Miranda, Ian Lomongo, Chico Pace, Mario Lim
It builds like a dream – - a dream that recognizes itself as a dream – - laconic, hazy, deceptive, controlling. The dream is alive; it moves, it breathes, it travels, it kills. Despite the loose structure of the film that tells a story that meanders like paramecia under microscope, there exists a virtual coherence – - something that it owes to the narrative voice – - Torres, the dreamer himself, sleepwalking, sleeptalking, sleepdiscombobulating, his words are in pain yet they are beautiful, his confession revolting yet compassionate, sublime and articulate. Calling his style poetic is a crime of heedless observation, a misnomer for an adjective that is not in the dictionary.
It builds a dream – - a dream that never happened, a dream that haunts the living, a dream that has no closure because the person dreaming it will never wake up – - of a child that remains ectopic all his life, his drifting relationship with his father, far and away from paternal sobriety that he longs for, their clouds forming shapes of sorrow and pity, their distance multiplied by more distance, and the loneliness between them that ferments, melts, and dries in time.
It is a dream - – a leftist dream, a firefighter’s dream, a mourner’s dream, a minotaur’s dream, a banshee’s dream, a unicorn’s dream, a dream of a man in his own dream in his own, own dream in his own, own, own dream and so on – - that eludes interpretation; it is a cowering testament to the expansion of cinema that Godard started to perforate in the 60s; more than forty years later, Torres now bears a torch that kindles with raw emotion, stories that refuse to tell themselves yet they burn one’s heart in fire once the arrow of loneliness passes through. Minutes become moments and moments become memories and memories become history.
When placed beside Todo Todo Teros, Years When I Was A Child Outside looks like the shrapnel – - the remnants of an explosion that collects every Filipino experience – - a failure that succeeds not to disappoint. Now look here: what I have in my hand is a fragment from that blast; caressing its pointed edges, it is whispering to me that John Torres’s films are not made in the present – - they belong either in the past or in the future. * * *
Dr. Strangesoul: Or How I Love The Short Films of John Torres and Why I Get Killed After Seeing Todo Todo Teros Again January 26, 2008
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Essay, Indie Sine, Mogwai, Noypi, UP Screening.8 comments
Tawidgutom, 2005 (3 mins)
Salat, 2005 (12 mins)
Kung Paano Kita Liligawan Nang ‘Di Kumakapit Sa Iyo, 2005 (13 mins)
Todo Todo Teros, 2006 (110 mins)
Except for their quirky titles, I can vaguely remember John Torres’s short films, which were screened at Mogwai almost a month ago. Whether it is genius photographic memory or preordained low-latent inhibition that one must possess to grasp entirely those soporific images of undeniable beauty, I’m sure I don’t have any of the two. Good thing I still have my mind — I manage not to lose even a curl of it, and what immediately runs like a high voltage current and electrocutes me right after is the sheer need to see more of his films, more of his words, more of his video poems, and more of his soulful ramblings — for the only thing that stays with me is the feeling, the deafening sound of eclipse, and, definitely, the enormity of the entire thing.
Tawidgutom, Salat, and Kung Paano Kita Liligawan Nang ‘Di Kumakapit Sa Iyo? compose the Otros Trilogy, Torres’s first wave of shorts, which had its international premiere at the Singapore International Film Festival last 2005. It can be seen as a progression, a linear tale of love and its loss, introduced by a series of mournful shots and bereft monologue, signaling a dismal repertoire of emotions soon to flood our eyes. Or perhaps otherwise — a backward progression, something in his poems that feels like a repercussion of another, feels like we have a corporeal rewinder inside our bodies that we forgot to turn off and before we know it, we are already out of the safe shore, the surface tension lied to us, said we can walk on water like insects. Torres’s decision to share his private miseries with us is not unusual — what makes his works so achingly beautiful is his unwavering sincerity — how brutally honest he is with his words without losing our interest in listening to his pain, it’s as if his agony is something that he would share with us to unburden him, bit by bit, strophe by strophe. Despite the extremely personal nature of his works, which I would describe as “gently indulgent,” he delivers some of the most affecting portraits of love ever seen in digital video, comparable to Jean-Luc Godard’s harrowing In Praise of Love, delineating, a conjecture of cardiovascular freedom, starting to manifest itself gravely, as if it blocks our arteries (fats and coagulated blood), recognising its death, and awaiting resurrection.
The nocturnal longing in Tawidgutom caves in; the sketches of urban solitude in Salat, an account of vanishing dreams represented by a pair of ice creams in The Last Sherbet, the crakerjack hommage to footballer Miklós Féhér in The Lunar Play, and who would forget how staunch he is in insisting to let her ex-girlfriend cry in front of the camera in Kulob, reflecting their usual pastime before, and now for one last time, after a couple of jerks and thrusts, she agrees — but not letting her tears slip momentarily, in slow-mo and complete silence; the edgy atmosphere of Kung Paano Kita Liligawan nang ‘Di Kumakapit Sa Iyo? preoccupies everything by all means, the spiritual quest for purpose, telling us, that again, moving on is the most difficult thing to do in this world — these vignettes, including the ones that I failed to recall, make up a world painted with untainted love, and it pains me to realise that indeed, as much as it echoes Fassbinder’s first film, Love is colder than death.
