Mario O'Hara (1946-2012)

The Great O'Hara

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

He was seated in front of us, inside one of the many rooms in the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Mario O’Hara, respected writer of most of Lino Brocka’s greatest works, inimitable director of such classics like Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years without God, 1976) and Fatima Buen Story (1994), outstanding thespian, and arguably one of the most important figures in Philippine cinema, was there in front of us, convincing us to greenlight his next film entitled Henerala. I was then part of the committee that gave grants to filmmakers wanting to make films, and I was ashamed to be in the unjust position of listening to the great O’Hara explain why his proposal would make a good film. I was already convinced then. Henerala could have been a masterpiece, the one film that painted heroic Gabriela Silang, always seen angry while mounted on her even angrier steed, as a sensual human being who was horny for and madly in love with Diego. Still, there I was, listening to him as he animatedly serenaded us of what the film that would now never be made could have been.

The great O’Hara was taken from us too soon. At age 68, while the entire country was steadfastly praying for Dolphy, he quietly said farewell. It is quite amazing how he died the same way he magnanimously lived his life, just there, quiet in the background. While Lino Brocka was being praised everywhere, while Nora Aunor was amassing legions of fans, O’Hara, an Adamson drop-out in a country that was dazzled by the liberal geniuses of the State University and the conservative wisdom of Ateneo, was just humbly working, churning out masterpieces after masterpieces without hardly a sense of the acclaim those masterpieces could have garnered for him. Sure, he was championed and earned the respect that he deserved. However, he never became a celebrity, or even a figurehead. He did not need it. He only needed to work.

His films are never personal visions. They never felt trapped in a world that he and the people who knew him inhabited. His films were either artful crowd-pleasers or relatable art pieces. They evolved whenever the audience or the market evolved. In the 70’s and 80’s, when the Philippines was busy struggling under the dictatorship, he wrote Insiang (1976) and directed Bagong Hari (The New King, 1986) that showed a world of characters that struggled even harder. In the 90’s, when the only films that could compete with Hollywood were children’s fantasies and soft pornography, he gave us Johnny Tinoso and the Proud Beauty (1994), Manananggal in Manila (Monster in Manila, 1997), and Sisa (1999), which featured a Sisa who had breasts the size of melons.

He made Babae sa Breakwater (Woman of the Breakwater, 2003), which brought the Philippines again to Cannes after decades of absence. Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio (The Trial of Andres Bonifacio, 2010) had him experimenting with digital cinematography and the result was more than exhilarating. When the country decided to leave the cinemas for the comforts of their homes, he directed Sa Ngalan ng Ina (In the Name of the Mother, 2011), a television series that not only heralded Aunor’s return to Philippine showbusiness but also showcased the artistic capabilities of Philippine television most local networks could ever imagine because they are too busy being pandering to the stupidity they have cultivated.

The characters that O’Hara wrote and gave life to are never heroes or villains, they were imperfect human beings victimized by circumstance. The Japanese soldier who raped a village girl of Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos is capable of real love. The baby-faced killer of Bagong Hari graduates from his violent encounters as a hero. The leper he played in Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You were Weighed but Found Wanting, 1974) is the film’s most tragically human figure. The unfortunate dwellers of the Breakwater in Babae sa Breakwater had joie de vivre the most fortunate of us can't never even imagine. The courageous founder of the Katipunan in Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio had the humanity to cry and beg for his life.

O’Hara’s astute understanding of our collective imperfections is laudable. He had no qualms in breaking perceptions, in defying conventions, in shocking conservative sensibilities, to point out that the weaknesses that are only part and parcel of our being only made in the likeness of God are not something to be masked or hidden but exposed and expressed in film and fiction.

