The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)

The Unfamiliar Fragrance of Faith
A Review of Roberto Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis
By Francis Joseph Cruz

Francis, rising from prayer, is obviously distraught. His usually calm face is shaking in distress and moist with fresh tears. His prayer, where he lays face down on the ground murmuring “Jesus, nailed on the cross” in between sobs, is more o an act of contrition than a dialogue with God. A leper, his beggarly clothes barely covering the open sores that populate his flesh, walks by. Francis, upon seeing the beggar nearing his spot, covers his face in sadness. He follows the leper and stops to acknowledge him. The leper walks away. He again follows the leper and stops to acknowledge him. The leper walks away. Still undaunted by the repetitive inattention given to him by the leper, he follows him, stops, and embraces the outcast. The leper still walks away, but stops before he gets too far, and looks back at Francis. Francis remains and lays anew among the flowers under the night lighted by his Sister Moon.

The scene described above is merely one of the episodes plucked from The Little Flowers of St. Francis and The Life of Brother Ginepro, two important Franciscan texts that detail the life of the saint and one of his followers, and immortalized into screen by neorealist director Roberto Rossellini in his 1950 masterpiece, Francesco, giullare di Gio (literally translated as Francis, the Jester of God but more popularly known as The Flowers of St. Francis). Filtered from the scene or most of the scenes of the film is the comfort of resolution.

The episodes are mostly portraits of the monks’ daily life, characterized by their childlike naïveté and upright selflessness. In fact, all innocence, humility and goodwill, as exemplified by the leper’s unemotional reaction towards Francis’ act of piety, are often rewarded with indifference, annoyance and violence. The film, narratively unstructured and connected theoretically by an indefinable atmosphere of spiritual serenity, is historically placed between the period of Pope Innocent’s acknowledgement of Francis’ spiritual movement and the period where Francis orders his followers to preach in different parts of the world. With that historical perspective, the film persists as a document of faith, against an overpowering lack of any proof to the existence of a God as professed by the abundance of unkindness despite the dogmatic intervention of the Church.

The film was made during the time Rossellini was publicly decried for having an affair with Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman. The two were married to different people, but have met during the filming of Stromboli. Despite the emotional turbulence brought about by the scandal, The Flowers of St. Francis remains almost unnaturally serene. Not only that, Rossellini is a self-professed atheist. However, the film, with its clear and convincing exaltation of faith, is probably one of the most poignant and effective films about a religious figure of all time.

In comparison to the guilt-ridden and arguably hateful excesses of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and the humanizing intimacy of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, Rossellini’s film seems inconsequential with its insistence on the mundane, the banal, and the quizzical spiritual implications of such simplicity. Yet, its lack of indulgence, its humility, and concern to the action rather than the effect, postulates the very essence of faith: that it is personal and does not require evidence. Had Rossellini decided to exalt Francis and his monks with the immensity of their work, then its definition of faith would have been compromised, making it less a film and more of a didactic Catholic propaganda.

The film ends with Francis and his monks, after giving away all of their possessions to the poor, decide to part to preach their ways. A monk asks where they should go. Francis tells them to spin until they are dizzy; the direction in which they land will be the direction they should go to and preach. They separate as Rossellini’s camera reveals the sky, calm yet uncertain. Faith is exactly that, calm yet uncertain. The Flowers of St. Francis gains more pertinence in these uncertain times, where faith, despite the ease of claiming possession of it, is an unfamiliar, if not completely rare, fragrance.

(First published in The A/V Club, Philippine Star, 26 March 2010)

Lupang Hinarang (2009)

Lupang Hinarang (Ditsi Carolino, 2009)

English Translation: Hindered Land

Ditsi Carolino’s Lupang Hinarang (roughly translated in English as Hindered Land), a two-part documentary about the failure of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Act, screened during last year’s edition of Cinemalaya as a work-in-progress. The documentary has all the ingredients for late-night editorial-political television programming. However, what Carolino does is both simple and magical. By following the farmers in their symbolic battles (the Cuenca farmers staged a 29-day hunger strike in front of the Agrarian Reform headquarters; while the Bukidnon farmers walked all the way from Bukidnon to Manila), allowing the farmers to tell or show their own stories without need of intervention, and ultimately relegates the politics to the background, she molds what possibly could be the most poignant, urgent and pertinent advocacy-oriented film in recent years. Editing hundreds of hours of footage into a tightly weaved package showcases Carolino’s talent for taut storytelling and efficient filmmaking. Creating a masterpiece that moved an entire audience to sobs and tears for people whose lives and dilemmas they would hardly know or care for showcases Carolino’s sincerity, selflessness, and compassion, three traits I wish more of our filmmakers had. The fact that the documentary is still a work-in-progress is quite troubling, evoking a sense that there are still so much promises of land grants that remain hindered and unfulfilled.

