Theory of relativity

The Lake House
Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock
Directed by Alejandro Agresti
Warner Brothers, 2006

Featuring anachronistic elements all throughout an otherwise stale love story, "The Lake House" tackles the subjectivity of time: that time is just a perception.

Sandra Bullock's Kate Foster is an emotionally preoccupied Chicago doctor who begins writing letters with Keanu Reeves' Alex Wyler, an architect who is living in the same lake house she rented two years earlier.

Just consider that the movie is a series of disjointed facts, events and circumstances relating the present to the past through a magical mailbox. Kate and Alex write letters to each other and later exchange dialogues onscreen as if they're both there present.

The film is surely booed by realists who would always argue that art takes off from common sense, logic, and all it entails. The film is devoid of these elements because it rather seeks to do something else.

The use of the time lapse is not in itself a lapse, but a reinforcing element to back up the contention that love defies time. That is all. And when we begin discussing love, thus, we stop asking questions.

And so we proceed to something else. The gist of this melodrama lies in the two-year gap between the two characters' respective time frames. Kate is currently living in 2006; Wyler in 2004.

The factor of time lapse is both interesting and tragically conceited. While it thrills us with how two people take liberties at pursuing their romance across time and space, it clouds the whole idea of logic; thus it must be perceived neither as rational nor realistic (which is a usual characteristic of something we watch with our money).

It can rather be appreciated with the way we see the depth of the feelings and emotionality of two people who are estranged from their own worlds but are enamored by a person beyond time and space (it sounds like an extra-terrestrial love story but it's not).

Foster and Wyler are what we may call "may sariling mundo," literally and figuratively because they do not live in the present. They make their own worlds somewhere else; their togetherness is hinged at each other's absence or lack of presence. And in the end they succeed. All in the absence of logic, or common sense.

While the original "Speed" stars make a wonderful chemistry onscreen, the audience is left mesmerized by how he can weave together disjointed facts, lacking sense and even sensibility.

Perhaps falling under the genre now called metafiction, "The Lake House," originally "Il Mare" by an Asian author, tries to demystify the subjectivity [read: relativity] of time, which to some people nowadays is not a reality but a mere perception.

Deconstructed realities is now an apparent trend in the literary field, which permeates books, films, and other available media. Realities are said to be only perceptions, something only perceived by the senses. So if everything is only perceived as everything is only felt or made out by all the senses, what is real, therefore?

Of course, we'll leave this question unanswered, as this film leaves us hanging the rest of our movie time. What matters more is the depth of thought or feeling of the human being. For one, it is so unrealistic for Kate to communicate with Alex, who is living "now" two years earlier. But what really binds them is the affinity to the same lake house, which has enchanted their persons for life.

"Lake House" slyly tells us that what matters more is the endearment of the heart, not any other preoccupation as time, nature, environment, or circumstances. What must rattle us is what we really feel.

Are you one of us?

You Are the One
Toni Gonzaga, Sam Milby, Eugene Domingo
Directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina
Star Cinema, 2006

Though its story is unexceptional, Cathy Garcia-Molina’s “You Are The One” is a “good” film once we realize it is our story. The movie is a latest addition to the date-movie flicks, a cinema staple typical of the works by directors like Rory Quintos and Joyce Bernal.

Like other Filipino flicks, though, what follows is the movie's formulaic [a.k.a predictable] storyline. A storyline is said to be predictable if there is not much new anything in it, and when we know exactly what can happen even if we just doze off inside the movie house the whole time.

A young National Statistics Office (NSO) female employee files her visa before a stern Fil-Am boy who is a vice-consul at the US embassy. Immediately the bubbly [read: Kikay] girl is smitten by the boy’s looks. After the girl’s inconsistency in her statements, Fil-Am boy denies girl US visa; the girl gets very disappointed.

Fil-Am boy gets trapped in a noonday Quezon City traffic jam, cancels going to work, and chances by the NSO; he later searches for his roots [requests for a birth certificate], meets the girl in her office.

The love-struck girl who first contemplated revenge now befriends boy. She later helps him find his Filipino parents in Pampanga. Sooner, their partnership develops into intimacy. Conflict arises when the boy’s supposed parents are not the real ones. Boy gets intimidated by such failure and later, depressed; slams the girl like there has never been a relationship.

After a fellow employee tips her of the boy’s records, girl gives boy other names of his possible relatives in Bulacan. Boy ignores it, badly hurt and intimidated. Girl catches the boy sleeping with a foreigner girl; she confronts him. Girl goes away.

Girl becomes bitter, tries to forget the boy. After the girl’s sister has visited the Philippines for a conference, girl reconsiders plans to go to US after she settles her emotional rift with “estranged” sister. Boy goes back to the girl but the girl has already resigned from the NSO job. Girl gets ready to fly to the US.

But one day, rain pours hard thanks to the director’s props—the girl’s contingent is trapped and delayed for the flight; boy’s taxi arrives just in time. Later, people in the entire neighborhood hold umbrellas for the two to patch things up.

Dressed as a pig mascot, the boy apologizes to the girl publicly; girl demands the boy to profess his love for her. The public witnesses a rainy soap opera live before their very eyes. End of story.

End of story. Of the same story. Of the same story. One critic even said that perhaps we want the same story because we are so familiar with it that it dictates our lives. Our familiarity with it makes us want more of the same thing.

So are we not tired of the same story? No, we say. Anything new is not the same story. So we patronize it. And because big producers like ABS-CBN produce these kinds of films and we have no choice not because this is what is given to us, but because this is what we demand. We later say this is what is given to us because indeed this is what we demand.

Producers always cater to what we consumers need, and because for long we have been programmed by the media to act like we now do.