After his pitch, O’Hara said his farewell and uneventfully exited the room. I could not help it. I had to excuse myself. Like a rabid fan, I rushed towards O’Hara and awkwardly attempted to start a conversation. “Hi Mario, I am a big fan. I thought Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio is absolutely great.” That was all I could say. In my mind, I wanted to probe his creative processes, I wanted to ask so many questions, I wanted to die out of sheer embarrassment of being put in a position a few minutes ago that I could never imagine I deserve, but sadly, those short and uncreatively constructed sentences were all that my brain could process to deliver to my mouth. He embarrassedly laughed and politely said thank you. He then asked me where the nearest restroom was. I pointed him towards the one beside the gift shop. He again smiled at me and whisked towards the restroom. I excitedly returned to the one of the many rooms in the Cultural Center of the Philippines, ready to hear out a dozen more pitches. Henerala would eventually get the greenlight, but because of lack of investors, he could not make it. I guess we just live in such an unjust, unfair world.

Mario O’Hara had to pee. He also had to die. He was human after all. In fact, there was so much humanity in him, his works radiate with it.

(First published in Supreme, Philippine Star, 30 June 2012..)

Manananggal in Manila (1997)

Manananggal in Manila (Mario O'Hara, 1997)

English Title: Monster in Manila

Mario O’Hara’s Manananggal in Manila (Monster in Manila) takes its cue from Roman Polanski who has mined domestic paranoia for dread in films like Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976). Terry (Angelika dela Cruz), who is living in a condominium building with her sister (Aiza Seguerra), is pregnant. Unfortunately, the father of her baby has abandoned her. Beatriz (Alma Concepcion), a model, has moved in next door and starts to befriend her. Right after Beatriz's move, mysterious deaths are reported, with the bodies of the victims disemboweled, giving rise to conclusions that a manananggal (a monster that looks like an ordinary woman except that the upper part of her body separates from the lower part when it hunts for its prey) is responsible for the several murders.

Manananggal in Manila is essentially two separate movies melded into one out of convenience and commercial viability. The first one’s the attempt to update Peque Gallaga’s Manananggal episode in the first Shake, Rattle and Roll (1984). This is where O’Hara stumbles. Given the meager budget and the time constraints O’Hara has to work with, the film ultimately suffers, bearing all the evidence of its lack of ample financing. The wings of the manananggal are obviously assembled from plastic. The animated sequences (where the winged monster flies into the sky against the full moon and the parting scene where an ominous full moon slowly appears in the night) are pathetically executed. Sometimes, O’Hara does away with special effects by communicating terror through editing, nuanced and resourceful cinematography, or inventive sound effects.

The other film is far more interesting. O’Hara, more than just depicting evil through a monster sourced from myths and ghost stories, explores the nuances of that evil. Concepcion, sans the prosthetics she dons in the film’s climactic scenes, inhabits the role with astounding ease. There’s urgency in her attempts to seduce Terry to befriend her, to ease her out of the comfort of living the life of a single mother who consciously fantasizes about a boyfriend who cares about her instead of simply accepting the fact the he has left her, and finally, to slowly be liberated from the clutches of morality and be angry and vengeful, making her the proper vessel for herself. The film is most successful when it aspires for this kind of internal dread, more introspective and conceptual rather than the cheap scares and unintended humor of low-rent visual effects.

O’Hara’s Manila fronts a facade of normalcy. However, underneath the concrete of its many high-rise residential towers and the cautious demeanours of its denizens lies an unspoken fear, a shared understanding that the supernatural exists alongside ordinary problems. It is a city that bears the same haunted quality of Dario Argento’s Freiburg, New York City and Rome in Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980), and The Mother of Tears (2007), respectively. The city becomes an apt dwelling place for the evil monster, who other than its look and its craving for human innards and babies has been transformed from a random mythological monster into an embodiment of evil, which is not necessarily defined by violent and destructive acts but by characteristics that are more human in nature, such as greed, lust and guiltless vindictiveness.

Manananggal in Manila is low-budget, high-concept horror. At first glance and especially with its crude and laughable special effects, the film seems to be nothing more than a hodgepodge of incongruent elements struggling to make logical sense. It is easily dismissible as nothing more than an attempt by its producers to rake in the most profit out of the littlest of capital. However, there is certainly something more to the film than its numerous glaringly bad parts. Unfortunately, the patience and persistence to see through the mess are traits that are rarely found in moviegoers fed with the seamless but empty spectacles Hollywood provides.