(First published in The A/V Club, Philippine Star, 19 March 2010; Richard Bolisay, Dodo Dayao and Philbert Dy's recommendations can be read here; Gang Badoy's beautifully written tribute to Alexis Tioseco and introduction to The A/V Club can be read here)

Miss You Like Crazy (2010)

High-Cholesterol Romance
A Review of Cathy Garcia-Molina's Miss You Like Crazy
By Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Watching a Star Cinema-produced romance is comparable to eating a McDonald's hamburger. The two activities, depending on one's tolerance for junk food, elicit one predictable response: momentary elation. Morgan Spurlock, in his hilarious yet disturbing documentary Super Size Me (2004), has taught us that the McDonald's burger is specifically engineered to be elating enough to be addictive. Star Cinema makes romances like McDonalds makes burgers. The film studio follows a strict formula, putting together the most ideal of love teams in the most un-ideal of romantic relationships with the most magically conceived of happy endings. The result is assured box-office success. The result of that result is a stubborn and artistically-numbing adherence to the formula.

If Star Cinema romances are McDonald's burgers, then director Cathy Garcia-Molina is arguably the most effective fry cook in the studio's roster of fry cooks which includes Laurenti Dyogi (And I Love You So (2009), tepid and underwhelming), Rory Quintos (Love Me Again (2009), overindulgent yet inconsequential), Jose Javier Reyes (When Love Begins (2008), frustratingly cluttered), and Jade Castro (My Big Love (2008), disappointing and uneven), among many others. Her effectivity, I guess, stems from the absolute lack of resistance to the mechanicality of her role in these productions. She understands the studio’s goal of profit, accedes to the studio’s restrictive processes, and proceeds to create delightful farces that only reinforce a cultural need for escape. In other words, she does what a fry cook does best: flip burger patties, toast burger buns, and prepare a hamburger that comes closest to perfection.

Her films, from the portion she directed in Bcuz of U (2004), a triptych of bubbly but inconsequential love stories, to A Very Special Love (2008), a fluffy and admittedly enjoyable unlikely romance between an ordinary employee and her rich, handsome yet difficult boss, are all charming confections, delicious enough to make you forget, even for just about an hour, that outside the darkness of the theaters, there are outstanding bills to pay, nagging wives to please, and other pressing problems to face. Perhaps Garcia-Molina’s most charming film is still You Are The One (2006), an undemanding but colorful story about a U.S. embassy official who is looking for his real parents and a government employee who is wrestling with self-confidence who become entangled in a whirlwind love affair that ends in an expectedly happy note. One More Chance (2008), Star Cinema’s attempt to expand its notion of romantic relationships to include something as banally realistic as break-ups, the emotional pain it induces to ex-lovers, and the sacred three-month rule, signaled Garcia-Molina as a director who aside from visualizing the occasional joyful tingles of falling in love, can also communicate the pangs of a recent heartache.

Miss You Like Crazy, Garcia-Molina’s latest, is just another addition to the director’s list of near-perfect burgers. While it is entertaining and at times, intriguing, it remains unremarkable probably because nothing, with the exceptions of the little tweaks in the formula-formed narrative and the out-of-the-country setting, differentiates it from any of the director’s previous works.

Alan (John Lloyd Cruz), who is falling out of love with his controlling girlfriend (Maricar Reyes), initiates a love affair with Mia (Bea Alonzo), a not-so-sassy girl he meets during his daily commutes aboard the Pasig River ferry. As it turns out, Alan and Mia’s irrefutable connection (which apparently erupts into an impromptu lovemaking session inside Alan’s rustic unfurnished riverside abode) is no match to fate. A few years later, the two ill-fated lovebirds meet again, this time, in Kuala Lumpur. Alan remains hopeful that he will be able to find Mia, fix the mistakes of the past, and win her back into his arms. Mia, on the other hand, has a loving boyfriend (Gerald Hans Isaac). Despite the flurry of lovely emotions (as cinematically represented by Erik Santos’ baritone suddenly bursting to the tune of I Miss You Like Crazy to accompany the two leads’ reunion beneath the metaphoric Petronas Towers) that immediately come into play with the acknowledgment that a fragment of that complicated love affair still survives, it seems that human effort (we later learn that Alan has been visiting and revisiting Kuala Lumpur just to search for Mia) is still powerless to fate. In fact, all that Alan had to do was to wait, and save himself from the aches, stress, and frustrations of doing everything for nothing.

