Emir (2010)

Emir (Chito Roño, 2010)

"To invest funds and other assets in such activities or undertakings that shall directly and indirectly promote development of the film industry, including the production of films and other terms and conditions as it may deem wise and desirable;"

- Section 3 (9), Republic Act 9167 entitled "An Act Creating the Film Development Council of the Philippines, Defining its Powers and Functions, Appropriating Funds Therefor, and Other Purposes"

Chito Roño's Emir, a seventy-million peso endeavor by the Film Development Council of the Philippines, with generous funding from the President's social funds and other government sponsorships or partnerships, looks exactly the part. Set in the most picturesque locations in the Philippines, from the grandiose Banaue Rice Terraces to the rustic Paoay Church, and Morocco, the film is mostly lovely to look at, exactly like moving musical postcards from various touristy destinations. The film also sounds expensive, with the several musical numbers utilizing full orchestrations to sweeping and rousing effect. It seems that every peso of the film’s unusually hefty budget was appropriately spent.

The question remains. Is Emir, a movie that tackles the experiences of Filipino overseas contract workers, deserving of such governmental support? Considering that the mandate of the Council is for the development of the film industry and not the promotion of overseas labor or local and international tourism, is the decision to concentrate such a budget on one expensive production a wise one, when it would be undoubtedly more helpful for the development of the film industry if such immense budget was spread to many filmmakers who have films that are just waiting for a fraction of the seventy million pesos to get made? The reasons and rationales for Emir’s existence is of course are in the arena of discretion, discretion that it is of the greatest import to celebrate the accomplishments of overseas contract workers through a film, an expensive musicale that is half-set in a foreign country. Decisions arising from discretion are sadly a very difficult thing to controvert, and suspicious minds can only entertain, well, suspicions. The film has been made, and the issue of whether or not this decision based on the discretion of a government whose past discretions or indiscretions have always been questioned but have never been answered is proper is better discussed in other venues.

Partly based on the true story of a crown prince of an Arab nation who can fluently speak both Tagalog and Ilokano, Emir tells the story of Amelia (Frencheska Farr), the daughter of poor farmers who travels to Yememeni, the fictional oil-rich Arab nation that is on the verge of being invaded by its neighbors, to be able to reverse the fortune of her family. She is employed in the household of a sheik and is assigned to be the nanny of the sheik’s only son. True to her job, she rears the child not only to be appreciative of Filipino culture but to treat that culture as his very own, often interrupting his expected English or Arabic with bursts of fluently-spoken Filipino phrases. While not tending to her ward, she either swoons for a half-Arabic half-Filipino man (Sid Lucero) or entangles herself with the issues of her co-workers.

Admittedly, there is something engrossing about telling the stories of these so-called modern heroes, those Filipino men and women who risk parting with their families and endangering their lives to earn enough for their families back home and whose only connection with the motherland is through these Filipino-made microphone-like contraptions that showcase Philippine vistas while displaying the lyrics to all-time favorite karaoke tunes, through song. However, Emir, even with its string of original songs, cannot muster enough sincerity to even approximate a fraction of the overseas experience. The film seems satisfied in approximating its influences, from its opening number, where hyperactive nurses, construction workers and dancers back-flip and gyrate to the incoherent rhythm of a song about the promises of overseas employment, which feels like a ghastly mix of Disney and Demy, to the lone near-lifeless Bollywood number where non-Filipino employees of the sheik suddenly enter the picture and dance to a pseudo-Arabic ditty, in token acknowledgment of their existence.

Save for O, Maliwanag na Buwan (O, Shining Moon), a high-powered duet that resembles the raw emotionality and the unabashed lyricism of Aegis’ greatest hits, and is sung sublimely by heartbroken Amelia and Tersing (Kalila Aguilos), who at that given point in the film were both left by their men, all of the songs of this musicale are fleeting and unremarkable.

Had its uninspiring musicality been its only problem, Emir could still have been a mildly entertaining diversion. However, the film propagates a dangerous fantasy of a reality that gnaws on the very core of what essentially is a national pride. In Hindi Ko Pinangarap (I Never Ambitioned), the musical number where Ester (powerfully played by veteran singer-actress Dulce), who recently resigned from her job as governess of the house, proceeds to convince Amelia to take the job, she pronounces that the job she reluctantly gave up is the pinnacle of their existences, irresponsibly reinforcing a culture of highly-paid servitude as opposed to self-fulfillment. This is basically the problem with Emir. While it is unwise to blind ourselves to the reality that the Philippines is surviving because it is exporting labor to richer nations, Emir never regards this resignation to this new form of colonization (a near-accurate term especially because this system of economy that relies solely on the fact that other nations are in need of Filipinos’ services and have the capacity to pay for Filipinos’ services result in the Philippines’ being subservient to other countries’ superior wealth), as a serious problem, which it is.

As it is, Emir treats all these, from the very real problems of these immigrant workers to the bigger picture of the country being taken hostage by employer nations, as popcorn entertainment, equivalent to a weekend noon-time variety show and nothing more. The fact that the government, in all its benevolent discretion, decided to go this way in its efforts to improve film production in the country, makes the pain, although forcibly disguised in fancy colors and upbeat tunes, even more resounding.

(Cross-published on Twitch.)

A Short Article about the Films of the Indio Nacional

Raya Martin's Long Live Philippine Cinema! (2007)

A Short Article about the Films of the Indio Nacional (or the Prolonged Sorrow of the Filipino Cinema)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

“Long live Philippine Cinema!”

The phrase, proudly proclaimed by Lav Diaz during his acceptance speech during the Venice Film Festival a couple of years ago when his film Death in the Land of Encantos was given the Special Mention prize in the Horizons section of the prestigious film festival, appears on the tin can that houses a film reel, whose history, as we have witnessed during the six or so minutes prior to that penultimate image, is tainted with violence. That violence is singularly directed towards a Chinese woman who based on the various posters that adorn the walls of her office, most of which seem to advertise inane comedies or titillating dramas, is a movie producer. The Chinese woman is not Mother Lily, the owner of Regal Films, one of the Philippines’ biggest film studios, but a mere alter-ego, a cardboard cut-out of who she is in real life, purposely over-simplified into a stereotype of a shrewd businesswoman whose only reason for dabbling in film is because it is a lucrative commodity in the country. With the studio matriarch transformed into a mere cardboard cut-out, the short film’s brave director is free to do to her and whatever evil she represents as he wants. Thus, she is shot in the heart, burned, and her office, a treasure trove of the country’s cinematic legacy, robbed of the prizes it contains.

“Long live Philippine Cinema!,” at least for intrepid young filmmaker Raya Martin, whose seven-minute satire I previously described borrows the words of the declaration to use as its title, has nothing to do with resuscitating the old Philippine cinema of the capitalist establishment, whose tradition of equating the filmic art with entertainment and profit is now being rendered obsolete by its powerlessness against the invasion of Hollywood. The declaration involves more drastic measures, changing perspectives and shifting paradigms, stealing from that unfortunate past whatever can be saved for the future, and breaking the rules for the single purpose of breathing life to the new Philippine cinema, a cinema that has for its fuel not the thirst for box-office domination but a pure independent spirit. As it turns out, this independent spirit, a concept whose meaning has been expanded, abbreviated, skewed and restricted to suit certain sectors, is the booster that would re-launch a long-absent film culture into the consciousness of the rest of the world.