Bagong Hari (1986)

Bagong Hari (Mario O'Hara, 1986)

English Title: New King

With the possible exception of Fernando Poe, Jr., no other actor who made a career as an action star can evoke that very rare mix of gravitas and ruthlessness in his characters as Dan Alvaro. Alvaro has a very pleasant and handsome mug, more befitting a matinee idol than a wronged crusader. Perhaps it is because of the incongruence of his angelic face, his stuntman’s body, and the diverse roles that the then unpredictable Filipino film industry has given him that turns Alvaro into such a wildly intriguing and probably underexplored screen personality.

In Mario O’Hara’s Bagong Hari (The New King), Alvaro plays Addon, the quintessential Filipino anti-hero, the bastard son of a corrupt police officer who purposely meddles in the very dirty political war between the governor (Elvira Manahan) and a town mayor (Celso Ad Castillo) in an unnamed province. Made for the 1985 Metro Manila Film Festival but only released the following year, the film left its producers, who were more used to producing comedies that are sure hits especially in a time when escapist entertainment was prime commodity, unable to recoup the capital put into the film.

The film has been lost for several decades, with the wild rumor of the remaining print of the film being thrown into the Pasig River by its frustrated producers surfacing every now and then, until a VHS copy was discovered by New York-based Filipino film preservationist Jojo de Vera, and through the efforts of the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film (SOFIA), was recently screened after a couple of decades worth of absence.

Bagong Hari benefits the most from Alvaro’s distinctly curious presence. Addon, previous to being forced into being deeply involved in the corrupting political state, exists within some sort of modest and humble paradise, where his conflicts are mostly personal and his pleasures are absolutely simple. O’Hara fluently paints that quaint existence, making use of the most sensual of visual and aural stylizations to enunciate sexual fantasies and other modest delights of Addon’s erstwhile peace. The marked difference between that seemingly idyllic life and the violent and bleak existence that he suddenly finds himself in punctuates the harshness of O’Hara’s not-so-fictional version of the Philippines. That the bearer of that entire world’s physical and emotional turmoil is a man of boyish features makes the bleakness of O’Hara’s vision even more poignant, more heartbreaking.

Deaths are so commonplace and only made momentarily significant by the strange sentimentality that the characters who seem to be enamoured with the pretence that there is something more to their lives than the hell that they have been living have reserved for them. Violence, on the other hand, becomes more than a requirement for survival. It is the way of life. The capacity to both resist and inflict violence becomes the barometer for one’s value. The country itself is moved by violence. The quiet decision-makers engage in gambles that involve brutal fights to the death. The struggle to the top political post is ridden with not only dirty dealings but also mindless massacres.

Bagong Hari, timely resurrected from a demise caused by both fate and neglect, proves to be a still potent portrait of a country wallowing in despair and hopelessness.

Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio (2010)

Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio (Mario O'Hara, 2010)

English Title: The Trial of Andres Bonifacio

When a film is described as poetic, it is often taken as a compliment. However, when a film is described as theatrical, it is seen as a critique, scathing at that. What makes poetry the better spouse to cinema? Isn’t cinema but a visual and aural interplay of poetry and theater to begin with? Theater provides the cornerstones: the narrative, the milieu, the setting and the characters. Poetry, on the other hand, more than the façade and the flourishes, provides the requisite subtlety in the execution --- the minute gestures that accentuate a character, that last five seconds of absolute silence before a cut, the symbols, the verses, the rhymes, and rhythms. This is purely hypothetical. But if films are judged based on a balance where theatricality is measured with poetry, and the former outweighs the latter by a large margin, does it mean that the film is better off staged than filmed?

Of course, cinema, contrary to common misconception, is vaster than the trite and absolutely baseless hypothesis that was just forwarded. For that reason, cinema should and cannot be caged to what is merely “cinematic” because the term “cinematic” itself is already enigmatic, subjective in its very definition and has something more to do with how the recorded moving pictures are treated and utilized to express rather than how these pictures are moved and later on recorded. That being said, for all the accusations of supposed theatricality, Mario O’Hara’s flawed yet masterful Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio (The Trial of Andres Bonifacio) is truly cinematic, probably the most important and cinematic creation that the Cinemalaya Film Festival ever produced in its six years of existence.

Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio starts off after the Tejeros Convention where Andres Bonifacio (Alfred Vargas), a commoner from Tondo who is the founder and regarded father of the Philippine Revolution, has lost the presidency of the Revolutionary Government to Emilio Aguinaldo (Lance Raymundo), one of the more popular generals in the province of Cavite. In the midst of the revolutionary war against the Spanish colonizers, the revolutionary government initiates a trial against Andres and his brother Procopio (Janvier Daily), for treason, when the two, along with several of their men, were captured in a town where a supposed confrontation ensued between Bonifacio and Aguinaldo’s camps. Artistic liberties aside like the ghostly narrator (Mailes Kanapi) who conveniently appears to provide present-day commentaries and reactions on the events of the past, O’Hara does not deviate from recorded history, neither adding nor deleting anything from the written accounts of the trial to depict one of the most contentious and mysterious events in Philippine history, one that has been a pointed precursor to several of the present ills that plague Filipino politics.

I agree. Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio is theatrical, but theatricality and literariness is the point. What essentially is the value of history translated into film, as is? It only glorifies and celebrates the erroneous artifice of a concrete and permanent history, as written by the few, and more damningly, by the few who are in the position to write and create history. We have seen this happen with Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Jose Rizal (1998), a film that attempted to film Jose Rizal’s life as fact that it only succeeded in being both glossy yet tepid, as compared to Mike De Leon’s Bayaning Third World (Third World Hero, 2000), a film that has experiential knowledge of the impossibility of committing history to celluloid that it resigned itself to deconstructing the hero and what it has become in the present age.

The film, self-consciously theatrical from its very first frame up to the last, eschews reverence for its depiction of history. By scripting the trial as it was recorded up to the final recount of Lazaro Macapagal who read to Andres and his brother Aguinaldo’s verdict, utilizing theater actors to play historical figures as if they were acting on stage for immediate audiences and hence enunciating words, expanding bodily gestures, and utilizing exaggerated acting styles, and employing several theatrical and literary devices, O’Hara treats history as literature and more specifically, treats the trial of Bonifacio as fiction, dramatized and romanticized. This film’s form, as described above, aptly sets the tone for the grandiose stage play that is Bonifacio’s trial, a proceeding set-up to emulate a sense of fairness and justice in the dilemma of legitimately dispatching the utmost symbol of the revolution.

It is undoubtedly inevitable that many viewers would imagine Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio as history recreated in film for the singular purpose of historical education, and I seriously fear educational institutions treating the film as such, feeding eager minds O’Hara’s clever mockery of recorded history as truth and fact. Before ending up with conclusions about historical figures whose lives and deaths are buried deep in speculations, hypotheses, and conflicting accounts, one should cognize the genius of O’Hara’s exploitation of the media he utilizes, that the Andres Bonifacio of his film is the Andres Bonifacio of the records of the biased revolutionary government, the main character of a staged play, the leading man of a film, and not the revered national hero of the Philippines.

O’Hara curiously incorporates the tale of the Ibong Adarna, also staged, in his film. Vargas, apart from playing Andres, also plays the youngest prince who in the Adarna tale, meets a hermit who gives him a knife and several lemons to keep him awake as the Adarna bird sings its lulling song. The film’s use of the Adarna tale ends mid-tale, when Andres and his brother are killed by Aguinaldo’s men. Death, more than the grand equalizer of men, is also the most effective means to silence men. Unlike the youngest prince of the Adarna tale who will be able to return to his father’s castle after being beaten up by his jealous brothers, and be acknowledged for his feat of capturing the Adarna bird and curing his father, Andres and Procopio’s deaths in the hands of his fellow Filipinos has left an incurable, lingering void in a country’s problematic history. All we can really do is investigate, speculate, and hopefully, create, and that as we do all those things, we can nurse this ailing nation to full health, with or without the help of the mysterious songs of the mythical bird.

(Cross-published on Twitch.)