Fate does not leave a lot of room for shocks and surprises. With fate as the primary motivator of all its love stories, Star Cinema is unabashed about the predictability of its film offerings. After all, there is comfort in predictability. In a country where the norm is discomfort, comfort sells. Thus, McDonald’s, Star Cinema and other similar peddlers of shallow comforts do well in this country. They offer what reality can’t, a release, no matter how temporary, from the unpredictability of life. Having tried my best to rationalize why Star Cinema films do so well and accept the fact that there is absolutely nothing I can write or do to force a corporation to steer away from what gives it the most profit, I still hope to see a Star Cinema romance that would tackle unfated love. Truth be told, burgers, no matter how masterful the fry cook cooks them, are still junk food. I believe the same goes for movies.

(First published in Philippine Free Press, 20 March 2010)

Bakal Boys (2009)

Bakal Boys (Ralston Jover, 2009)
English Title: Children Metal Divers

The first half of Ralston Jover's Bakal Boys (Children Metal Divers) is excellent filmmaking. Jover, writer of Brillante Mendoza's Manoro (The Teacher, 2006), Foster Child (2007), and Tirador (Slingshot, 2007), and Jeffrey Jeturian's Kubrador (The Bet Collector, 2006), gives an engaging glimpse of Baseco, one of Manila's most depressed areas, and its surrounding shorelines through the eyes of children who seek to augment their families' minuscule income by scavenging for junk metal and selling them. Opening with two best friends, 10 year-old Utoy (Meljon Ginto) and 12 year-old Bungal (Edgardo Olano, Jr.), being chased by a security guard for allegedly pilfering junk metal from a neighboring shipyard, the film's first half immerses its audience to the peculiar life these kids, by virtue of extreme poverty, are forced to live. Despite the dire circumstances that naturally presents itself, Jover treats the material with delightful levity, never forgetting that his subjects, no matter how much they are forced to grow up quicker than the rest, are still children. They are still preoccupied with such matters like play and friendship, juggling these juvenile needs and more with very real threats of pain, hunger and death.

From the mundaneness of these children's day-to-day existence, Jover finds lyric. From the overt grime, he uncovers an unlikely elegance. From the undignified treatment of life that leads to the triteness of death, he reveals a quiet compassion for his subjects. Virtually unadorned with the exception of the infrequent pleasant melodies composed by Teresa Barrozo, the film forgoes distance for intimacy. Jover's camera tireless follows these children as they play and work. The underwater scenes, where the camera shows the children swimming past floating dirt and debris, are not beautiful images in a traditional sense, considering that there is barely anything to be seen except for the constant browns of the cloudy water and the silhouettes of delicate children floating for long periods of time, yet it emphasizes the discomforting burden of childhood innocence and the struggle of livelihood that these children have to grow up with. There is an intriguing blur of play and work when we see these children, donning their worn out goggles and makeshift flippers, swimming in and out of the frame.

The sea, an endless expanse of space that the children sees as both a provider and a taker, is depicted with intrigue and mystery. Despite the overabundance of grueling reality, the film manages to evoke a faint mysticism, not much different from the magical attributes Mario O'Hara gifted polluted Manila Bay with in Babae sa Breakwater (Woman of the Breakwater, 2004). The enigmatic disappearance of Bungal, an emotional baggage that pervades the latter half of the film, is depicted with cool casualness. Alone, he jumps, with the suddenness of a random irrational decision, and swims further and further from the safety of land, and in a way, further and further from the hardships of living. That scene, precursored by the children planning their dive among other concerns, has the same curious abruptness Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), where young schoolgirls and their teacher suddenly disappear after an afternoon picnic. While Bakal Boys does not center on the lack of answers regarding the disappearance (Jover makes it clear that dozens of children drown weekly because of the practice), the film manages to give the sea a semblance of reverence, and more importantly, minimize the inevitable didactic repercussions of tackling such a socially relevant subject matter by delegating the drama of Bungal's disappearance or death off-screen.

Bakal Boys, however, without losing its sincerity, loses a bit of the realness that kept the first half afloat. Inescapably, after selling their haul (a particularly memorable scene where a shrewd scrap metal dealer haggles with the children) and dividing the earnings among themselves, the kids return to their respective homes, and the film expands its scope to involve adult matters. The adults are played by professional actors (Simon Ibarra as Utoy's father; Gina Pareño, who with her commonplace looks, can usually seamlessly meld with the settings and situations the characters she plays, as Bungal's grieving grandmother; Ketchup Eusebio, Jess Evardone, Cherry Malvar and Joe Gruta play various roles). Yet, there is an observable difference between how the actors and the real children inhabit their roles, how the actors are obviously playing a written character while the children are not, knowing the concrete grief caused by actually losing a best friend to the sea. The result, especially in scenes when the kids are with the actors, is a palpable awkwardness, which prevents me from fully investing myself to the rawness and immediacy of the human concern.