Kidlat Tahimik termed this independent spirit “sariling dwende,” referring to native mythic creatures that supposedly reside in every artist and should be the lone basis of the artist’s every creative output. With the democratization of filmmaking through the proliferation of the digital medium, the entire studio process, repercussions of which include personal visions being compromised by the need to recoup investments, can be totally eliminated. Because of that, films, most of which would not even be created under the studio system, have been made by filmmakers, most of whom would never have the opportunity to make films under the controlling and restrictive studio system and this collection of films and filmmakers, separated from the cheap junk that the digital revolution has also given birth to, has been referred to by critics and curators everywhere as the “Philippine new wave.” As with all movements in cinema or the arts in general, this so-called new wave in Philippine cinema has its front-liners whose works, all of which are as varied as their aesthetics and artistic motivations.

Brillante Mendoza, having recently won the coveted Best Director prize in Cannes for Kinatay (The Execution of P, 2009), is probably the most immediately recognizable of the Filipino directors in the showcase. A direct inheritor of Lino Brocka’s social realism, he approaches his subjects with the intensity of a documentarian. Critics have rallied against his films as predominantly pornographic, where the Philippines’ extreme poverty is being utilized as exoticized commodities for the consumption of foreigners in their film festivals. However, this restrictive interpretation of Mendoza’s films will only betray the honesty he devotes to analyzing humanity in the midst of dire circumstances.

In Kinatay, a young man who is studying to be a cop takes a van ride to the lowest depths of corruption when he takes part in the execution of an indebted prostitute. The premise seems to be something any other director would exploit visually, but in Mendoza’s hands, the camera is either exploring the contours of the young man’s face or observes the murder and the atrocious chopping of the corpse in side glances to depict a humanizing restraint from evil. Lola (Grandmother, 2009), made in the same year as Kinatay, details the struggles of two grandmothers in opposite ends of the justice spectrum. More than a commentary on the ills of an ineffective bureaucracy within the country’s court system, it is an ode to the extreme lengths these elderly women would go through for their grandchildren. Pessimistic as the premises of his film are, Mendoza nonetheless finds humanity, whether it be something as horrific as our predisposition for corruption or something as idealistic as perseverance, under inhuman circumstances.

Adolfo Alix, Jr., whose industriousness in making films (he makes an average of three to four features per year) is both blessing and bane, similarly explores an elderly woman on her eightieth birthday in Adela (2008). Alix, who wrote screenplays for director Gil Portes before debuting as film director in Donsol in 2006, has always utilized cinema as an instrument for telling his stories. Adela turns out to be his most honest work, a heart-wrenching portrait of a woman who is suffering from undeserved loneliness in the twilight of her life. The last scene of Adela (a beautiful performance by veteran actress Anita Linda) sitting on the beach, weeping and alone, is probably Alix’s finest moment as a filmmaker. Manila, the second half of which is an update to Brocka’s Jaguar (1979) that he wrote and directed, is his tribute to late great filmmaker.

The first half of Manila, a re-imagination of Ishmael Bernal’s City After Dark (1980) by Raya Martin, is nonsensical but still seductive and hypnotic to watch. Carried mostly by an atmosphere of jazz-induced pointlessness (the portion follows a man on his quest for his drug fix), the film is truly a product of a creative mind, brimming with ideas that are unhindered by expectations or convention. The scope and breadth of Martin’s work at such an early age is staggering. In between Ang Isla sa Dulo ng Mundo (The Island at the End of the World, 2005), a documentary about the Itbayats of the northernmost islands of the Philippines, and Independencia (Independence, 2009), a hyper-stylized historical meditation on the meaning of independence, Martin has tirelessly made more than a dozen short and feature films, that while immaculately distinct from each other partake a similarity that is grounded on Martin’s very personal passions that ranges from national history to the intricacies of filmmaking.

Ang Isla sa Dulo ng Mundo is as cryptic as its title suggests. Fashioned like a travelogue but inevitably morphing into an anthropological study on a people separated from the country by distance as it goes along, the documentary is at once an immersive cultural work and an examination of the malleability of cinema. Life Projections (2006), made as reaction to the Guimaras oil spill which is reputed to be the second largest oil spill in the world that reportedly affected the ecology and the residents of the island, has more to say about cinema than it does about the kneejerk subject of the oil spill. A Short Film About the Indio Nacional (or the Prolonged Sorrow of the Filipino) (2006) is the expanded version of his student thesis film which was rumored to have been dismissed by his professors in the University of the Philippines. As it turns out, Indio Nacional is probably one of the most radical films ever made, as it is structured like a series of silent vignettes. The narrative is loose and almost non-existent, about a group of actors on the verge of joining the war. The fascinating facet of the film has more to do with how it laments the reality of history as opposed to the illusion of cinema, how the history of the Philippines is written from the perspective of the privileged while the masses, whose records are unwritten, are left to be forgotten.

Independencia, the second film in the trilogy that Indio Nacional initiated, is a far more polished. Its tale of a family retreating to the forest to escape the invading Americans is told with the technological limitations and style of Hollywood cinema of the thirties and forties. The painted backgrounds, the mannered acting, and the fake newsreel that divides the film into two halves, places the film in an intriguing historical limbo, where the film’s seductively dated form and aesthetic facilitate a discourse that has been ongoing since the Philippines was freed from its colonizers. Where Independencia relied heavily on its distinct look and feel to carry its message, Now Showing (2008), a very personal ode on childhood and a very personal lament on its repercussions that echoes for the duration of a lifetime, takes its time to ripen the melancholy, to bloom the joy, to fathom the banality in growing up.

If there is any Filipino filmmaker however whose films seem to represent adjuncts of his personality, it would be John Torres. Torres has been making short films for several years now. Yet, his humble personality and his private demeanor has kept this filmmaker and his remarkable films, most of which respond like coded diary entries, guarded and known only to a very few. His first feature, Todo Todo Teros (2006), came as a shock. The film, a collection of found footage stringed together to document jealousy and infidelity, which to Torres, equates to terrorism, has the ingenuity of Kidlat Tahimik’s Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare, 1977) and the subtle-turned-palpable emotionality of Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? (Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow?, 1995). His latest, Refrain Happens Like Revolutions in a Song (2009) continues to baffle critics with its playful treatment of cinematic conventions without sacrificing what turns Torres’ very personal films so undeniably understandable even to the random filmgoer: the sincerest of emotions.