Babae sa Breakwater (2004)

Babae sa Breakwater (Mario O'Hara, 2004)
English Title: Woman of the Breakwater

Yoyoy Villame is one of the most underappreciated musicians in the Philippines. While the elite members of society are dictating to the masses the dictum of culture and good taste (mostly Western inspired orchestrations or indigenous melodies), Villame rebelled and came up with songs whose melodies are simple enough to be sung by the tone-deaf, and whose lyrics are memorable enough to be memorized by the simpleminded. His songs are considered novelty, yet the term itself is an anomaly as Villame's songs talk about real life, both its joys and pains, distilled by his jovial beats and uplifting attitude. In fact, in film, his songs are utilized to describe the state of Philippine society --- like in Aureaus Solito's Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005) which began with a song where Villame sings "this is my country, the Philippines..." while the camera displays garbage piling up in a creek.

Villame died a month ago, leaving a legacy of songs immortalized by the millions of Filipinos who can hum them in a heartbeat. Probably his most lasting mark on film is in Mario O'Hara's Babae sa Breakwater (Woman of the Breakwater) where he played a street side entertainer singing songs he made famous decades ago.

Babae sa Breakwater is a film about a man Basilio (Kristoffer King), who escapes from provincial Leyte to the slums of Manila with his younger brother Buboy (Alcris Galura). Residing in the makeshift tenements beneath the tourist-infested breakwater of Manila, Basilio falls in love with a prostitute Paquita (Katherine Luna). Their relationship is troubled by the apparent poverty and the more impending threat of the slums' jealous protector, ex-cop Dave (Gardo Versoza). This tragic tale is alleviated by the ditties of Villame, providing a biting sense of irony to the plot and an accurate summary of the unpredictability, the chaotic colors, and the dizzying bevy of emotions that surround Manila life.

O'Hara's film, by itself and without the help of Villame's songs, is quite good. There's an undescribed underlying mythology that sits quietly; to disavow of such mythology or religiosity would spell out a disbelief in many of the film's supervening events. The film begins with what seems to be a religious ritual. Men in masks are about to sacrifice a person; that event causes a eunuch priestess to be murdered causing more acts of vengeance which will ultimately affect the young Basilio and Buboy. It's sort of a seaside cult --- the monster child of Catholicism and paganism, with statues of the Virgin Mary or pagan gods jotting out of the seawater.

The sea in O'Hara's film is the domicile of god; it provides as much as it takes away. Basilio and Buboy respect and appreciate its role. Despite the garbage and filth in Manila Bay, the brothers pay their respects to the unnamed deity by submerging their faces (supposedly conversing to their father --- murdered in the introductory religious vendetta). When humanity betrays Basilio (as when he gets pickpocketed or he is removed from work), it is the sea that magically provides.

The film actually describes man's relationship with the sea (or in this case, God as represented by the sea). Manila, in the film's point of view, has raped the sea --- abused it and polluted it. The city itself is crowded with abusive people and dregs of society; children are addicted to rugby and will fight for leftover food; men urinate in the streets; the characters' pasts (both Paquita and Dave) showcase a depletion of morality within the citizenry, which continues to their present lives; another character steals to escape from the Breakwater but only succeeds in maintaining the habit. Basilio comes from a land where the sea is pure, and within the film, he maintains that purity and is able to reform Paquita, despite the temptations and the treachery of the city. O'Hara succeeds in driving that point, and fantastically, within the context of the tired genre of melodrama about the provincial who gets lost in the big city.

In a way, Babae sa Breakwater is a modified retelling of the Orpheus myth, with Basilio playing the tragic Greek hero and Paquita as Euridyce who is trapped in the underworld. Basilio manages to uplift Paquita from the hedonism of the city (as properly depicted in Dave's character --- an impotent, disabled boss who works through his muscled bodyguard and delights in alternative pleasures). On his way, tragic events ensue yet the end result, the ultimate goal, is to bring Paquita back to Leyte where the sea is clean.

O'Hara's filmmaking and the familiarity of Villame's melodics turn Babae sa Breakwater into a modest yet sublime artwork. At first, the film's simplicity may disarm you into thinking that it is in equal rank to the oft-produced socially-relevant melodramas of the past recent years. However, the film is certainly different as it is ripe with contexts and meanings; all of such are dutifully wrapped up in this fascinating work by two of the country's most brilliant artists.

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This post is my contribution to Windmills of My Mind: Film Music Blog-A-Thon.