Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)

Amar Akbar Anthony (Manmohan Desai, 1977)

There is enough story in the forty minute opening of Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony to fill up an entire month's worth of melodrama. Kishanlal (Pran) ex-convict is released from prison only to find out that Robert (Jeevan), his boss who promised to take care of his family if he takes full responsibility over a hit-and-run accident he did not commit, has broken his pledge and left his wife (Nirupa Roy) afflicted with tuberculosis and his children starving. He goes to Robert's mansion, and pleads for the support that Robert owes him, but instead of getting what he deserves, is humiliated and forced out of the mansion. He fights back by shooting Robert with a gun, but fails to kill him, and thereafter, escapes from the mansion using one of Robert's cars that contains a crate full of gold bars. He goes home and finds out through a letter that his wife has left to kill herself. He takes his three children, leaves them to safety inside a park while he is being chased by Robert's men. The three children are then separated: the youngest is adopted by a Muslim pacifist; the middle child is taken cared of by a Catholic priest; and the eldest is raised by a Hindu police officer. The mother fails to kill herself, and instead, is blinded by a freak accident. Kishanlal falls from a cliff, and is presumed dead by the police, although he actually has escaped from the accident with a crate full of gold.

In a matter of forty minutes, director Desai manages to separate the three boys from each other and their parents through narrative twists and turns that appear out of nowhere, and thereafter reunites them with their mother in a sequence that serves as the film's belated opening credits: the three children, now grown up, are all inside a hospital room, donating blood to their blind mother and all of them not knowing that they are related. Its an outrageous concept, and cinematographer Peter Pereira's camerawork matches the outrageousness of the concept, focusing on the viscuous blood flowing from the siblings' arms and into their mother, focusing and de-focusing, shifting angles to enunciate the very unique circumstance of their reunion. Amar (Vinod Khanna), the eldest brother, is now a police inspector. Anthony (Amitabh Bachchan), the middle child, manages a liquor bar, while responsibly donating half of his profits to the Catholic Church. Akbar (Rishi Kapoor), the youngest, is a performer. Desai stretches the film for another two hours or so, infusing the narrative with upbeat action sequences, syrupy romance, and catchy melodies, before arriving at its predictably happy ending.

However, despite the film's obvious leaning towards plebeian considerations, it remains to be unbelievably entertaining. Desai commits to the impossibility and implausibility of the film's convoluted affairs; when the film purports sentimentality, it not only opts for shallow tears, it requires wails, screches, and enlarged gestures; when the film flirts with kitsch, it is unsatisfied with choreographed song numbers but decides that Bachchan pop out of an Easter Egg, singing a hilarious ditty ("My Name is Anthony Gonsalvez") that starts off with a long-winded yet incomprehensible speech that sounds scholarly but doesn't really mean anything; when it describes villainy, its unsubtle manifestations of human evil, from physical characteristics (bared teeth and gorilla-like muscularity) to heartless processes (Robert, in a showcase of his malevolence, orders Kishenlal to clean his shoes using his shirt's sleeve), are more than instructive of the characters' moral predisposition, they are also downright hilarious; when it involves romance, it triplicates the cheese and the corniness, giving each of the brothers a beautiful partner to court and ultimately win over. The humor, whether intended or unintended, adds to the allure of this undeniably charming flick.

It is Desai's particular preference for simple-minded pleasures fuels the film from start to finish. Desai manages to delegate the film's more-than-obvious political commentary (the three boys being separated on India's independence day, under the statue of Gandhi, and raised by India's three largest religious factions), fresh in its hopefulness on the nation's religious dynamics, in the background, not totally indispensible in the overall enjoyment of the film, but adds a possible discourse about the cinema that Amar Akbar Anthony represents. Amar Akbar Anthony is populist in its sensibilities yet not totally lacking of a say on the world-view that is current during its time. While the film is definitely unpolished, it possesses an energy, a certain rhythm, an inarguable sincerity to simply amuse without leaving any baggage or concern, that makes one forget of its blatant inadequacies and excesses.