Paalam Aking Bulalakaw (Goodbye My Shooting Star, 2006), Khavn dela Cruz’s lyric to romantic what-could-have-been’s, showcases the filmmakers bevy of aptitudes in one package. Part record of a promising date with the perfect woman, part album of self-penned and self-performed love songs, part collection of self-penned poems, Bulalakaw has Dela Cruz baring his heart to the world. There is nothing left to do but get swayed by the unabashed sentimentality onscreen. His Maynila sa mga Pangil ng Dilim (Manila in the Fangs of Darkness, 2009), on the other hand, has message, other than the celebration of the finest works of Lino Brocka and the inimitable acting prowess of Bembol Roco, one of Brocka’s favorite actors, that needs to be relayed. The blurred and butchered scenes from Brocka’s films mixed with the high definition footage of De La Cruz seems to make a statement regarding the deplorable state of the Philippines’ film archives, which is losing year by year films because of decay and neglect.

Lav Diaz’s eleven-hour epic Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, 2004), made in the span of ten years because of budgetary and logistical constraints and also probably because the film required that much pain, waiting and struggle to be created, is an unparalleled immersive experience. The film details the intertwining histories of two peasant families struggling under the auspices of an abusive Marcos dictatorship. Melancholia (2008), true to its title, details the story of the saddest people in the world. Sadness, however, much more than a mere emotion that has become synonymous to sighs and tears, is depicted in its most extreme sense, from its cause, the disappearance of loved ones without the benefit of the closure of death, to its effect, a total change in character in the hopes that the disguise will eliminate memories of pain. These are Diaz’s most politically-charged films, which is saying a lot, considering that Diaz, from his first feature Serafin Geronimo, Kriminal ng Baryo Conecpcion (The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion, 1998) to his latest, Walang Alaala ang mga Paru-paro (Butterflies Have No Memories, 2009), are very vocal pieces on the ills of a society rendered cancerous by a lack or excess of government.

Diaz started his career under Mother Lily’s Regal Films where he made four of his early feature films. During the course of working under Regal Films, he is rumored to having several shouting matches with Mother Lily because Diaz wanted more independence while Mother Lily wanted more control. In the eyes of the world, Diaz seems to be winning, considering that his films have been regarded with much acclaim. Unfortunately, the truth cannot be said in the Philippines, where Mother Lily, whose redundant romances, pointless comedies, ineffective horrors, and undercooked dramas are being watched by majority of the Philippines despite the repetitive clamor for new content, is still in business, still churning out films that seem to get worse and worse every year. As it seems, this so-called independent spirit, championed by Mendoza, Alix, Martin, Torres, De La Cruz and Diaz and several other Filipino filmmakers, is an allergen to the moneyed capitalist investors, whose idea of culture-building is to dumb down filmgoers for the purposes of competing with Hollywood and increasing profit.

What I am lamenting about is not the fact that these films are not box office hits but that these films hardly matter given the statistic of Filipinos who have had the opportunity to watch them. This is the prolonged sorrow of Filipino cinema; that no matter how many words have been written proclaiming the qualities of these films, no matter how many awards and retrospectives have been given to these filmmakers, no matter how many labels are made for the collective movement of independently-made films, no matter how many passionate arguments about these films as indispensible adjuncts of Filipino culture are made, the Filipino will never give back to its cinema what its cinema has given to it.

Despite that, I shout and will continue shouting “Long Live Philippine Cinema!”

Sadly, all I can hear back is silence.

(This article was commissioned for the programme of the Showcase of Philippine Cinema, which is currently happening in Sao Paolo from June 9 to June 27, Rio de Janeiro from June 29 to July 15, and Brasilia from July 13 to August 1. The article may be read in Portuguese in the Showcase's website, along with Noel Vera and Alexis Tioseco's articles, and Khavn de la Cruz's poem.)

Summer Hours (2008)

Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008)

French Title: L'heure d'été

Olivier Assayas' delicately magnificent Summer Hours is bookended by two gatherings in a rustic summer house that is located a few hours from Paris. The film opens with children hunting for treasure. The children, offspring of siblings who have been separated by a rapidly globalizing culture and are only reunited during important family events like birthdays or funerals, run and play around the house, apparently oblivious of the intricacies of what’s going on with the adults. It is the 75th birthday of Hélène (Edith Scob), the family’s matriarch and safe-keeper of the estate of her late uncle, a famous painter who has amassed a collection of valuable art pieces. The celebration, seemingly warm and sun-drenched like the summer house, is more than meets the eye. The family reunion, beneath the token gift-giving and the heartfelt well-wishes, is a precursor to Assayas’ astute discourse on mortality and immortality, as exemplified by life and its limits, and the things, both tangible and intangible, that humanity leaves behind.

Hélène dies. Her children, Frédéric (Charles Berling), an economist living in Paris, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), an art designer working in New York, and Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), a factory manager residing in China, have been left with the decision of what to do with the house and the treasures therein. The dilemma is seemingly straightforward: Frédéric wants to preserve the estate for gatherings in the future and for their children, while Jérémie and Adrienne, who foretell their inevitable disconnect with France given their jobs abroad, opt to sell everything. As the pieces are sold and hauled away from the house, values are revealed and sentimental attachments are disclosed. Assayas, who fascinatingly documents the goings-on with astounding near-objectivity and hardly any emotional attachment in display, crafts a resounding elegy of legacy as opposed to estate, the former being objects inherently co-existing with memories formed with them and the latter being objects appreciated only for their utilitarian value.

Summer Hours, while fundamentally a family drama that tackles the most intimate of familial interactions, reaches further to comment on the current world of globalized culture where factories in China, ran by a French expatriate, are manufacturing Puma shoes to be sold in the United States, or design houses in New York are conceptualizing vases to be sold in Japan, or an unpaid mortgage by Californian blue-collar worker triggers a global financial crisis. Globalization has seeped into what is believed to be the proudest of cultures; as the staple American influence, from the preference of wearing a pair of Converse sneakers instead of China-made Pumas to having your children be educated in the English language, have found themselves not only in the extremities of familial reunions but in the utmost core of decisions. The Berthiers, coming from a line of cultural workers with the great grand uncle being a famous painter, have succumbed to the globalization malady.

Further manifested through showings of how cheapened culture is being turned into via its commodification through auction houses and other institutions whose capitalist intentions simplify culture to maximize financial worth and nothing more, Assayas’ subtle lament becomes more meaningful. In the guise of democratizing appreciation for what is advertised as cultural or artistic heritage, placing the Coron and Redon paintings, the Majorelle and Hoffman furniture, and the Bracquemond and D’Auteuil vases in museums for everyone’s limited and momentary pleasure, the meaning and essence of these objects dissipate as they are relegated the sole function of time capsules to everyone, from the previous owner who acknowledges these pieces as soulless outside the summer house that housed the memories that they keep to the random passerby whose appreciation for the object is limited to what is written in the label or what is mentioned by the paid lecturer.