Nothing could well prepare Torres for his first feature-length film than these short gems. Todo Todo Teros is the wind that shakes the barley, the penultimate Pinoy indie film, and if local cinema has its Bible, this, by all means, is its Genesis.
It is such a difficult film to review, for in every word there is liability to betrayal; for it is hard to come up with the right words — the proper words to exact its meaning — the right phraseology to express admiration, and it causes me great trouble, distress in fact, thinking how to say how beautiful I think it is without sounding highfalutin, without overusing adjectives and adverbs, without losing my sincerity and compromising exaggeration, which I admit I do most of the time — for in the misuse of words there is the danger of misleading my readers (a number that you could count using your fingers in both hands and feet) in thinking that this is just another film that I liked, that I found great — no, I tell you, this is more than being great, this is an experience, and it is truly therapeutic — and if you want a fitting metaphor, well, have you tried acupuncture?
This is what a destabiliser film looks like — carved by a brilliant sculptor, who longs to share his sufferings with everyone — yeah, John Torres loves to share, if that is not too obvious — no matter how bizarre, obtuse, magnified, rarefied, convoluting, hell out of logic: he speaks for us, he tells our maladies, and he cures us — Torres is Dr. Strangesoul, the doctor of our souls, of our sick souls. Aware of his stature in local cinema, he is one of the few storytellers who bravely defies cultural and filmic norms, using digital video as a tool of influence to dig the hole of apathy that continues to eat us, and with that, nothing is more noble: sublimity is the echo of a great soul.
During the discussion, I hesitantly asked Torres (in Filipino): In your films, when you share something with people you don’t know, do you feel that there is something taken away from you? Of course he said yes. Anyway I just wanted a confirmation. Any idea where I can catch Gabi Noong Sinabi ng Ama Kong May Anak Siya sa Labas and Voices, Tilted Screens, and Extended Scenes of Loneliness: Filipinos in High Definition? Come on, I need these pills.
The Pig Finds Its Way in Ray Gibraltar’s When Timawa Meets Delgado (2007) January 12, 2008
Posted by Richard Bolisay in Asian Films, Indie Sine, Mogwai, Noypi.3 comments
Written and Directed by Ray Gibraltar
Poetry by J. I. E. Teodoro
Cast: Kristoffer Grabato, Sofie Garrucho, Rhenomar Soqueño
Gandhi’s words still resonate up to this day: Poverty is the worst form of violence. Indeed if it takes a huge sum of money to send someone to nursing school, then how come we have thousands of licensed nurses every year? A puzzling follow-up question would have to be, Are we really poor? How does the idea of poverty in relation to the drastic increase of nursing students in the last ten years strike you? Of course there are countless stories and countless reasons — long enough to fill Smokey Mountain and Payatas — and after all, no one gets the blame for it except the government, not that there’s always a need to pass the blame, but this economic and national condition we have with regard to overseas employment — homesick maladies and the never-ending quest for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — has gone a little absurd, which perfectly describes the times we have today.
It is ruffling. Details are layered unmindfully — but I don’t mind because they very well represent the course of things — that perhaps we are all hamsters in a cage running tirelessly backwards, for years, for decades, for centuries. The feel of a music video prevails all throughout, but not the type that blows your optic nerves up to the point of satiation — the type that kills silently and leaves a bad taste in your mouth — no, not that sort. It almost ends when Timawa finally meets Delgado, for no apparent reason except that both of them want to serve humanity, and humanity is not even asking for their service! Clips of their lives roll — atheistic scriptures, lost souls, hi-jacked romance, recurring social anomalies — but the thing that sticks like a leech stuck on one’s leg, sucking its blood till he resorts to laughing, bursting, laughing — is The Pig. Discerning, disconcerting, and delusional — whimsical, that’s the word; in fact it’s so brilliant it makes a lot of sense the less you understand the poem itself. Timawa’s deity and the use of folk music, plus the metaphor and the alternation of language, signify a troubled nation slaughtered by pigs, piglets, and piggies, every one of them, and the great thing? — we laugh. Even its title speaks of a universe of conflicting things, representations of history in present society, and it is just safe to laugh them off. Gibraltar adds talking heads of nurses and prospective nurses, not to mention degree holders and second-course students who shifted to nursing — more and more it doubles the strangeness of meeting these people — we know them but we don’t really know them — the vane of alienation spins savagely and has no idea where to point at. Their experiences are real, but what’s more real is the plurality of things; that even though we come from different places, with different language and different beliefs, we all come to a point of intersection — we are not parallel lines after all — and the harsh realities that we share as a nation, no matter how stark or subtle, are the ropes that keep us together. These are the virtual hands of our bleak nation, the virtual hands that will keep us sane. Straight from the heart, Ray Gibraltar’s When Timawa Meets Delgado is an absolution. Go and see it. * * * *