This has always been the story we want. This has always been our story in which we forever delight. While making our minds stagnate with these flicks because they do not make us think, these movies do not challenge our minds, but only entertain us and make us forget the cares of the day [which, to us, is more important anyway]. To us it is already okay.

We are content with such a treat not because we are "mababaw" but because it features a number of things to familiar to us—it film features in the characters our very personalities; these characters are our very sensibilities.

First off, Toni Gonzaga is Sally Malasmas, the NSO East Avenue employee whose family migrated in the United States. Left to fend for herself, the yuppie in Sally projects a strong bubbly personality but whose hopes are dimmed when she is denied a visa to go to the States. Her bubbly character affords the movie its comic finesse. Without such bubbly-ness, You Are the One may not at all be the one worth our time and effort. It is as though Gonzaga’s comic aura just so spontaneously delights her co-characters. Not at all pretty [which is most usually required for lead female characters], her taray personality is entirely unique, not like Maricel Soriano’s or those of her forerunners—you are just elated by her charisma.

From the Sprite commercial [I Love You, Piolo!”] in the late 90s, Toni Gonzaga has come a long way in the film industry. Her lead role in this film all the more makes her a very serious actress to consider. She propels the plot as the story revolves around her relationship with Sam Milby’s character and her remote family in the US.

Sam Milby’s Will Derby satisfactorily delivers a Fil-Am sensibility whose naivety does not become a hindrance to his task of finding his roots in Pampanga or Bulacan. Will Derby, the Fil-Am vice consul at the US Embassy who denied her visa is a typecast—a stereotype. His Asian-Caucasian looks easily fit the role, though most necessarily his diction and twang.

Like other pigeonholed roles, his character is the one that can easily be forgotten in the pages of out “movie memory” because he does not provide a fresh look at our consciousness. He highly portrays a type, a stereotype or stock character—whose existence though necessary for the story, is not a memorable one.

Eugene Domingo’s character is a delightful treat. One of the most sought after comediennes to date, Domingo’s signature antics coupled with her expressive facial expressions and smirks help bring the house down, just like she did in “D Lucky Ones” [together with Pokwang]. It is always wise for the filmmakers to provide for the character of Eugene Domingo because her talent is bankable. She reminds us of Nova Villa characters who are given the best punch lines or one-liners [those statements that make you think deeper about the story being presented].

In fact, Domingo acted out the lead character in the Palanca-winning play “Palanca In My Mind” which was presented during the 56th Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature held in Dusit Hotel September 1st. She led the comedy cast who portrayed the making of a Palanca die-hard. Domingo’s performance before the intellectual elite virtually brought the house down.

Meanwhile, Gio Alvarez’s Melody is another flat character reminiscent of Mel Martinez or Bernardo Bernardo, the screaming faggot who does not only portray the queerest character but even acts as “tulay” to the lovers Sally and Will.

Like Eugene Domingo’s role, we do not forget this one because he is queer. To Filipinos, what is queer is always—necessarily—interesting. He interests us because he is noisy, and because he is among us, or one of us.

So there—to us, the movie is good because we find familiar characters in it—we find ourselves in it. Or we [get to] laugh to our hearts’ content watching a comic sitcom on the silver screen. Virtually, we do not feel cheated or shortchanged at all because we are only given what we want. Yet, hardly we realize that while it does entertain us [because it features the same characters we have been used to knowing or identifying with], it does not at all make us think. Worse, we even feel it is more than enough.

To the fateful, departed

The Departed
Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Warner Brothers, 2006

In Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed,” all the law enforcers and the gangsters they pursue end up dead at the end. The police—Martin Sheen’s Captain Queenan and Mark Wahlberg’s Sergeant Dignam—in pursuit of the bigwig thug—Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello—double-crossed both ways by Matt Damon’s Colin Sullivan and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bill Costigan—are all killed.

It is just right that the bidas die since the film tackles an 80s Boston mobsters’ story, or because the film is done by Scorsese [who is world-famous for his sense of gore and glory]. After watching the film, you get a feel that it’s for real, meaning—it is realistic that the main characters die because right from the very start, they have just tricked each other.


While the movie title is perhaps stating the obvious—the word “departed” there connotes another sense. “Departed”—as in the sense of the dead, thus the phrase “our faithful departed”—rather translates into a more sensible meaning of isolation, since every mobster or law enforcer there—and the ones caught in between [Caprio and Damon]—seems to be rallying for his own cause, advancing his own cause, sadly solitarily.


Each one of them is trying to penetrate another’s territory—that inevitably the movie climaxes at the part when the “mole” or the “rat,” who makes a lot of trouble between the outlaws and the pursuers cannot just be easily caught—so confused their characters are they are that they end up pursuing and killing each other. They all end up being isolated. They, indeed, end up departed. Abandoned.


Scorsese’s film provides us similar insights into the present-world realities. The whole drama in this piece spells out man’s isolation which is deeply rooted in his self-interest, if not outright egotism.


At the height of the campaign for his partymates the US Midterm polls this week, US President George W. Bush, for instance, skirted the Iraq issue—instead persuading Americans that the main issues are taxes and terrorism. For this inconsolable war freak, nothing else is new—or worth addressing—but how he wants to get even with Al-Qaeda, or how to make Americans fat so they could forever patronize his war-freak whims.


Meanwhile, in a recent UN report on climate change, renowned economist Nicholas Stern points to the guilt of the industrial countries who have the biggest culpability and liability on the greenhouse gases issue, but who do not staunchly or surely address it. Countries like China, India and the US, so-called the biggest polluters of the world, have yet to be held liable for this.

Having no clear policies in place to address the environmental concern, the Bush administration is not being vocal or straightforward how to address this. International media are skeptical that the issue might not be touched in the president’s remaining term.