Still, Bakal Boys is very good. Instead of bludgeoning the film with the larger picture, Jover concentrates on accurately encapsulating the kids' day-to-day life in a span of less than two hours, clinging to the mundane and banal and finally, allowing the kids to tell their own stories without much directorial intervention. In a film that puts the triviality of life (to the point of death being a relief) in the midst of economic desperation as the forefront of its social discourse, it's quite impressive how Jover has kept the perspective wholly human.

Himpapawid (2009)

Himpapawid (Raymond Red, 2009)
English Title: Manila Skies

More than three decades after Lino Brocka's Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975), Filipino filmmakers are still busy depicting the treacherous allure of Manila. The styles and methods may have changed, with today's directors and story-writers eschewing melodrama for documentary-like realism, but the intent is just the same: to unmask the city of its glittering neon lights and expose the asphyxiating poverty that pervades it. Raymond Red, in Himpapawid (Manila Skies), goes further than trite exposition. He knows that we know that our dire situation, how the nation is always at the mercy of moneyed capitalists, how the masses are suffocated by an inept bureaucracy, how the poor are so impoverished that the only currency they acknowledge is hope. It is that hope that drives them to strive for a better future, relocate to the metropolis where opportunities are peddled left and right, and patiently persist despite the astute oppression and marginalization.

However, Himpapawid is hardly a film about hope. It is about the loss of all hope, about how this frustration rapidly morphs into desperation. The film is not simply about poverty, but about the absurdity of this nation's poverty; how despite two celebrated peaceful revolutions toppling corrupt presidents, and despite yearly reports of advances in the nation's economy, the poor remain poor, if not getting poorer. It is an angry picture. The anger, fluently communicated through the film's main character Raul (Raul Arellano), an ordinary laborer who we first see pleading, begging and finally, threatening for a day off to apply for an overseas job, is so palpable and pronounced, it frightens you immensely. Raul's story, enlarged by Red from a piece of news about a peculiar hijacking incident in 2000 where the hijacker, after collecting money and jewelry from the passengers and crew of the flight, jumps out of the plane and dies in the process, represents the ridiculous lengths the poor have to commit to in order to escape from an inescapable fate of what seems to be a cycle of tremendous hope leading on to tremendous disappointments.

A bag of cash and jewels falls from the sky. It just lands there in the middle of an undeveloped provincial farmland, almost magically. A farmer (Ronnie Lazaro) walks by, picks up the fortune, and runs home, promises his son he'll send him to Manila to study with a specific condition that he never returns to the province. The shot of the dreamy little boy carrying the baskets he and her mother sell for extra income fades (which cleverly gives an impression of a few decades passing by) to give way to Raul, crossing the street in crowded Manila, carrying a sack of goods on his back. From Raul's woeful experiences that we witness, from his unpalatable adventures in the middle of Philippine bureaucracy to his participation in his pals' botched attempt to steal from their shady recruiter the money that was stolen from them, the allure of the big city is exposed for the dangerous sham that it really is; that Manila, which is for the millions of Filipinos in the province, the place that holds for them the elusive promise of escape from the unbearable humdrum of their respective impoverished lives, is nothing more than a nightmare perfumed with neon-lighted billboards that display fantasies of prosperity. Yet, the sight of families of five, seven and ten crowding inside a makeshift shanty, a whiff of the pungent air from the hundreds of overly crowded squatter colonies that dot the city, and a survey of the plenty yet similar sob stories from these slums, all relating to their collective misfortune of leaving all their belongings in the province for the promised job in the city only to be left unemployed and without any money to go back, expose the sad and difficult reality in Red's outrageous fiction.

Red's play on the timelines, where he blurs the boundaries of past and present with the use of clever editing, cinematography, and production design, is more than just cinematic sleight-of-hand. In the 70's, audiences were horrified by the tragic fate of Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag's Julio Madiaga, who was plucked from the provinces, exploited in the city, killed by his fellowmen in a mob. In the 80's, audiences were again confronted by Brocka with Macho Dancer (1988) the same story of a man who flees the province for Manila, then works as a stripper in one of the seedy gay bars in the city, and ends up with the same fate as Julio. The 90's saw several variations of the same story, the most memorable of which is Carlos Siguion-Reyna's fantastically melodramatic Abot Kamay ang Pangarap (Elena's Redemption, 1996), about a barrio lass turned maltreated maid. The new millennium saw Maryo J. De Los Reyes' Laman (Flesh, 2002), and Mario O'Hara's Babae sa Breakwater (Woman of the Breakwater, 2004). Himpapawid, I believe, is not the last of its kind.