By communicating conflict through minute gestures instead of grand emotional displays, Assayas has created a film so elegant and graceful it seems to belong in another era. Conflicts are enlarged not by what is visible and immediately felt, but by what are merely suggested: Hélène’s monologue, which caps her 75th birthday, fades out to after her death several months after the reunion; the housemaid who parts with the summer house from the outside looking in; the long conversations between the siblings which end with Frédéric crying alone in the dark. Civility has never been this tenuously depicted, as if a sudden burst of violent disagreement would function to sever ties forever. Outbursts are quick and apologies, even quicker. Aches, experiences and reminiscences do not make opulent appearances. They only function as defining moods and nuances, sources of understandings and misunderstandings, the very thing, fragile and incorporeal as they are, that keeps the family a family.

Ultimately, Summer Hours feels like a swansong to an era that was and is still beautiful but is being rendered obsolete by a world that is so fascinated by materialism. Yet, survival dictates that humanity move on and adapt. The film ends in the same house where the children of Frédéric are throwing a party before the sale papers are signed and the summer house transfers ownership. This is the torch being given to the next generation, where the opening’s gathering is pastoral in its simplicity and gracefulness, the ending’s gathering is rowdy and noisy. Assayas seems to suggest an ominous future where the next generation are nothing more than uncouth, uncultured, and unappreciative lots. However, Assayas slows down and allows a glimpse of the next generation, a glimpse that the entire movie seems to have neglected in giving. Frédéric’s daughter, in a surprising sincere expression of somber regret, tells her boyfriend of what her grandmother has told her and the value of the house to her. Promises were broken. Objects fade. Memories remain. Memories are all that we share.

Noy (2010)

Noy (Dondon Santos, 2010)

The biggest and most fatal problem of Dondon Santos' Noy is that it was never allowed to grow its own set of balls. The film is basically a product of favors: from then-presidential candidate and now-president apparent Noynoy Aquino, his family, and his campaign team, who allowed Santos and his crew the opportunity to shoot the presidential campaign from the inside. As such, it never fully acquires a voice. It relays its message, or whatever sort of motherhood generality it tries to impart, through minuscule peeps and squeaks. It is what it is, and no matter how it musters every conceit in cinema like mixing documentary footage with overt melodrama, it remains to be at most, a limp and flaccid political statement if not an absolutely impotent failure.

Noy (Coco Martin) is an ambitious yet unqualified young man who by submitting a fake diploma and a demo reel he bribed one of his friends to make, got the assignment of documenting the presidential campaign of Aquino. Fueled by the desire to make ends meet for his family, composed of his mother (Cherry Pie Picache), a manicurist who caught the fancy of a transient American, his elder brother (Joem Bascon), whose legs have been rendered useless by a previous accident, and his younger sister, an able student who is unknowingly going blind because of an undetected diabetes, he at first does his job with the mechanicality of an unaffected employee, before events at home start to compound for him to treat his subject with the zeal that it suggestively deserves.

The trials of Noy’s family, from the younger sister’s inevitable blindness to the older brother’s entanglements with drug dealers, are predictable consequences of narrative conceits. They are hardly reflections of the social malaise that is troubling the nation. At most, they are didactic inclusions whose only real value is to elementarily graze upon issues that have existed and have been eternally discussed and debated in other venues and forms of media. As for their dramatic value, it is perfunctory at best, made effective more by the deft performances of the actors than their supposed truthfulness. Noy endeavors to mirror the plight of the poor, showcasing a household tormented by the floods caused by a recent typhoon and the maladies that frequent the downtrodden, yet all it really achieves is to shallowly tell a story made ridiculous by the convoluted twists and turns, which are better suited in an afternoon soap, that are forcibly squeezed into the feature.

The footage of Aquino’s campaign, integrated into the film via Noy’s work-in-progress documentary, is nothing more than ornamental. Shot using murky and jerk digital format as opposed to the rest of the film’s elegant film cinematography, most probably to emulate the immersive quality of Brillante Mendoza’s filmmaking, the footage is at its best, like when Aquino’s discussion on the state of Cebu’s power was serendipitously interrupted by a short brown-out and he bounces back with a witty retort, revelatory of some of Aquino’s endearing traits. Mostly however, the footage is no different from the thousands of footage that were aired in each and every news channel during campaign season: crowds, motorcades, politicians making promises, celebrities endorsing; with only one difference, Martin, disguised as a journalist, is there. There could be something to say about fact, in the form of Aquino’s campaign, and fiction, in the form of the character of Noy interacting with Aquino and his team, interacting seamlessly in the documentary footage, but as it is, everything feels put-on and cosmetic at best.

Thus, Noy is nothing more than a disposable drama that disguises itself with the most current of political flavors to achieve only a semblance of relevance. It tries to walk the talk, juxtaposing a grandly operatic tragedy with the insistent promises of change of Aquino’s presidential campaign, but it only succeeds in talking more talk, throwing around mere suggestions of the grey areas of Aquino’s campaign without actually creating any pertinent discourse about anything. Gone were the days of Lino Brocka’s Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (Bayan Ko: My Own Country, 1985) or Orapronobis (Fight for Us, 1989), whose political agendas are brandished with both the skill and directness that are required to inflict a measure of change, even if it is just momentarily. In comparison, Noy feels like a buss in the cheek, given only if the cheek’s owner is courteous enough to give a buss back.

(Cross-published on Twitch)

Robin Hood (2010)

Robin Hood (Ridley Scott, 2010)

What is it with history that implores us to treat it with reckless reverence? It seems that humanity has devolved into needy orphans, unable to cope up with the problems of the present and always looking at the past for answers and reasons, or a semblance of a former glory that the messy world we currently live in can never provide. Filmmakers, those modern storytellers who more often than not are no longer motivated by the actual pleasure of the arts but by the promise of earning a shiny buck for themselves and for the corporations they make films for, have presented themselves to bridge the already bridged gap, telling new and old stories with perceived historical accuracy. What for? Surely, it is no longer for sheer spectacle or plain pageantry. When the likes of D. W. Griffith, whose The Birth of the Nation (1915) remains to be one of the most historically offensive yet grandiosely spectacular films of all time, or Cecile B. DeMille, who has made a career turning the silver screen into a time capsule that showcases the opulence of the past, are a rare if not extinct species in today's crop of filmmakers, historical accuracy has turned into a cosmetic cliché that begs and pleads for relevance and importance, rather than a spark for discourse.

Take Ridley Scott's appallingly unimaginative Robin Hood as an example. The character of Robin Hood persists in common knowledge as close to mythical, a conveniently moral bandit who is donned in the stereotypical archer’s outfit and goes about the business of stealing from the rich so that he can redistribute the wealth to the poor and is reinforced by the many cinematic reincarnations from Errol Flynn’s dashing and charming hero in Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); to the witty fox garbed in green in Walt Disney Studios’ animated re-telling Robin Hood (1973); to Kevin Costner’s overly serious champion in Kevin Reynolds’ Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). In an attempt to inject relevance to the overly familiar tale in the most unlikely way, Mel Brooks came up with a deliciously vicious satire, Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), explicating how the hero, with his and his friends’ dated fashion sense and claim to fame, is actually a wellspring of gags and jokes.