And while Indian citizens can only express their personal concern to address global warming, the government will have yet to list it as one of their priorities. But certainly time cannot wait for people to do something in their own time to resuscitate the endangered environment. Time waits for no one, and Mother Earth cannot tarry, either.


In a larger scale, we just await for realities in the films “Waterworld” and The Day After Tomorrow to happen. So any culture of indifference, self-interest or unrest will certainly not make things better.


Our world is continuously at war—the Sri Lankan conflict, Al-Qaeda’s recent attack in Pakistan, among others—the world doesn’t change. All news—we observe—spell discontent and hatred, or plainly, one’s lack of sensitivity to the needs of others.


The world may seem to be at peace when it is not. Isolation, that worst sense of existence caused by not being able to get our message across or seek understanding between and among ourselves—but just standing one’s ground because this is good for us, and only us—may not, at all, get us anywhere. These grim instances of self-interest will only pose to us more adversities in the future.


Man is in the brink because of his own isolation—he is the last ace he has to save himself, but he hardly realizes it. He is too “departed” to know what he must really want, or care for—he ends up needing endlessly.

Of Shame and Shyamalan

Lady in the Water

Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Warner Brothers, 2006

Once labeled “unusual but charmless” film, the mysterious "Lady in the Water" by India-born American film director M. Night Shyamalan [read: Sha-ma-lan] deserves a second look, asking us to dive and swim deeper into that pool [of water brimming with] meanings and insights.

METAFICTION

An experimental and unconventional work, Lady in the Water falls under metafiction, a work of fiction whose primary “concern is the nature of fiction itself.” A metafiction contains—as one of its structural and thematic dimensions—a testing of fiction itself.

The film rolls out as the anatomy of fiction, in the strictest sense of the word—a naming of parts, the structure of [a] Story. This means that the film itself presents in all its frames what constitutes fiction.

For instance, the chief character’s name itself is Story, who just comes to the life of one building manager Cleveland Heep, who later will help resolve her problem, much as a reader would have to make sense of a story that [he reads].

In the film, Story [literary text] and Heep [reader] have a literal encounter. Cleveland Heep, an ordinary man, is thrown the task [so he desperately asks people how] to help Story go back to her own Blue World, just like the common reader who reads a story and has to finish reading [understanding] it.

Featuring fiction within fiction, characteristic of postmodern works, Lady in the Water presents two plots—the first plot is the narf’s incredible story; the second is the story being woven out of the narf’s presence to the life of the building tenants.

In all, the film itself presents in all its frames what constitutes fiction, laying out the elements that compose the whimsical and wonderful world of fiction. Whimsical, meaning the author freely makes use of fantastic elements to carry out his purpose; and wonderful, meaning the insights and plethora of realizations we can get from it.

BEDTIME STORY

As stated by the makers of the film itself, Lady in the Water is “a bedtime story.” Therefore, it is indeed a story told to children at bedtime; therefore, a story that entails “a pleasant but unconvincing account or explanation.”

More particularly, a bedtime story is something told to lull us into slumber, or usher us in to the dreamland, where we will see more disjointed characters and plots, more insensible events and phantasmagoric images that all defy explanation.

Thus, a bedtime story does not seek to convince anyone. And by being a seemingly “unconvincing” film, Lady in the Water delivers its very purpose.

Using bedtime story as its narrative vehicle, though, the film is a potent illustration of a few literary concepts. For one it is fantasy—the literary genre that designates a conscious breaking free from reality. Fantasy applies to a work that “takes place in a nonexistent and unreal world, such as fairyland, or concerns incredible and unreal characters.”

Considering the film a fantasy, then, we the audience have to work out their “suspension of disbelief.” This means our willingness to withhold questions about truth, accuracy, or probability in a work. Taking root from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Bibliographia Literaria, which describes “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes the poetic faith,” it simply means that our willingness to suspend doubt makes possible the temporary acceptance of an author’s imaginative world—however ridiculous it is. We are transported to the time and place, people and events all created by the author.

The relaxed Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) dealing with a young woman stranger Story (Howard) literally illustrates the suspension of disbelief. Significantly, the film illustrates full suspension of disbelief in the lack of skepticism—acquiescent attitudes—by the other building tenants when Cleveland Heep just turns up with a strange woman Story, and later involves all of them to helping the stranger return to her Blue World.

All throughout the film, we the audience are asked to make sense out of the seemingly insensible things presented in the work. In fact, M. Night Shyamalan seeks to suspend our disbelief to the extremes, asking us to just believe everything in front of our noses.

We can also say the film is a fairy tale, “a story relating mysterious pranks and adventures of spirits who possess supernatural wisdom and foresight, a mischievous temperament, the power to regulate the affairs of human beings for good or evil, and the capacity to change their shape.”

In the film, the fantastic character Story obviously lands into the world of men, bothering their very silences, especially Heep and The Cookbook author (the film director himself) and later, comes to effect change in them, conscious or otherwise.

HEEP HELPS NARF, READER MAKES STORY

By and large, we cannot judge a piece of work based on our failure to grasp its meaning. If we cannot particularly make sense of the work because of our lack of knowledge, or our refusal to be open to forms which do not fit or dwell in our comfort zones, we cannot really have a more valuable scrutiny of the work.

We cannot care much about the author or director’s sensibility as much as we must interpret meanings for ourselves. A literary theory called reader-response criticism says that a piece of writing—here translated into film [previously called cinema, or celluloid literature] scarcely exists except as a text designed to be read [in this case—watched]. Shyamalan seemingly disjointed frames to other people can just make sense to the informed reader—the real reader who can appreciate it.

The symbolic rescue of Story from the dog monster who ate up the film critic who was talking out a definition of one character tells us that any story therefore is the product of the one who reads it—a film’s meaning is made out by the moviegoer themselves.