Himpapawid bears the purely cinematic sheen (the luscious cinematography, its genre aspirations, its traditional screenplay) of its predecessors. There is a marked difference between Red's feature and the several low-to-no budget features being produced by many intrepid Filipino filmmakers; as Red's film has an elegant pace and a clear and consistent mise-en-scene, recalling the disciplined artistry of studio filmmaking, before it was cheapened by the need to break-even in a cutthroat market. More than self-indulgence, the purpose of making Himpapawid such a consciously polished film, reminiscent of Brocka, Mike De Leon, and Ishmael Bernal, is, in my opinion, to enunciate the absurdity of the fact that things, whether in reality or in what defines this nation's cinema, are still criminally unchanged. There is no difference between today and forty years ago. Manila remains to be hell; perhaps glittered and gilded to the unassuming provincial dreamer, but definitely still hell. Cinema, reacting to such unchanging reality, can only either exploit it or be angry about it. Red thankfully does the latter.

Where The Wild Things Are (2009)

Where The Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze, 2009)

We were kings of the world once, tireless and virtually unstoppable forces, selfish little creatures who were incessantly expecting that the rest of the world have the same enthusiasm for exactly the same things as us. When that expectation is not met, we burst with the same energy until we are fully consumed by the fiery wrath that we have created out of nothingness. Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are, with its less than 400 words and memorable illustrations about Max, a mischievous boy who was sent to his room without his supper and eventually sailed his way to a land where wild things dwell, is, although deceptively simple, an accurate mirror of that inherent wild thing that we all had when we were younger. The book's popularity among the youngsters stems from how fluently and delightfully Sendak was able to communicate what children will never be able to successfully communicate to their parents. The book's popularity among the grown-ups stems from how the book is more mature than it looks and reads, that beneath the wondrous sudden flight to the world of the wild things of short-tempered Max is an apt document on childhood angst.

Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers understandably expand Sendak's story, giving Max (a Max Records) an ample-enough back-story (youngest child of a hard-working single mother (played beautifully by Catherine Keener)), creating specific personalities to the wild things (Carol (voiced endearingly by James Gandolfini), who is probably the most affectionate yet also the most dangerous of the wild things; KW (Lauren Ambrose), a mother figure whose two new friends have disrupted whatever harmony the wild things have with themselves; Judith (Catherine O'Hara), self-confident and often obnoxious know-it-all; Ira (Forest Whitaker), Judith's too-eager-to-please admirer; Douglas (Chris Cooper), Carol's loyal wing-man; Alexander (Paul Dano), the group's token non-entity; and a mysteriously imposing Bull-like wild thing), and crafting a not-so-elaborate plot about Max keeping out all the sadness from the group of wild things. Sadness, more than anger and fury, is the most pronounced emotion in this adaptation. The emotion is effortlessly conveyed by Jonze, whose choice in hues (autumnal golds and yellows during the daytime and wintertime black and grays at night; all beautifully shot by cinematographer Lance Acord), humor (far more dry than slapstick), and design (the computer generated faces of the wild things are the saddest things I've ever seen) are directed to enunciate childhood melancholy, more than anything else.

Jonze's film obviously lacks the playfulness and energy of Sendak's book (unbothered by the need to characterize Max as anything more than an impossibly vigorous and volatile kid, the book forgoes being stalled by needless melodrama, allowing the narrative to satisfyingly breeze within a matter of minutes). Even the wild rumpus, an isolated moment of unadulterated joy in a film full of childhood dolor where all the characters, even the usually discordant wild things, are finally in agreement to just enjoy in their unified chaos, lacks the charming succinctness of Sendak's wordless panels, where the illustrations (Max and the wild things dancing under the full moon; Max riding on top of one of the wild things while the rest follow in merriment; Max and the wild things swaying from tree branch to tree branch), are by themselves apt expressions of the joy of freedom from parents, chores, and all those other things that restrict children from happiness. It does not need the upbeat melodies of Karen O., or the kinetic cinematography, or the polished editing (although I must admit, the technical details of the film are all superb) to relay something as simple and pure as bliss.