In Scott’s Robin Hood, Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is an archer in the army of King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston), whose return to England to reclaim the throne is impeded by his death in battle. Disguised as Sir Robert Loxley who died in an ambush, Robin and his men return to England to relay the news of the king’s untimely death, which leads to the coronation of John (Oscar Isaac) as the new king of England, and start to lead the lives of their assumed identities, as son of the Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow) of Nottingham and wife of Marion (Cate Blanchett). Burdened by contributions to Richard’s crusades and John’s abominable taxes which are being collected by Godfrey (Mark Strong), one of John’s trusted men, who turns out to be a double agent for the invading French, the people have gone poorer and poorer, making them more restless and resistant to the king’s abusive demands.

Placing the character in an exact place in history seems to be a good idea since it opens the character to further interpolation, placing his legendary motive of wealth distribution within a context of actual events instead of fictional scenarios. Although claimed to be based on researches and investigations on the very identity of the character, Scott’s Robin Hood feels more hokey than convincing. In fact, this undue insistence on historical accuracy, boxing him within the possibilities and probabilities of the time period, has turned the character into a fatal bore. As far as this film goes, the allure of Robin Hood --- the cunning and mischief mixed with chivalry, the adventurousness, the mystery --- is completely obliterated, turning the famous thief, at least in the eyes of the film’s viewers, into just another artifact of the past, excretable and forgettable. Not even the several astoundingly meticulously recreated set pieces can save a Robin Hood film whose Robin Hood is as ordinary as the next summer blockbuster action hero from obscurity.

As far as historical accuracy is concerned, Scott makes his audience believe that he has solved the riddle to the identity of the much-beloved Robin Hood. More than that, Scott has oversimplified Robin Hood, turning him into a palatable modern hero and a defender of democracy with the several back-stories on the trauma of the crusades, his father’s goal of uniting England with a declaration of rights, and his fate of mustering all the warriors of England to thwart the French invasion, instead of the moral conundrum that he really is, the prime example of the debate on whether or not the ends can justify the means. I personally prefer the latter; Robin Hood is simply bigger than the history or the culture that gave birth to him. By reinventing him by portraying him from a definite historical perspective in the mistaken belief that with history, comes newfound relevance, it can only lessen the character’s mystique. Of course, other than what I think is a bastardization of the enigma that is Robin Hood, the film, is, to put it plainly, just lousy, and probably the lousiest film ever done by Scott.

Here Comes the Bride (2010)

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding

A Review of Chris Martinez's Here Comes the Bride

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

All it took was a solar eclipse and five-car collision atop the Magnetic Hill for the souls of five individuals --- the virginal bride-to-be (Angelica Panganiban), her histrionically litigious godmother (Eugene Domingo), her ringbearer’s destitute nanny (Tuesday Vargas), her husband-to-be’s amorous grandfather (Jaime Fabregas), and her gay beautician (John Lapuz) --- to switch bodies. With the bride-to-be’s soul transferring to the godmother’s body; the godmother’s soul transferring to the nanny’s body; the nanny’s soul transferring to the grandfather’s body; the grandfather’s soul transferring to the beautician’s body; and the beautician’s soul transferring to the bride-to-be’s body, the dream beach wedding turns into a hilarious riot, where long-dormant passions are awakened, sexual fantasies are fulfilled, economic alleviation is achieved, and a chance at love is obtained.

Let us get it out of the way. Chris Martinez’s Here Comes the Bride is top-notch entertainment. Martinez was able to come up with everything most recent Filipino mainstream comedies lack: that no-nonsense singular objective of making people laugh. From the getgo to the post-credit extra scene, the film never stopped to be overtly pedantic or moralistic, a problem that most Filipino comedies have since there always seems to be this need to use cinema as replacement for Sunday school. For example, Wenn Deramas’ Ang Tanging Ina (The True Mother, 2003), and its sequel and many offshoots, are always derailed by its insistence on teaching a lesson; even Joyce Bernal’s Kimmy Dora (2009), also written by Martinez, is stalled by its apologetic dénouement that went too long and too serious. Never mind the forced logic to explain the illogic, the negligible business about solar eclipses and souls, the history and science behind the soul-swap, as authoritatively explained by television trivia-master Kim Atienza. Here Comes the Bride is deliriously funny nonsense all the way and it thankfully works.

The film’s success is not entirely surprising. After all, Martinez is arguably one of the Philippines’ better screenwriters. His screenplays, from Bridal Shower (Jeffrey Jeturian, 2004), about three friends in search of love, to Caregiver (Chito Roño, 2008), about a mother who follows her husband to London in the hopes of earning enough to live comfortably, reflect his ability to articulate something as minute as the language to something as pertinent as the needs of the rapidly-changing Filipino society for mainstream appeal. 100 (2008), his directorial debut about a woman who is dying from cancer, is salvaged from being a run-of-the-mill melodrama by an abundance of relevant humor. Martinez understands the Filipino soul, that the very best way to tackle something as devastating as death is to treat it with levity, to make it familiar and therefore personal. That said, Martinez may very well be the most current of all actively working screenwriters, actively pursuing entertainment without being dumbed down by the demands of commercial accessibility.

Despite its astounding technical polish, Here Comes the Bride is fundamentally closer to Joey Gosiengfiao’s redeemed Temptation Island (1981), where a bunch of beauty queens and the men surrounding them are stranded in a deserted island, than the mechanically churned comedies Star Cinema has been producing the past recent years. Underneath the caricatures that Martinez connected by the conceit of the convenient soul-swap, underneath the blatant inanity of its carefully conceived proceedings, is a well-pronounced understanding that life, as it is, is unfair, that there are those who are born poor, those who live loveless, and those who inevitably grow old and inutile. In a twist of fate, cruel only to the bride-to-be who suddenly gets a first-hand experience of the inequity of living after a lifetime of being sheltered and protected, inabilities and deficiencies are cured, emphasizing in what essentially is a film created for no other reason than to be an escapist fantasy that the key to a happy life is as unrealistic and as incredible as swapping souls via rare natural phenomena.

Like Temptation Island whose gay pageant director becomes the unwilling sacrificial lamb simply because he presumably has the least to lose among the other loved and loving survivors, the most fully realized character in Here Comes the Bride is the love-starved gay beautician whose fortune of being transported to the body of the beautiful and sexy bride-to-be is the most dramatic out of the five. As expected, it is mostly played for laughs and Panganiban does a brilliant job in emulating the fabulous larger-than-life gestures of Lapuz. After all, the very idea of a gay man suddenly and surprisingly getting everything he ever wanted, from the body parts he can only have in his wildest dreams to the straight men who he can only love and lust for from a safe distance, is in itself a hoot. The hilarity of the absurd situation, at that scene where the bride-to-be in the body of her godmother insists that the gay beautician return her body, unravels into a well-pronounced statement of gay angst and sentiment as he emotionally shouts “Hindi ninyo maiintindihan dahil hindi kayo bakla! (You will never understand because you are not gay!). At that moment, the film, notwithstanding the fact that it never stopped being funny, reflected a current fundamental truth, something that not even a mainstream film as self-promotedly queer as Olivia Lamasan’s In My Life (2009) can have the guts to state as plainly and matter-of-factly as that.