Considering the film a serious work of art, then, we say it is not the work of the author. For some literary theorists, the author is dead—what he wrote or made, after being written, is not anymore his. For reader-response theorists, it’s the reader’s perception about the work that says what it is.

Nevertheless, the makers of the film can be lauded for their daring to break the stereotypes associated with film and filmmaking. Risking commercial success for the sake of bringing out some learning in art and literature, M. Night Shyamalan proves consistent to his credo of experimentation that gives the educated audience not just essential points of discussion but also countless insights.

The beauty of the unexpressed

Brokeback Mountain
Heath Ledger, Jake Gylenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy Quaid
Directed by Ang Lee
Paramount Pictures, 2005

WITH “BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN,” film director Ang Lee presents himself as a symbolist, a minimalist, and a lot more.

Based on Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer-winning work, “Brokeback Mountain” is an apt label for Lee’s masterpiece on how the lives of two cowboys—the tightlipped Ennis del Mar and the rodeo-loving Jack Twist—are made meaningful and even tragic by their summer experience in the wild. In Brokeback Mountain, the two cowboys have their own Walden experience, or epiphanies—something that they will hold on to for the rest of their lives—but that later turns out to be against social conventions, a dilemma to resolve that it makes tragic heroes out of them.

AS A SYMBOLIST, Ang Lee shows so much by concealing many things. Ennis del Mar’s restrained affectation for his friend Jack Twist with whom he shares a steamy summer in 1963 predominantly figures in the end as tragedy.

A plethora of symbols prevails in the masterpiece. First, the sheep being tended by the two cowboys are the juxtaposition for Ennis del Mar, one whose restraint and silence seems the most deafening to all the other characters. The meekness of the sheep being tended by the two main characters delineates Ennis’ inability to articulate his own preference, living in an otherwise homophobic society. Like the sheep feasted on by the obscure [the unseen social ridicule] wolves, Ennis del Mar confines himself to avoid the stigma from his outward relationship with another man.

Second, the bloodied clothes—Ennis’s long-sleeved shirts and Jack’s denim jacket—spells the boys’ distinctive bonding. When Ennis finds the clothes in Jack’s room after his death—with Jack’s denim covering Ennis’s shirt—the viewer is told that Jack has indeed nurtured their friendship and union. Towards the end of the movie, after Ennis gets to know of Jack’s fate through his wife Lorraine, Ennis’s shirt is already covering Jack’s clothes. The living already treasures the memory of the dead. Such cinematic contrivance affords us these symbols of male love and concern.

Also, the movie’s title itself spells the polar tendencies and realities of the two main characters. While “Brokeback” spells their aggressive, masculine tendencies, “mountain” articulates their softer and more feminine sides, as they [get to] love each other.

“Brokeback” perhaps sounds contrived as it accounts for the harsh cowboy life that the Ennis and Jack encounter in the Wyoming ranch. The jobs they took on themselves literally “break” their backs. Yet, something else in the ranch does other things to them.

On the other hand, “mountain” speaks the providence of nature—in the way the camera portrays nature scenes as real-life postcards of lush vegetation, open fields and pristine panoramas of sky and water.

While their ranch work entails “breaking their backs” literally, the entire backdrop where they were makes them gentle to themselves.

AS A MINIMALIST, the Asian sensibility of Ang Lee surfaces in the film’s sparse dialogues and its use of panoramic postcards-like shots. Lee’s camera pans out to the poetic and the restrained.

The film zooms in on the ‘corked’ anger and restraint in Ennis del Mar. Ennis del Mar's interesting character later turns out to be the more repressed, the wayward character who needs more redemption just because he cannot fully articulate himself—he thus becomes the disadvantaged protagonist, he is the tragic hero.
Lee’s angles delineate well the characters. Ennis del Mar’s displays the vacillation of a typical human being. While seeking to desire something else, he chooses to do otherwise. He then suffers greatly from not being able to articulate his feelings and aspirations which can get him something good.

Ennis del Mar sustains his inarticulateness through his murky relations with other characters. While he sustains himself as a father to Alma Jr., ironically he has already contradicted himself when he divorces his wife Alma.

While he maintains clandestine relations with his “fishing” friend Jack Twist, he suffers greatly from the inability to sustain any sensible one with a serious one. And while Ennis seeks to be conscious of social ridicule all the while—disregarding Jack’s suggestion on cohabitation, he eventually suffers from the pain of it all when Jack finally gives it a go, and leaves him all alone.

When Jack Twist dies towards the end of the story, the dilemma of the protagonists is never resolved. The film then becomes an elegy for the death of love between two males—which—to society—means the death of the self simply because it cannot be, or can it?

Lee presents the audience the widest open spaces for introspection. When he captures the sprawling blue skyline and open waters and streams and fields, he tells them this is how wide the possibilities in the world are—where he lives, where everyone can etch their own notions on morality [or the lack of it].

With this, Lee presents to the audience the option to etch his own notion of right and wrong, his own sense of morality.

Lee presents wide, open spaces as he presents options for the human being to take a stand and articulate his convictions. While Jack Twist freely etches his own spectrum of colors in the open pages of Ennis’ life, he is also easy and free to wheeze all these away. But everything he must have done was hinged on self-conviction, despite its not being grounded by the proper sense of right and wrong.

Meanwhile, the driftwood personality of Jack is clear to go against Ennis’s sense of self, which later translates to a dilemma that shall challenge him from one moment onwards.

The film is brimming with binary opposites. And these are made clear when Jack Twist’s life rifts from that of Ennis del Mar whose sensibility is all restraint and uncertainty.

Now acclaimed by a number of award-giving bodies, Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” will certainly break the back of the moralists, despite the [degree of] sexual liberation prevalent in this country.