Jonze never meant his version of Where The Wild Things Are to be simple or pure. The emotions that Jonze manages to explore are much more complicated and also much more infuriating than it first seems. The film feels more like a very personal reflection on the pains of growing up than a mere adaptation of a very popular children's book. Jonze handles the story with an understandable restraint, more careful in accurately capturing the memory of the joys and disappointments of childhood than sufficiently pleasing a viable market group. There is a tenderness, a beautiful fragility to the film that is difficult to ignore. It is as if everything that is happening in the film, from the igloo that he built to the peace among the wild things, are on the verge of breaking. And things do break, along with people and fantasies; and when they break, the effects are tremendous: earth-shattering realizations that we are not kings of the world, that we are not tireless and unstoppable forces, that we are weak. There is nothing sadder for a child than that.

There were some buildings... There were these really tall buildings, and they could walk. Then there were some vampires. And one of the vampires bit the tallest building, and his fangs broke off. Then all his other teeth fell out. Then he started crying. And then, all the other vampires said, 'Why are you crying? Weren't those just your baby teeth?' And he said, 'No. Those were my grown up teeth.' And the vampires knew he couldn't be a vampire anymore, so they left him. The end. --- Max

Holed up under his mother's desk while playing with her toes in an attempt to steal her attention from work, Max makes up the story upon his mother's prodding. It's a gorgeously written and directed scene, one that immediately grants you a sizable look into Max's loneliness: how he is needy for his mother's attention; how creativity and imagination has become an outlet for his frustrations; and how his mother, knowing fully well of her limitations, can make use of that for her own sanity. The story Max crafted foreshadows his impending maturity. Told with the same deceptive simplicity of Sendak's book, the story is at first, childish and illogical, but as it settles, it offers an unassuming wisdom about leaving childhood, about how growing up is much more melancholic than it really is, as it dictates separation from the guiltless pleasures of childhood. Flash-forward to the film's end (which I believe is an improvement over Sendak's last panel wherein we see Max return to his room finding out that there is supper prepared for him), where Max eats his supper. He stares at his mother, sleeping out of exhaustion and worry on the other side of the dinner table. Jonze cuts back to Max's face: contented, happy, wiser, and surrendering to the fact that he is not the world and his mother can only do so much. His teeth have fallen off. He is a vampire no more.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)

Produced in present-recession American and set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Werner Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans is strangely one of the funniest films I have seen in recent memory. Under Herzog's crazed vision, New Orleans is given an exciting personality. It is a city that is at once coming to grips with a prolonged melancholy and suffering, struggling with an ever-growing frustration of being alienated socially and economically from the rest of the United States, and parading an unlikely carefree enthusiasm. It is a city that is externally atrophied, with its structures crumbling and its citizenry seemingly paralyzed by the floods. However, beneath the uninspiring facade is a dormant energy that reveals itself in infrequent moments of ecstatic madness. Herzog's New Orleans is simply a city that is delightfully two-faced: corrupted and moral, where the desperation is conveniently masked by an unwavering religious faith; and impoverished and promising, where the money generated by an underground economy betrays the obvious penury.

Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage), the film's titular bad lieutenant, didn't start out bad. An asshole maybe, but bad, no. The film opens inside a flooded prison. A sea snake swims its way inside a locked cell, occupied by a forgotten prisoner. Terence and his partner Stevie Pruit (Val Kilmer) enter, talking about some stuff that their superior forgot while evacuating the building during Katrina's onslaught. A nonchalant conversation about their various indiscretions lead to the discovery of the hapless prisoner who desperately plead, to the two cops' twisted delight, to be let out before he drowns. After jokingly equating the prisoner's life with the expensive underwear his girlfriend bought for him, he suddenly jumps into the murky flood waters, and saves the prisoner, to the ample surprise of his partner (and probably Herzog's audience), who thought he had Terence all figured out as corrupt to the core. The heroic act becomes the impetus to a string of events. Terence gets diagnosed with a perpetual back ailment, causing him to walk with his shoulders automatically hunched to his head, to be completely dependent on illegal drugs, and to live his life with a devil-may-care attitude.

He also gets promoted to lieutenant and later on, gets assigned to solve a case of the massacre of a family of Senegalese immigrants. The police procedural aspect of the film is more of a frame for Terence's descent to corruption. Instead of meticulously mapping out the details of the police investigation, Herzog concentrates on depicting more interesting Terence's side-trips: to his girlfriend (Eva Mendes), for an easy lay; to the clubs, to stalk on youngsters who may be bullied for free drugs; to his dad and his stepmother, just for the reminder of the possibilities and probabilities of his fate; to his bookie, to haggle a failed bet in the hopes of reversing that fate by sheer luck. The case, by force of narrative, takes its own shape, intertwines itself with Terence's personal life, leaving the hapless lieutenant to have no choice but be bad, selling his soul and his badge to the very people he is tasked to eliminate, allowing himself to be a hostage of his own desperation. By film's end, after the unstopping and unbelievably entertaining descent of Terence to the lowest depths of human amorality, we get a sense of a world where corruption is not a decision but a phase, where the environment humanity struggles in, more than its own un-seldom decisions to transgress its self-made codes of propriety, is the primary mover for us to forget ourselves in order to simply survive.