The gay man becomes a girl. The loveless godmother feels how it is to be loved. The amorous yet incapacitated grandfather relives the passion and the romance of his distant youth. The poor nanny turns into a millionaire. The innocent bride-to-be wallows in the realities of life’s misfortune. Martinez fills the screen with realized desires at the expense of the bride-to-be, emphasizing the frailty of the human soul in the face of happiness. In the midst of the film’s invaluable wit and humor that frequently pumps in rhythm with the Latin beats of the apt lively music score, the film’s characters, ideally uncomplicated and stereotypical, are allowed to live their desires realized, concretizing in easy-to-understand cinematic terms the pleasures of escape, of living a fantasy even if it is only momentarily. I am very happy to say that Here Comes the Bride is as current and relevant as it is entertaining and hysterical.

(Cross-published on Twitch. Re-published in Philippine Free Press, 22 May 2010)

Sana Maulit Muli (1995)

Sana Maulit Muli (Olivia Lamasan, 1995)

English Title: Hopefully, Once More

Olivia Lamasan’s Sana Maulit Muli (Hopefully, Once More) is essentially about two lovers drifting apart by reason of the American Dream. When Agnes (Lea Salonga), an overly dependent to the point of being spineless woman, was petitioned to the San Francisco by her absentee mother, she expected that her long-time boyfriend Jimmy (Aga Muhlach) would always be there for her as she struggles to survive on her own. However, as it turns out, Jimmy, an advertising executive, utilizes the time without his girlfriend to improve his career. The demands of their long distance relationship pull them apart, until Jimmy, detouring from an ad conference in New York, visits Agnes in the hopes of winning her back.

The film examines the American dream, a post-colonial promise that has consumed Filipinos wishing for the better life that the Philippines cannot seem to provide, with jaded eyes. It initially establishes the immense possibilities of life in America, showing Agnes change from a girl cocooned by her boyfriend’s abnormal attentiveness to a successful career woman, who rose from the ranks from caregiver to real estate agent. Before dwelling on the opulence of American living and the comforts of the fast-paced and go-getting lifestyle it promotes, Lamasan begins to shatter the fantasy, allowing a glimpse at the other side of the coin where illegal immigrants are overworked and underpaid, where interracial marriages are hounded by cultural misunderstandings, where life is just simply harder to bear with the dollars earned becomes equivalent to the ounces of dignity lost at the hands of unscrupulous employers, most of which are Filipinos themselves.

The film then becomes more pertinent when Lamasan depicts oppression in America, a concept that seems ludicrous if pitted against everything the American dream stood for. In probably the film’s most famous scene, Jimmy, after being cursed and demeaned by his Filipino employer in front of his co-employees for breaking several dozens of eggs, explodes in anger, brandishing a cleaver against his employer before walking out of the restaurant. That display of anger, executed with hardly any subtle cue, was carefully built up by Lamasan who slowly but surely invests Jimmy, who exchanged his white collar career in Manila for the thankless odd jobs he has to put up with, with signs of weariness and repressed violent emotions leading to the climactic outburst. It is a short-lived retribution. The injustices will most undoubtedly continue on long after the shock of Jimmy’s outburst has passed. Such is the life of a second-class citizen.

However, Sana Maulit Muli insists on putting Jimmy and Agnes’ love story in the center of the narrative, wasting whatever attempts at relevance with the incredulity of forcing two characters in a relationship that is arguably more destructive than romantic. Of course, the film was designed for its audience to root for its lovers. Every time Jimmy goes home to Agnes, tired from work, tired from swallowing his pride just to win Agnes back, Jimmy’s sacrifice is not only emphasized, it is overplayed. On the other hand, Agnes, vastly improved from the timid wallflower of her years in Manila to the self-sufficient success story that she has become, is depicted with subtle unfairness, and left with the decision to either leave America, the country that has been so kind to her in more ways than financially, for the sake of her beloved who outside his insistence on his love for the motherland, is actually a weakling and chronically afraid of being in a relationship where the woman is far more successful than he is.

Thus, the ending, executed with the exact syrupy indulgences of nearly all Star Cinema romances with Agnes returning to Manila to meet Jimmy in the city’s crowded sidewalks, can only leave an awful aftertaste. While love is realistically about compromises, the film conveniently blurs the questionable compromise committed with the help of the swelling music, rehearsed smiles, and a kiss to heal all the pains and aches just to achieve the happily-ever-after ending.

Consequently, Sana Maulit Muli could have not achieved the consistency of Gil Portes’ ‘Merika (1984), where a Filipina New Yorker starts to feel the deadening humdrum of American life, or the unhindered and unabashed moralism of Elwood Perez’s Waikiki (1980), where a mother suddenly discovers her family falling apart in her husband and children’s pursuit of the American dream, or the psychological, philosophical and social depth of Lav Diaz’s Batang West Side (West Side Avenue, 2001), where a Filipino policeman’s investigation of a young Filipino immigrant’s murder awakens him to the several conflicts caused by the Filipino diaspora. Forgoing its gloss, the kneejerk delights of the well-packaged romance, and the used-as-a-mere-backdrop discourse on the Filipino experience in America, Sana Maulit Muli is a film so confused and confusing, deeming the American experience, all the benefits and issues surrounding it, and never mind the fact that Agnes came out of it an infinitely better person, subservient to the whims of a limiting irrational heart.

Sana Pag-ibig Na (1998)

Filipino Fatherhood from the Afterlife

A Plea to Rediscover Jeffrey Jeturian's Sana Pag-ibig Na

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

It is not that Jeffrey Jeturian’s strangely titled family drama Sana Pag-ibig Na (Enter Love) remains sadly unheralded more than a decade after its release. Even with its suggestive poster, which should entice viewers to a promise of abundant sex between then-fresh faced Gerald Madrid and immaculately beautiful Angel Aquino, the film did not do well in the box office, sharing the same fate as fellow “good harvests” like Lav Diaz’s Serafin Geronimo, Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion (Serafin Geronimo, Criminal of Barrio Concepcion, 1998) and Mario O’Hara’s Babae sa Bubungang Lata (Woman on the Tin Roof, 1998) which opened and closed on the same day. The critics’ praises, which came too late, were also too faintly exclaimed. The film eventually became more famous as Jeturian’s debut film, an under-seen precursor to his more acclaimed films Tuhog (Larger Than Life, 2001), Bridal Shower (2004) and Kubrador (The Bet Collector, 2006), than anything. The fact that its title is more suited for a Star Cinema movie did not help either. As it turns out, Sana Pag-ibig Na’s current reputation seems to be limited to being a mere footnote in Jeturian’s career.