The film featuring boys loving boys is certainly a big “no-no”—something scowled upon by traditional social conventions in this only predominantly Catholic country in Asia.

But as lovelorn boys coming of age, characters Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar might hardly gain the ire of any viewer since they present two sincere characters whose dilemma of pursuing their preferences intersects harshly with social conventions.

Together they achieve sense of fulfillment—they fly like angels without wings. They become messengers of their own truths, speaking much of the reality that pervades among us.

Of momos and monotonies

Sukob
Kris Aquino, Claudine Barreto
Directed by Chito Roño
Star Cinema, 2006

In the 70s and 80s, films with one-word titles became instant classics and bestsellers. They featured power plots written by academe-learned screenwriters and showcased breakthrough, tour-de-force performances by upcoming actors handled by directors who were strongly driven by advocacies in the midst of repressed martial law environments—all gave rise to these masterpieces, which would later reap awards from all over the world.

The plethora of very good films such as “Insiang,” “Itim,” “Kisapmata,” “Jaguar,” “Himala,” “Bona” produced by Lino Brocka, Mike de Leon, Ishmael Bernal, and others—has attested to this.

Today, whenever one-word-title films are featured, we come to expect much because we anticipate that at least they might go against the usual popular, formulaic films that only rake profits for the producers.

Yet, we are proven wrong. While “Feng-shui” was quite a box-office in 2004, owing to its freshness, “Sukob” does just as poorly.

Though exploring a theme as local as the superstitious beliefs involving marriage is a brave attempt to seek something new, the manner of presenting the theme, though, is not as new.

For one, the long-range shot of Kris Aquino’s Sandy falling from the belfry is a standout inconsistency in terms of cinematography. It still calls for more effects, for ideally it if can be shot as close as the confrontation between the curse girl and the sisters inside the belfry itself. It could have been given much attention—not haphazardly treated.

Moreover, the use of the corpse bride [flower girl motif] appears much like Tim Burton’s Helena Bonham voiced-over character in “The Corpse Bride.”

Claudine Barreto’s melodramatic acting also does not make the film horrifying at all, while Kris Aquino’s frowns and smirks—in scenes which does not require them [she usually does on TV shows]—do not help much in rendering emotionality in the film.

The use of scary characters and situations that go with abrupt sounds of horror tells us that to jolt is scare is to horrify is to make money.

Offering no more than jolts and scares, Sukob belongs to the scary movie roster, perhaps a cousin to “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Scream.”

Nothing much is there to say about the film, except that it features the vulgarly popular Feng-shui star Kris Aquino with her popularly known best friend Claudine Barreto. The film either capitalizes on the actress’s bonding or vice-versa. Commercialism in the film industry has never been vulgar as this.

Even obviously showing branded products in the films which the actresses themselves endorse tells us that the films being made only cater to the whims of its producers or financiers, not to any purpose of art.

This setup is entirely Filipino, as if to perennially say to us, art cannot exist without the interests of the producers and capitalists. As regards “free plugging,” the film’s use of capitalists’ products in the film itself is paralleled to that of a literary magazine that features advertisement to finance the publication itself. What else is new?

“Sukob” owes Roño’s previous film “Feng-shui” much of its inspiration and even elements of horror. Even then, a horror film involving the same Kris Aquino will be highly open to comparison.

And as is usually said of trilogies or movies with sequels and prequels, the original movie can never be equaled. In fact, Fengshui can never be repeated because of the freshness it offered few years ago. The second work in the same vein of any film director always suffers the fate of a second best—a copy of the original.

Or maybe the film defies genre classification as it vacillates between melodrama and horror. In so doing, it ends up uncertain about its purpose, for it does not seek to deliver anything whole in the end.

Film’s auteur theory—one that says a body of works by the same author usually belong to the same vein, much like a singer sings songs with similar melodies in a single album—is shown perfectly clear by Roño in the two films he has recently made. The two films are, shall we say, split personalities of the same identity.

Perhaps like other filmmakers who have to be conscious of their art, Roño has to seek new ways of _expression using the film medium, if only to make the film discipline as respectable as it is can be.

Now that the scare era is waning, producing a horror film that does not present anything new is not so much a gracious exit as it is an ugly closure. As is proven in the film, moomoos and monotony seem to work well together.

Dream. Believe. Then gripe.

Goal: The Dream Begins
Directed by Danny Cannon
Touchstone Pictures, 2005

You feel exhausted after a week’s work, so you go watch a movie. But here comes one supposedly “feel-good” film that will rather make you feel bad about many things in the end.

As a “good” movie is supposed to inspire the audience because it must present something new and fresh, regardless of any trite topic], “Goal: The Dream Begins” falls short in many respects.

In this latest onscreen sports saga—perhaps belonging to a list of Hollywood staples—Kuno Becker’s Santiago Munez dreams big to play in the English premiership and then makes it, period. No more, no less. Munez appears fresh in his boyish and savvy countenance as a newcomer in England’s Newcastle United, but his clear, pretty-boy looks alone do not account for what he has to do much in the film. Yet, the entirely boyish smiles and grins and a contrived acting do not convince much, not to mention the film’s simply ordinary storyline.

The actor’s pretty face does not work well for a serious character who can elicit sympathy for his efforts and achievements as a struggling migrant who makes it big in the city and in the world. He fails simply because his face does not look challenged and as convincing, and does not deliver much.

Coming from a poor Mexican family who once escaped to California, Santiago Munez may have convinced us with his diligence and hard work common in America migrants—but the movie appears to assume so much from the audience.


In other words, one needs to have read American or Mexican Revolution first—so we would understand the temperaments and the racial undertones working in the film. Sadly, not all people would know or want to know about it—thus the film settles with the simple biographical account of this poor boy’s life who becomes professional through a series of ups and downs. Cliché.