Burlesk Queen (1977)

Burlesk Queen (Celso Ad. Castillo, 1977)
English Title: Burlesque Queen

Celso Ad. Castillo's Burlesk Queen (Burlesque Queen) is most famous for Vilma Santos' noteworthy performance. She plays Chato, daughter of crippled Roque (Leopoldo Salcedo). She works as assistant to Virgie (Rosemarie Gil), current star of the burlesque stage (the film opens with Gil gyrating to the rapid beatings of drums, to the ecstasy of her numerous patrons). Resisting the lofty wishes of her father, Chato succumbs to the lure of the stage and the money it would bring her. It really is a grand performance as Santos was able to deliver the physical requirements of the role with her innate charismatic aura (a skill that earned the actress legions of fans and eventually elected to public office). Santos' Chato is servile to the men around her (her father, Louie the theater manager (played by Joonee Gamboa in the film's other equally terrific performance) and Jessie (Rolly Quizon), her boyfriend) but when she dances onstage, it doesn't come off as merely sensual and titillating. She dances burlesque to make a statement (if there is such a thing), a statement important enough to die for.

More remarkable than Santos' portrayal of the doomed burlesque dancer, is Castillo's filmmaking. Set within the very patriarchal lower class Manila, Castillo posits the burlesque theater as not merely, as impassioned Louie points out, a place for highbrow entertainment for the masses, but also the window for the film's female lead to become superior to her male oppressors. It's a difficult metaphor to execute but Castillo successfully does so. The dancer, scantilly clad amidst the cheers and jeers of horny men, is easily regarded as the victim of exploitation. But in the film's case, the stage becomes the dancer's opportunity for leverage which is impossible in the outside world. The stage provides Chato ease from the outside world's patriarchal clutches. She becomes financially stable on her own, temporarily free from her father's influences, and powerful over thousands of men.

Interestingly, Castillo stages a poetically sequenced scene of Chato's devirginization within the theater. Jessie attempts to make love to Chato inside her dressing room, and the latter submits to the former's sexual advances. Interspersed between their lovemaking (take note of the ballad that plays in the background as the lyrics talk of love amidst the entire world's disapproval, very typical of the romantic declarations that inevitably falter over time) are scenes from the stage, a circus act of horrid penetrations: of a woman being juggled by a man, several magic acts, and more importantly, of a man hammering a nail inside his nostril, then puncturing his eye socket with a metal stick, finally commencing with him swallowing a long blade. Castillo's juxtaposing Chato's first sexual act with acts of unnatural and bizarre penetrations of the human body impart a clear message of invasion, of Chato's theater where she is the goddess (her stage name is Tsarina the goddess) and almighty over all the men who watch her. The theater is no longer the same sanctuary; in a way, the theater's magic has been tainted. She becomes pregnant and decides to stop dancing pursuant to her relationship with Jessie and pregnancy. Her devirginization within the theater becomes symbolic of her surrender to the outside patriarchal forces.

The burlesque is in its dying days. Submitting to the very same patriarchal forces that have established strict moral norms and economic systems, the government has deemed the dance to be lewd and illegal. Louis plans that the final burlesque performance be the best and we become witnesses to the plan's grand execution: a judiciously edited montage of circus acts, musical numbers, costumed dances and finally Chato's coup de grace to both the theater and to herself. In a hypnotized daze with spotlights concentrating on her rhythmic gyrations, she enchants her audience. Once more, she is a goddess, the most powerful person in that wide area full of men. Her reign is short lived for she is pregnant with Jessie's child and starts bleeding. Castillo cuts to Chato's face, sweaty and in pain and we hear as her heavy breathing joins the rapid beating of the drums. The camera pans down, and we see her belly dangerously shaking as blood continuously flows down her thighs. This is Chato's repentance, a fatal undoing of her naive betrayal of the stage to succumb to patriarchal forces. Chato reluctantly stops and presumably dies as the crowd cheers on.

A jovial and sweet melody replaces the hurried beating of the drums and the boisterous cheers. The theater is empty. The hundred or so seats have no eager men sitting on them. A dusty curtain covers the once vibrant stage. Pictures of the burlesque dancers, more prominently Chato, are on display. Outside, a couple of players, including the Filipino version of Chaplin (complete with the trademark hat and cane of The Tramp), are waiting. They stand up and leave. The film closes with them walking away from the theater, reminiscent of the bittersweet finales of Charlie Chaplin's comedies (more specifically The Circus (1928) and Modern Times (1936)). Of course, Burlesk Queen is nowhere like Chaplin's films yet the ending feels irresistibly apt, an intriguingly ironic homage. The living remnants of the theater, those bit players walking away, have no bright future. Like Chato, the theater is their sanctuary and survival. The real world, the desolate and unfair lower class Manila of which they are ultimately going to, has no place for them. The melody, the memories, and the transient burlesque queen that once charmed a thousand men with the movement of her hips have been drowned by hopelessness. They shall all remain tramps.