It shouldn’t be, though. Seeing it now, after seeing the more recent dramas like Jade Castro’s Endo (2007) or Milo Sogueco’s Sanglaan (The Pawnshop, 2009) that occupied the same subdued storytelling temperament, made me realize that the film is ripe for rediscovery and reassessment. The screenplay, written by Armando Lao long before the ballooning expenses of Minsan Pa (One Moment More, 2004) forced him to invent real-time, is both poignant and witty. Jeturian’s direction, unperturbed by expectations of grandeur or dearth, is refreshingly earnest. The performances, from Madrid’s teenager who is coming to terms with his late father’s infidelity to Aquino’s pregnant mistress who sees her late lover’s son as her only support, are all lovely, significantly subtle in a way that seems unlikely in Filipino cinema.

Mike (Madrid), the youngest son of a respected professor (Chinggoy Alonzo) and a housewife (Nida Blanca) whose ambition is to be an entrepreneur, proudly points out his state of being a virgin in his late teens during the film’s introduction. When his father dies of stroke, he searches for his mistress (Aquino), discovers that she is pregnant with his half-brother, and proceeds to take care of her. His mother belatedly finds out of her late husband’s illicit affair, crushing her and her long-lived belief that her husband was an upright man, and later on discovers that her son has known of the affair all along, and worse, has befriended and supported the mistress.

Sana Pag-ibig Na is also that rare Filipino film that maturely maps the role of fathers in the family. For the sake of heightened drama, fathers have either been depicted in a bad light or in close-to-nonexistent or underwritten roles to enunciate the traditional role of mothers as light of our homes. Let us admit it, we are a nation of mama’s boys and girls. We have seen enough films championing the sacrifices of mothers, yet there are very few films that give the father more than perfunctory roles in their narratives. This is strange considering that much of our cinema clings on machismo, a concept that our culture — confusingly — prizes highly. Even more rare than films with meaty cinematic father figures are films that dissect the mechanics and psychology of the father’s role within the culture.

Sana Pag-ibig Na, despite the attention that is given to Blanca’s long-suffering mother, is predominantly about the relationship between Mike and his father, how the latter still reared the former to manhood even after his death. Lao’s script and Jeturian’s understated direction place the father, even after his death, at the center of all events. His voice reverberates through the carefully written words of his final love letter to his mistress. There is this one beautiful freeze frame of the mistress’s face, preceded by the father’s enamored description of that mistress. During that scene, the father’s adoration and Mike’s blossoming concern for the mistress are cinematically united.

Thus, in a clever twist, the same love letter serves as the guide to Mike, the guide that he never got when his father was still alive, as he pushes away from immaturity into adulthood. Even more importantly, his father, through acts secretly intended or via fate, was right there, right where all Filipino fathers who insist on being the first to show their sons the delights of unraveling a woman for pleasure or love or both, when he lost his virginity and skipped the line to certain manhood. Thus, his farewell remarks — that he is no longer a virgin and he is keeping it a secret as to whom he lost his virginity with — is more than just an upbeat and humorous conclusion to the tightly-knit drama. It holds a certain truth, a deeply entrenched social and cultural value that speaks more than all of the shouting sprees, the slapping matches, and the weeping wars that our cinema has been infatuated with for so long.

(First published in The A/V Club, Philippine Star, 14 May 2010)

Juan Tamad Goes to Congress (1960)

Long Live Juan Tamad!

A DVD Review of Manuel Conde's Juan Tamad Goes to Congress (1960)

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

It has been taught in school that the most important legacy the Americans left us is democracy. Given that after so many elections and after so many national and local politicians elected for the purpose of leading their constituents to prosperity, the country is still in a state of an inexplicable sorrow is enough proof that the great American legacy is actually a farce, a gargantuan lie that has kept our people in an embarrassing state of hopefulness in a reality of abject hopelessness. For that simple reason, I am now proposing that the greatest legacy of our American colonizers is in fact not democracy but is actually democracy and the escapism of Hollywood. Our predisposition for incessant daydreaming has mutated the basic tenets of the democratic system of government into an escapist mechanism, a source of entertainment, a wellspring for exciting scandals and intrigues.

A cursory look at the carnivalesque happenings currently, just a few months before the next presidential elections, would prove my arguably cynical but grounded observations on our inherited form of government. Celebrities (and I am not simply talking about entertainers but also descendants of famous personalities, who have practically no experience of governance or if they have, have not taken such experience with the seriousness or diligence the positions they were elected for deserve) have suddenly turned into lucrative commodities for the several political parties who have been ambitioning control of the government after several years of being deprived a stake at governance by the extremely jealous present administration. Politicians have become extremely creative and imaginative in formulating reasons for their obvious turncoatism. Perceived honor and promise are abandoned for an assured place in a political party’s supported slate of aspirants, which supposedly equates to abundant campaign funds, and thus, a better chance of winning. Let’s stop at that and leave the more absurd eventualities (like the dead being resurrected to exercise their right of suffrage, the indignant exchange of money between the voted and the voter, and a lot more) of this politically-charged season.

That being said, DVD release of the previously lost but eventually found Juan Tamad Goes to Congress (1960) could not have come at a better time. The circumstances behind the release have been mysterious. As it turns out, Nicanor Tiongson’s beautiful coffee table book The Cinema of Manuel Conde has led to a renewed interest on the filmmaker’s films, pushing intrepid cultural workers to search everywhere for remaining copies of the reportedly lost films of Conde. With the invaluable connections in Southeast Asia created through the efforts of the great film critic Alexis Tioseco, a perfectly preserved print was discovered in the collection of a Malaysian art enthusiast, who graciously lent the reel to the DVD producers as commemoration of Tioseco’s tireless efforts in promoting Philippine cinema.

Conde, who also plays the iconic Juan Tamad, graces the cover of the DVD. Garbed in a colorful and intricately designed outfit (designed by Botong Francisco) with various political placards in the background, Juan Tamad looks like a clueless man in the middle of the chaos of everything else. The cleverly conceptualized cover practically summarizes the story of Juan Tamad Goes to Congress, where Juan Tamad, egged on by his creditors who imagined that the only way Juan can pay off his debts is when he gets elected to Congress and is given the usual bribe money that goes along with the position, campaigns and eventually gets elected to Congress. The screenplay, written by his frequent collaborator Jess Banguis, cleverly reimagines Philippine politics that is completely populated by exaggerated stereotypes (with Juan Tamad representing the common man; Karima representing the patient Filipino wife; Lakan Hangin, Lakan Tabil, Congressman Ismagol representing are all representations of our many inutile politicos) yet maintains a steadfast grasp on reality. Introducing the film is a non-disclaimer; a foreword that courageously invites the viewers to not regard the film as a fictional laugh-fest but as an entertaining indication of the very real ills that are plaguing Philippine society.