In doing so, it simply reels off as a pastiche of some football history memorabilia—showing football drills under the rain, pristine soccer fields in the British countryside, and jump-packed domes in English cities, one that a social-climbing middle-class father can show to his overeager, disoriented son to dream it big likewise to get to the Western world—where future can be totally uncertain for migrants like Latin Americans, or Asians.

The film instead rolls out time to featuring the addiction of the English people to their own sport. Using the film as payback, or act of gratitude, like Mel Gibson’s own sense of religion in the “Passion of the Christ,” the film’s director must have created the project to enunciate his passion for the sport, or sense of country.

While Stephen Dillane as the talent scout and Alessandro Nivola as Newcastle’s oversexed pro-football main man turn in good, few-lined performances who help the struggling athlete make it to the green field of his dreams, Mike Jefferies and Adrian Butchart flimsy story does not help it deliver to the net of the audience’s satisfaction, as all seems to be left hanging after the movie ends in Munez’s first and last [so far the biggest] game in London.

This film may not at all solicit any hurrahs or raving reviews from those people who—in their lifetime—have had overdose of similar storylines as in Sean Astin’s Rudy, or other football or baseball league stories. The movie’s sad fate spells a similar reality in the field of literature, wherein not all writers can experiment or play around with grammar—American poet eccentric e.e. cummings—or reinvent his material—Irish icon James Joyce—and succeed in it.

Not all can succeed in any experiment or hackneyed storyline, unless he does something so clear and unique with it.

As an art form, the film propels—or rather “drags”—the viewer through a cliché plot—a marginalized Mexican migrant son who dreams for the stripes on green—is first failed and later challenged by his unrelenting angst-ridden father who would want him to just work in his own business—but his religious grandmother makes ways and means to make his grandson fly to England—where he is supposed to meet an agent who would later take him to fame. And he simply would.

Not one character is well-explored—even Munez himself—the film is going on as if the main job is to showcase images and histories and encyclopedia input on England’s football and the people’s chalice treatment of it.

While the movie seems to pry open possible sensitive issues such as racial discrimination, it does not pursue them. There are sensible issues or themes better explored—but it stubbornly does not. Also, cameo appearances such as that by David Beckham do not at all help the film propel to something serious—as the underdeveloped character of the protagonist’s father who would first insist that Santiago remain in Los Angeles, and just “plant kamote” so to speak, but would later become so moved by his son’s prominence when he’d see him playing soccer on international television. The transformation of his character does not appear convincing because there is not much said or shown about it.

True to its cliché poster blurb—“Every dream has a beginning,” “Goal: The Dream Begins” simply presents the inception of a dream, and nothing much beyond that. After it rolls out how Munez finally made it to his first game in London, the film rolls up, insensitive to other possibilities—perhaps because it seeks to present something else in the sequel.

It does not present any sensible tension, or serious, realistic conflicts, which—you can argue—can rather provoke introspection from any earnest audience. In fact, some National Geographic or Discovery documentaries featuring the life, times and dramatic stories of athletes the world over might even prove more insightful.

Nothing can be said further.

History of violence

Zodiac
Jake Gylenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr.
Directed by David Fincher
Warner Brothers, 2007

David Fincher’s “Zodiac” opens in a grim sequence, one that makes a book-into-film venture deserve a closer look.

In a night of revelry, two unsuspecting youngsters who are making out on a holiday or simply relishing the Independence Day Celebration in California drop dead and injured in their car after a friend-turned-stranger shoots them point-blank.

This classic opening murder scene highlighted by the swelling of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” makes the film unforgettable. A grim reality depicted in the senseless murder slides along with this 60s rock anthem—which makes you cringe a bit, and a little more.
The killing of Darlene Ferrin and her companion in 1969 virtually starts the ball rolling—the killer goes on his butchery until the time comes when the lives of a number of San Francisco journalists and cops get entangled with the search for his identity. Through his ciphers and letters, the serial killer terrifies the San Francisco Bay Area and taunts the police. As investigators in four jurisdictions begin to search for him, the case becomes an obsession for four men—as their lives and careers are built and destroyed by the endless trail of clues.

While San Francisco Chronicle may be entitled to berate the film for whatever reason it has, aside from being the site of struggle of the story’s characters, saying it “falls flat. and giving it a C rating, what makes Fincher’s adaptation remarkable is its treatment of a crime thriller woven in the threadbare characters whose very souls are sacrificed in search of the truth—Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.), the San Francisco Chronicle lead reporter whose life gets preoccupied and later emaciated by the Zodiac lure; Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), the cop who pursues and later becomes the pursued, and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), the San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who eventually cracks it further for good. Graysmith’s nonfiction work is itself the source material for the film.

After years of search and investigations, however, the Bay Area police could not identify the Zodiac murderer who had senselessly killed a number of persons to date. They could not prove him guilty on the bases of handwriting and fingerprints. That was in the 70s.

These days, it is not so difficult to pinpoint a criminal—what with the DNA tests and similar other forms of crime identification and detection.

What strikes us hard in the film is its depiction of how a prospective criminal who had been at large for years and should have been imprisoned for his heinous acts can simply go on free just because police technology was old-school.

The experience spells the realities we witness in our own country nowadays. Here and now, politicians and criminals alike loom at large, living with the rest of the saner civilization which they prey on, or on which they feed.

In this sense, “Zodiac” becomes a predictable masterpiece as we easily see what it speaks to us of the stark realities that make our lives difficult—some people are born to make us live in fear, or some are just born to make things difficult for us unless we try to do something about it.