Survival is what drives humanity. It is also what drives the rest of the world. This shared thirst to perpetuate ourselves in our environment becomes that inherent link we have with nature. Herzog's film is so conscious of this link that he often deviates from his narrative to simply observe animals: the swimming snake that opens the film; the colorful pet fish in the room of the murdered child; the crocodile by the highway; the imagined iguanas. These creatures' sudden spotlighted presence, while at first befuddling, creates an awareness that humanity, with its ongoing businesses in fixing its own affairs, does not exist within a vacuum. The similarities, like the cold-bloodedness or the predatory predispositions, are pushed forward, allowing us a sizable glimpse and a more-than-believable rationale as to why Terence is required to lose moral perceptions in order to persist. The proposition that I am making, that it is not us but circumstance that dictates our capacity for evil or even the theory that the concept evil is only a human invention, is admittedly cynical, one that has been conveniently drowned with Herzog's confidently unconventional directorial approach or Cage's effectively over-the-top portrayal of Terence.

Herzog's intent is clearly not to take corruption seriously, and this is where Herzog deviates from Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992), where corruption is unflinchingly depicted as dirty and scary. When Terence suddenly appears from behind the door, with an automatic shaver on hand and chin and eyes twitching from exhaustion and lack of sleep, and proceeds to remove the oxygen tubes from an old woman, while extorting from the old woman's attendant the location of the lone witness to his case, the disgust over the reprehensible act is buried by the ludicrousness and ridiculousness of the attempt. The joke continues as Terence rationalizes his dastardly deed with an accusation that America is in such bad state because of rich old women like her victim. The wisdom of his retort is both humorous and enlightening. Humor is essential in driving the point. Again, after a sudden shoot-out where a drugged Terence is salvaged from death and debt by his shady new friends, the discomforting pact is punctuated by insanity when he insists that his friends shoot the dead man because "his soul is still dancing," and indeed, we see the man's soul break-dancing. Herzog's filmmaking is as over-the-top, as self-consciously hilarious, as his actor's portrayal and it works, it works wondrously.

Herzog simply leaves no room for remorse or introspection, because there is nothing to be remorseful for. Contrary to popular belief, corruption is an fact the act of fate, while nobility is the choice. Animals, programmed only to survive the longest, are all victims and agents of fate, such as a crocodile that wanders too far into the highway and is ran over. We, however, have the choice to forgo survival and sacrifice. We are reminded of our perceived nobility and when that reminder comes, all one can do is reminisce, laugh and move on. Terence, in the end of the film, is reminded of that noble act that preluded his deterioration when the prisoner he rescues from the flood, now a hotel bellboy, recognizes him despite the effects of cocaine that he has been consuming, as the cop that gave him another chance at life. The two end up in an aquarium, with a giant glass separating them from the fish. What ultimately separates humanity from the rest of the world is that we are, although we may often choose to forgo of it, have the capacity for nobility. That Terence McDonagh, the baddest of bad lieutenants, has exercised such capacity for nobility, no matter how long ago that was or how spontaneous the decision was, expresses that important distinction men have from the the rest of this wild fog-eat-dog world.

Ang Panday (2009)

Ang Panday (Mac Alejandre, 2009)
English Translation: The Blacksmith

Somewhere out there, Carlo J. Caparas is beaming with a brand new dose of pride and self-confidence. Caparas, whose status as National Artist for Visual Arts and Film has been tainted because of several procedural lapses in his selection and a widespread and thoroughly convincing opinion among artists' circles that he does not deserve such honor considering that he never drew any of the comics he's most famous for and that his filmography is limited to exploitative films about sensationalized massacres and morally questionable political figures, has again gotten what his naysayers can never get, box office triumph. As it turns out, Mac Alejandre's re-do of Ang Panday (The Blacksmith), based on the very popular comic book written by Caparas and translated to film several times before, is quite a hit.