What transpires throughout the film is a collection of valid observations on traditions and practices in politics, all committed to celluloid, utilizing the mechanics of absurdity to infuse humor into the indubitably dirty affairs that are being depicted. The unfortunate practice of padding votes by having the dead vote is exemplified in Juan Tamad’s fervent efforts in campaigning in a graveyard, with his wife and sister carrying placards as the unconventional politico delivers his speech with such seriousness that it is impossible not to chuckle at both the strangeness and the wisdom of his political maneuvering. Upon Juan Tamad’s election, the absurdity worsens as Conde portrays Congress with both the vibrancy and the utter inanity of a circus show, with congressmen napping, fooling around with their various mistresses, arguing over the use of the microphone, and being visually bored and useless at what they should be doing. However, despite the non-stop humorous attacks at our failed political system, Juan Tamad Goes to Congress conveys a maturity that goes beyond the kneejerk effects of Conde’s invaluable comedic timing. In fact, seeing it for the very first time five decades after it was released and observing that each and every hilarious joke still holds water up to this day is a frightening indication that we have not progressed politically.

Democracy and the escapist intentions of Hollywood cinema, the gifts of our generous American colonizers, are conveniently married in our insistence to drown our collective disappointment on our ineffective political system with laughter. While Juan Tamad Goes to Congress is the most impressive example of how we have perfected such joviality in the midst of a rotting political core, there have been various other examples, in different forms and media, as to how we treat these supposedly serious matters with the lightness of afternoon gossip. In our newspapers, radio programs, in Youtube and the various blogs that have mushroomed in Filipino cyberspace, in magazines and television, in the idle banter in the nightly drinking sprees in our respective neighborhoods, even in political rallies and the handful of people power revolutions, the Filipino is quick to add wit to the discourse, to add spice to the grievances, to add a chuckle to the challenges. Perhaps that is the reason why we cannot get rid of democracy despite the many recurring instances that our nation has proven that we do not deserve its privileges. We, as a nation, have become chronically addicted to the freedoms that democracy provides and even for that single reason, I will and must concede.

Manuel Conde’s Juan Tamad Goes to Congress is great cinema. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that arose out of this DVD release is the lingering pain that our luck might have ran out, and that the rest of this magnificent series of satires, could have disappeared completely, left to be enjoyed through synopses, shooting scripts, posters, publicity shoots, and pictures.

(First published in Uno Magazine, April, 2010, Stranger than Fiction issue)

Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (1991)

Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (Carlos Siguion-Reyna, 1991)

English Title: I Will Wait for You in Heaven

Gabriel (Richard Gomez) is a street urchin that was plucked from the streets of Manila by Joaquin Salvador who proceeds to treat him like a son. Milo (Michael de Mesa), Joaquin's real son, who regards Gabriel as competition for his father's love and attention, is sent to Manila after an altercation with Gabriel that left the latter shamed and bruised. Without Milo around, Gabriel is brought up as a Salvador, becoming really close with and eventually falling for Carmina (Dawn Zulueta), Joaquin's daughter. Joaquin suddenly dies of a heart attack, allowing for Milo's return as master of the house, and Gabriel's sudden demotion to servitude. While Gabriel and Carmina still share the same feelings for each other, the promise of the life of a princess which is offered by Alan (Eric Quizon), the wealthy scion of the land-owning Ilustre family, is simply too good to refuse. Thus, Carmina marries Alan as Gabriel disappears to build his own fortune in preparation for his return and revenge.

Upon Gabriel's return, he immediately puts his plan into motion. First, he wins the Salvador property from Milo in a game of cards. Then, he seduces Sandra (Jackie Lou Blanco) into marrying him, in the hopes that his impending wedding would force Carmina decide to just leave Alan to elope with him. Upon learning of this, Alan prevents Carmina from leaving their abode. Gabriel starts to believe that he has totally lost Carmina to Alan, and proceeds with his plan and marries Sandra out of spite for his beloved, weakening Carmina to the point of exhaustion and death.

Ah, Love. Isn’t it just beautiful? At its best, it gives you consummate pleasure, a sudden rush of seemingly perpetual happiness resulting from being overwhelmed by the giddy feeling. At its worst, it hurts without mitigation, even to the point of emotional paralysis and death. Carlos Siguion-Reyna's Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (I Will Wait for You in Heaven), an adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights by way of William Wyler's 1939 version, exhausts the entire spectrum of the emotion, from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of torture.

It is an impeccably shot film. Cinematographer Romeo Vitug takes advantage of the sprawling hills and the violent shores of Batanes where most of the film was shot. Complementing Vitug’s gorgeous visuals are Ryan Cayabyab’s appropriately swooning musical score and George Canseco’s famous theme song whose lyrics evokes the film’s appreciation of the torturous facet of loving. Gomez, an actor whose chiseled face and physique contemplates the virility of the perfect Filipino man, and Zulueta, an actress whose frequent wide-eyed expressions exemplifies the submissiveness of the traditional Filipina, suit their roles very well. Together, with their undeniable good looks and their matching personalities and characteristics, they represent the perfect romantic couple and the fact that fate and circumstances are pulling them apart, it makes their struggle to stay together even more compelling. The film, from its literary roots down to the minutest technical detail, is designed to create this make-believe world where love is primordial, and everything else becomes subservient to that emotion.

This purposeful romantic sheen heightens the fantasy Siguion-Reyna concocts. It is a fantasy that clearly exploits a nation’s infatuation for larger-than-life struggles, of the downtrodden eventually reversing his fortunes, of victimizers getting their eventual punishment, and of love against all odds. Bronte’s classic work, stripped away of the complexity of its multi-generational narrative, perfectly suits this requirement. Siguion-Reyna shies away from portraying the subtleties of love and instead depicts it in its full grandeur and opulence. We see the emotion depicted in enormous gestures, with the lovers proclaiming their promises against dramatic landscapes, exploding in colossal sobs and tears, and bursting into exuberant expressions of reiterated affections for each other.

Hihintayin Kita sa Langit predictably culminates in the most grandly executed of tragedies. Gabriel, upon learning of Carmina’s condition, rushes to the Ilustre estate where she is kept captive. Carmina, fatally diminished by Alan’s violent jealousy, whittles in Gabriel’s embrace. Gabriel then carries her to the balcony overlooking the ironically serene sea, as they whisper their final apologetic farewells to each other. Alan catches them but his protestations do nothing and he shrinks in the background as the two lovers are consumed by their passions. Siguion-Reyna crafts this scene to perfection: the editing, the Vitug’s precise cinematography, Gomez, Zulueta, Quizon, and Vangie Labalan (who plays Carmina’s nanny) aptly amplified performances, and Cayabyab’s swelling music.

True to its title and to give a semblance of a happy ending, the film leaves its audience with the shot of the two lovers prancing in the hills. This is a direct quote from Wyler’s Wuthering Heights, an ending which director Wyler supposedly disapproved of but producer Samuel Goldwyn insisted on. The ending, awkwardly inserted (segued from the cemetery scene by disembodied laughter; a cinematic device more apt in a ghost story than a romance) making it seem more like an afterthought than anything else, softens the sadness and tames the tragedy. It is not unexpected that Hihintayin Kita sa Langit is regarded today with some reverence, considering that to a certain extent, the film, while not in any way revolutionary, is a competently crafted romance with some moments of absolute beauty, which is something of a rarity at the time it was made.