John Caroll Lynch’s Arthur Leigh Allen, who comes hardly unscathed during the film’s timeline—he is identified by the 1969 killing witness Mike Mageau only in 1991 or towards the end of the film—visibly mirrors the criminals in our country who are still at large because we lack measures to properly track them down.

Screened locally some four months later than its original release worldwide, Fincher’s adaptation of Robert Graysmith’s whodunit throws open that gross realities like these are solved after a long time, or hardly solved at all.

All art is imitation

White Lady
Boots Anson-Roa, Angelica Panganiban, Pauleen Luna
Directed by Jeff Tan
Regal Films, 2006

In art and literature, Aristotle is often quoted for having said that all art is imitation—the Greek word for his concept is mimesis. Thus, you have the concept of the word mimicry for the animal behavior of adapting to their environment for survival, or mime, that theater style famous in beauty contests or high school theater arts.

Jeff Tan’s “White Lady” must have taken this definition too literally that the film is a hodgepodge of some ingenious works that we have previously seen onscreen.

“White Lady” opens quite cinematically, with zoom-in shots of the classroom chairs where the sort of epilogue for the story commences. Kind of tells you this is a serious picture to reckon with. Kind of thrills you, really. But as the movie progresses, we are made to infer that the sensibilities being showcased one after another are the ones we must have seen in a number of movies produced in the past.

A number of scenes in the film remind us of those in the Ring, The Grudge, Willard, or even Feng Shui, and all other stuffs horror flicks are made of. Of course, we say an artist can normally be a product of his influences. But for his part, being too imitative to the point of copying quite accurately what was done before is synonymous to plagiarism—an act that encroaches anyone’s right to intellectual property, such as those who made these previous films.

Such act highly resembles the act of photocopying articles from a book, and using them for one’s own purpose. The storyline is not original as it takes off from the white lady myth and the supernatural details we must have head over all our superstitious country.

We can cite instances of the lack of originality. The way all the kontrabidas die in the film reminds you of Kris Aquino’s Feng Shui, in which characters die according to their own year in the Chinese calendar—dragon, horse, snake, boa constrictor?, etc. Similarly in this film lacking originality, antagonists die according to their fear, probably because the White Lady herself knew about all of them, when she hovered in the campout where they phobia session took place.

The white lady coming out of the canvas reminds you of Sadako coming out of the television screen towards the end of the Ring which shocked people in 2002. The white lady spewing out smoke and ashes [right, because she was burned in the tool shed] makes you recall the horror specimen in the Grudge, both films anyway had their Hollywood versions.

The computer graphics work involving rats overwhelming one male character, the playing dolls moving and walking reminding you of 80s horror flicks where monsters and mumus were rolled on wheels, etc., or the mirror being shattered on the face of the lead female kontrabida, have yet to be polished so as to appear realistic, er believable. They have to be so—after all, everything in the film discipline must be make believe, a mimicry, an imitation. Logically, then, we should be made to believe.

Furthermore, Iwa Moto’s Mimi tells us that Moto is not an actress—her coñita twang and even a Koreanovela countenance do not match quite acceptably. Her final scene, though, matches up with her hackneyed acting as she dies of the shattered glass from the mirror. She is supposed to render the story much tension—with her original evil character, but she falls short of evil—just laughable in her cliché performance. Seriously, that is not a good thing for someone newly introduced in the industry, maybe. We can even wonder why she was discovered to act.

Meanwhile, the Ilonggo twang, according to my Ilongga companion, does not even sound believable, as she observed some inaccuracies or un-grammatical Ilonggo sentences in the dialogues. The director must have capitalized on Gian Carlos’ Ilonggo roots, but the un-grammatical sentences in the script did not save the Ilonggo sensibility.

The “Ili-ili” (Ilonggo for lullaby) theme, though, gets both our praise and flak. While it brings to an Ilonggo a sense of nostalgia, the actress’s lip synching another singer’s voice three or four times throughout the film suffices more than enough that he has seen more of such stuffs in television variety shows, where singers are said to be “singing” when they are not. At least in music videos or MTVs, we can forgive the swelling vocals [sounds] because it is timed accurately with the singer’s actual singing.

Citing the flaws of the film should make you curious about it. True. So, there. There’s not much else to say about it then.

TO BE FAIR, though, let’s ask, “What are the film’s sources of redemption, if any? What are its pluses, if applicable?” Pauleen Luna’s Pearl is simply engaging. Luna is a promising actress with her un-hackneyed countenance as the female lead who faces the dilemma, and who closes it satisfactorily in the final scene. Her pretty face does not fail to refresh the audience who is compelled to negotiate an otherwise dark, hackneyed storyline.

Angelica Panganiban’s Christina, the white lady herself, shines in her own way, too. Her portrayal as the innocent victim and a vengeful angel of death is quite portrayed with originality, complementing Boots Anson-Roa’s wicked [or weak-ed] Ilongga Lola Tasya, who gets away with her accent slightly unscathed, and who succumbs to the same predicament as her granddaughter Christina [but who finds herself in the middle of a Tanging Yaman poster in the final scene].

All the other characters, it should be noted, are pathetically stock characters. They are the cliché roles that we see being portrayed day in and day out on soaps [and other suds] on television. There’s nothing new about them.

That the film ends in a melodramatic way [anyway, scenes all throughout vacillate between Love to Love Season 10? and Shake, Rattle and Roll V] tells us that it is not a horror film after all. Perhaps it is something else. Or something else? Makes us think of the film otherwise by asking, “What is the film trying to do, if at all?” Ah.

In all, they say the best thing to constructively critique a badly made film is to ignore it, or not to review it at all. Or cite it at the end of the year as the worst this and that. Razzi Awards, etc. Of course not.