Burlesk Queen is much more than a gripping commercial melodrama. It is also a scathing commentary on the sexual politics that has become the atmosphere of Philippine society: of hardworking women and the good-for-nothing men they serve; of a patriarchal society gone awry. It is also a fervent reminder of the redemptive and equalizing power of art. Multi-faceted, committedly acted, and very well-directed, Burlesk Queen, I opine, is an unsung masterpiece.

Mababangong Bangungot (1977)

Mababangong Bangungot (Kidlat Tahimik, 1977)
English Title: Perfumed Nightmare

It was in 1977 when Eric de Guia (who would rename himself as Kidlat Tahimik (Silent Thunder), thus removing every bit of colonial roots from his personality) made his first film. It was made with around $10,000 seed money, by a director who had no previous film training whatsoever, in an age wherein Hollywood was beginning its fetish with faraway worlds and epic-size stories and budgets (ala George Lucas' Star Wars). Yet Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare) is a success like no other --- it garnered awards from international film festivals and gained the respect of various critics and filmmakers, and spawned a generation of independent Filipino filmmakers who'd go the way of Kidlat Tahimik and make films with an adundance of heart and spirit, despite the lack of funding.

Thirty years after its debut, Tahimik's first film re-screened during the 1st Bagong Agos Film Festival, alongside its many descendants in cause. I can only imagine the reactions of its viewers when it was released --- the film looks brazenly cheap, Tahimik's editing felt more mundane than artful. It looked like a stitched-together home video; which is probably the reason why most foreign critics consider it as semi-autobiographical (Tahimik was quick to respond that he was never a jeepney driver). In Tahimik's amateurish methods, we sense a delightful familiarity, or a very welcoming attitude that seemingly invites us to explore his world --- a world which I thought mixed real conventions of history and geography with Tahimik's unique imaginative sense.

Midway through the feature, the sound started deteriorating and Tahimik, whose improvisation is probably his greatest cinematic talent, danced his way to the front of the theater wearing only a bahag (native g-string). He finally gave up on modern technology (the same way his alter ego in Mababangong Bangungot did) and told his story the only possible way he could think of, without the help of modern technology. I was too enchanted with the imagery of jeepneys being constructed, of little boys getting circumsized, of his tattooed pal saying farewell, to make out any of what Tahimik was doing --- it looked like he was improvising the Filipino's first trip to the moon. I thought that moment was quite an intimate surprise --- the present Tahimik is as lively, youthful, and imaginative as the Tahimik thirty years ago in his debut feature; and he is still insanely in love with his culture; telling everyone that the yoyo is a Filipino invention, that the moon buggy is a Filipino invention, that the high-tech digital projectors imported from abroad can't equal the power of basic storytelling.

After a few minutes of Tahimik's act, the sound was finally restored. In the film, Tahimik was brought by an American capitalist to Paris to work as his assistant in refilling bubble gum machines all over Paris. That is when, I thought, Tahimik's coming of age happens. During his lifetime in his barrio, he has been in love with the ideology of Western progress; he is the president of his town's Werner von Braun fan club, and is an avid listener of Voice of America, and seems to be perpetually enchanted with the idea of space travel and industrialization. His trip to Paris changes everything; he befriends the market vendors of the Four Seasons, soon to be uprooted by the appearance of a monstrous supermarket. He visits Germany wherein he sympathetically notes the construction of the last man-made onion dome, while helping out in a German woman's labor. The extremely slow de-Westernization of Tahimik is charmingly told (through his letters to his mother, through a roughly shot yet lovely dream sequence in the end), yet you are drawn incessantly to his growth; something I find invaluably rare in cinema nowadays.

It is Tahimik's generosity, his humble simplification of the world's complex worries, that carries Mababangong Bangungot from its low budget imaginings. Tahimik exoticizes his culture without necessarily exploiting it. He also exoticizes European cultures; and in a way, he dons the skin of a curious documentarian, only with more humor and a drawing charm. Tahimik states that he initially wanted this film to be the typical tale of a probinsyano (provincial man) who is transplanted to city life. Somehow, the canvass blossomed into what it is now; a flavorful ode to Filipino ingenuity and culture; a classy coming-of-age tale of a fullgrown man (although childlike in his ways) coming to see the world in his little nation's meager curious eyes.