Caparas, however, cannot and should not claim sole ownership over the phenomenon that is Ang Panday. He may be credited for creating a near-empty vessel, a character that is so simplistic, so archetypal that it readily morphs into an entirely different entity depending on the actor who takes on the role. Fernando Poe, Jr., who is regarded as king of Philippine movies who was charismatic and popular enough to have actually threatened to take away the presidency from Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in an election despite having no political experience prior to his presidential campaign, portrayed the role of Flavio, the blacksmith who was prophesied to rid the land of evil, in several movies in the early eighties, improving Caparas' empty character and turning it into a cultural, if not political icon, a champion of the masses who singularly wages a righteous war against the forces of evil who have enslaved the poor people of the land. Bong Revilla, Jr. and Jinggoy Estrada would later on portray derivatives of the Panday character in Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes' Dugo ng Panday (Blood of the Blacksmith, 1993), about a descendant of the original Flavio who inherits the mythical blade, and Caparas' Hiwaga ng Panday (Mystique of the Blacksmith, 1998), about a gunsmith who discovers Flavio's sword and converts it into a gun, respectively. Matinee idol Jericho Rosales adds youthful vigor to Flavio when he took on the role for the television series. Ultimately however, Poe remains to be the quintessential Flavio as his slow yet assured demeanor, his stylized poses and fighting styles, his undeniable charm, his trademark quietude that makes every word he speaks invaluable have become irreplaceable adjuncts of the character.

In Alejandre's Ang Panday, Revilla graduates from portraying a mere descendant of the legend into stepping into the shoes of the legend itself. It's a tricky proposition, one that Revilla, who is also the main financier of the film, quickly deflects by dedicating the movie to Poe (sympathetically ending the dedication with a statement about Poe being the one and only Panday). Whether or not the dedication is actually heartfelt or an automatic reiteration of what is expected from anyone touching the franchise is beyond the point. Revilla has volunteered himself to be compared against Poe, to be scrutinized for whatever he lacks, to be criticized for whatever changes or modifications he introduces. It really is a daunting task, one that Revilla accomplishes by putting in what essentially is a very safe performance, a performance that is so carefully and deliberately engineered that it is neither wondrous or obnoxious, just inexplicably dull and unoriginal. However, to expect a myth-changing performance by Revilla is close to impossible. Revilla has never been or never pretended to be an accomplished thespian. What he is is an action hero who is gifted with age-defying good looks and an unwieldy heft that makes him a logical replacement for Poe.

Alejandre manages to tie things together with a thread so loosely spun that a minor misstep can cause the entire thing to fall apart. Screenwriter R. J. Nuevas' update on the narrative is understandably simplistic, episodic and quite easy to follow and digest. There's enough room for humor, usually provided for by cameos by some comedians (John Lapus as a gay mananangal; and when a young adventurer throws an insult on his ridiculously long hair, with stoic ease, he retorts with "nakapangasawa ako ng mayaman (I married a rich man)"), but not enough to relocate the film from derivative adventure into camp territory, an experiment that I thought would have made for a far more interesting movie. Obviously, the point of the movie is not to reinvent the wheel (Panggay, veteran comic Joey De Leon's flamboyantly gay version of iconic hero is a funny although short-lived parody; while Guiller, Estrada's gun-slinging variation of the character is an imaginative but half-baked creation) but to embellish a classic with the best special effects, production design, and other technical details Philippine money can buy. It somewhat works, at least to create an experience that nearly resembles the ones offered by Hollywood's expensive epics. The visual effects (from the beautifully animated opening sequence to the computer generated effects that are generously sprinkled throughout the film), the gorgeous musical scoring, and the delightfully meticulous production design display the extent of Philippine talent given a budget that is a mere fraction of what it needs to make one of Michael Bay's bloated extravaganzas.

Alejandre's Ang Panday is, at best, a showcase of Philippine ingenuity. The movie, probably deservedly, is getting a lot of criticism for being a hodgepodge of Hollywood influences (Philip Salvador's Lizardo is an uncomfortable mix of Jack Nicholson's outwardly insane and Heath Ledger's inwardly insane Jokers; Lizardo's dreary castle seems to inspired by Sauron's tower in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings series; in fact, much the movie's mise-en-scene (Lizardo speaking to his army of goons atop his castle is a convenient copy of Saruman speaking to his army of orcs atop his tower) are borrowed from Jackson's famous epic). However, Philippine mainstream cinema can never claim originality, since the formulas used, from the slapstick to the heavy dramas, from the horrors to the romantic comedies, are patterned after those that have worked for Hollywood and other Hollywood-type markets in the world. Capitalist logic dictates that those in the entertainment business should create entertainment to survive; and when pressed against competitors that are bigger, brighter, and fancier, the tendency is to bridge the gap, not with money but with sheer craftsmanship. That said, Ang Panday is probably one of silliest films in the decade (and as an aside, Caparas, for all his intuition on what stories the masses are willing to pay to follow, should not mistake artistry with mass appeal) but it's a step forward for Philippine mainstream cinema in its ambition of finally churning out a film that can be at par with the Hollywood blockbuster. Whether that is good or bad in the long run is a different matter altogether.