We believe in what the young people can do—so we do not just sit down and be apathetic to it like the rest of the world. At best, we could point out some things for consideration so next time they produce anything, we will not be shortchanged.

All art is imitation, it is said—but some people take it quite literally. Sadly.

East meats west

Fearless
Jet Li, Yong Dong
Directed by Ronny Yu
2006

The best of men is like water.
Water benefits all things,
and does not contend with them.
—Lao Tzu

Ronny Yu’s “Fearless” takes us back to the era of Chinese martial arts movies, but this time he does so with a well-thought story that reminds you of your Asian Philo class or Asian literature texts you pored over in college.

This is a filmbio which defies the trite and hackneyed styles emphasizing action sequences and fight scenes as if they’re their entire story. While the film entertains you with its award-winning stunts and martial arts choreography—flawless action sequences that will make you fly with the actors themselves, sharp angles and featuring intense emotions and miens of actors, sprawling panoramas of trees and wind and weathers, clear close-up shots of faces and actions—its English and Chinese subtitles do more than moralize—in every phrase and translations, the logic of the story is explained.

For almost two hours, you’ll have the ringside seat to a martial arts match in the Fight Arena in 1910 Shanghai—where you must face your fears—but later also redeem your soul after it is corrupted by wrong notions about how to do well in this life.

Total entertainment, however, is all you get once you come to know that the fight is only the icing to the cake—when the meat of the matter is that the ultimate fight is within yourself—it is the willingness to stand corrected and eventually change for the better.

The movie is worth watching for a number of grounds. According to one smart review, “Fearless” has ‘awesome fight scenes, expertly choreographed by genre master Yuen Woo Ping.’ “Though at times slightly marred by gimmicky set ups, these moments lend the film a brutal air of realism which has often been lacking in the genre.”

1910 Shanghai was the world’s melting pot of cultures and commerce. Europeans, Frenchmen, British, Arabs, and other nationalities swarmed the Chinese district for business and entertainment. Colonization was at its peak in that part of China. The Fight Arena is one Asian coliseum where one man’s strength and power were shown for the world to see. And this is where one man’s story unfolds and rolls up in all its glory.

Featuring the story of Chinese Martial Arts Master Huo Yuanjiya [1869–1910] from Tianjin, “Fearless” highlights how an individual can attain three virtues that can make sense out of his life.

First, strength entails one’s determination to use his physical ability to face life and all its struggles. Huo Yuanjiya, even as a child exhibited his passion to fight. After a fistfight with one young hooligans after his father’s losing match, he’d vow to never be defeated again. Not yet then would he realize why his father lost the match. Years later he would prove to the rest of the world he is one to reckon with when he becomes the champion of Tianjin. For a long while, he has been overwhelmed by his own strength that he established his name in his own village.

Then, honor is one of life’s blessings you gain through sheer respect and prudence with other people—in your daily affairs, profession, and even preoccupation with the world. Master Huo gains his respectability when he is pursued by a large following—his disciples whom he convinced with his entire philosophy.

Last, courage is poignantly the last—if not the most vital virtue of all—when Huo Yuanjiya realizes that this is all you need to finish and [even win] the ultimate fight within yourself, who is indeed your most mortal enemy.

With such a uniquely tragic story, we would later know of the real biographical account of the spiritual guru of the Jin Wu Sports Federation, a martial arts circuit that has a sizable following.

Yet, it is noteworthy that the film clearly lays out one thing—the Asian philosophy of self-denial or the Western counterpart of self-sacrifice—always seems fresher than the Western theory of self-assertion.

While the West purports affirmation of the self, Eastern beliefs proclaim self-denial, the Asian train of thought glorifies asceticism self-denial—this is how East “meats” the west.

In “Fearless,” the Confucian doctrine waxes consistent in the character of the protagonist Yuanjiya. Just like how the Master Hou gets to topple down the “Sick Man of Asia” with his effortless tricks before throngs of spectators in the Fight Arena, the Asian way of life—er—sensibility makes a lot of sense since it proves that indeed, “it takes too little to move much.”

Grace after Meals

Nagdamoy si Rudy.
Mu'riton siya pagkatapos
magkakan nin manggang
binakalan niya pa hali sa Leon.
Hinog na daa pero masakrot pa.

Pinandulsi ninda an prutas
kan agom niyang si Maria
na nag-alsom nin balanak
na pinangudtuhan ninda.
Inon-on daa pero mayo nin la'ya.

Huminigda na siya sa papag
nagpapahiran-hiran; hinu-
hugasan kan agom niya
an saindang kinakanan.

Man in the Mirror

Siedah Garrett and Glenn Ballard
1988


Gotta make a change
For once in my life
It's gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right

As I turned up the collar on
A favorite winter coat
This wind is blowin' my mind
I see the kids in the street
With not enough to eat
Who am I to be blind
Pretending not to see their needs

A summer's disregard
A broken bottle top
And a one man's soul
They follow each other
On the wind ya' know
'Cause they got nowhere to go
That's why I want you to know

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

I've been a victim of
A selfish kinda love
It's time that I realize
There are some with no home
Not a nickel to loan
Could it be really pretending that they're not alone

A willow deeply scarred
Somebody's broken heart
And a washed out dream
(Washed out dream)
They follow the pattern of the wind ya' see
'Cause they got no place to be
That's why I'm starting with me

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make that change

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
(Man in the mirror, oh yeah)
I'm asking him to change his ways, yeah
(Change)
No message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make the change
You gotta get it right, while you got the time
'Cause when you close your heart
(You can't close your, your mind)
Then you close your mind

(That man, that man, that man)
(That man, that man, that man)
(With the man in the mirror, oh yeah)
(That man you know, that man you know)
(That man you know, that man you know)
I'm asking him to change his ways
(Change)
No message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself then make that change