The bearable lightness of being

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Have you ever heard the phrase “Thank You” in the most soothing and soulful way?

Most of us must have—if we have listened to one such phrase in Dido’s song years ago. With “Thank You” and her other anthems that hit the hearts and souls of listeners the world over [selling millions of copies of albums], Dido [Armstrong] has become the listener’s confidante, but only because she has become everyone’s spokesperson of their truths and lives. 

In her two albums “No Angel” [1999] and “Life for Rent” [2002], the thirty-something British artist—in collaboration with his brother Rollo—has created masterpieces for life that can inspire the soul to go on with life.

Leading the first collection released in 1999 and onwards [internationally], “Thank You” catapulted Dido to fame. Before Eminem even did a “Stan” cover for this cut, the ballad has virtually sunk in the sensibility of the modern man who is living in an anxious age, full of worries and concerns except the salvation of his own soul. “Thank You” also highlights how love can—in a fresh way—uplift the rather dissipating lives we live today—dragged in the hustle and bustle, or worries of the day. “Pushed the door I’m home at last, and I’m soaking through and through/ you handed me the towel, and all I see is you…” Love—the feeling of being someone special to a person can always strike a chord in the listener’s soul. “Even if the house falls down now, I wouldn’t have a clue—because you’re near me.”

A choice cut used for the Roswell [alien TV series] soundtrack, “Here with Me” may send you to sleep so you can dream of your lover beside you, breathing gently, like a beautiful creature, like an angel. The song starts out well slowly, drives into a surging melody then brings you to rapture back and forth—making you mourn or rejoice in the absence of a loved one. “I won’t sleep, I can’t breathe until you’re resting here with me” tells us that the persona might be very attached to their loved one. “Don’t wanna call my friends, for they might wake me from this dream.” The infatuated persona relishes, or takes delight in the presence—or “being there” of her lover or beloved. The song clarifies a very sensitive human attitude—love and affectation has never been so intimate and personal in this lonely world than in the world created by Dido.

Starting like a hum, as if the water flows over the land—on and on towards the house where you are lying after someone leaves you—”My Lover’s Gone” is a fishing-and-drowning theme. This elegiac piece sends you to grieve and cry over someone whose leaving does not bother you much except that it makes you think why they’re not coming back. The song makes you see yourself as the one who wronged the other—the lover who did not love, the self-centered beloved. “His boots’ no longer by my door, he left at dawn. No earthly ships can ever bring him home again.” Indeed how can the departed dead ever go back or return—except in memory.

“No Angel” reads like a misnomer or ironic for this album because its cuts contain messages and good news for the exhausted soul that wants release and refuge from the busy world with all its multifarious concerns.

An intimate follow-up to the first, “Life for Rent”contains an array of more soulful pieces that tug at the listener’s heart, makes him reminisce a wonderful past, and cradles him back to look at the present with cool, unruffled countenance, so he can look beyond with cooler anticipation.

In “Life for Rent,” an anthem that starts out slowly as waves splashing on the shore, the persona laments life’s transitory nature. “If my life is for rent, and I don’t learn to buy,” While she apologizes that she is not in love, she realizes that “I deserve nothing more than I get”—for nothing “I have is truly mine.” Life is said to have been borrowed, and the best thing to do is to invest with it. If anyone doesn’t take risks with what he’s been rented out, he has not at all deserved it in the first place. This cut calls to mind one poem titled “The Cynic”—which reads—“Don’t look, you might see, don’t run, you might stumble, don’t live, you might die.” Life is about taking risks—and to do so is to live to the fullest.

“Sand in My Shoes” chronicles the plight of the city dweller torn between her work and her longing to go to a rendezvous where she can unwind or un-mind the person whom she cares for. While the video shows irony in that the man and woman delight in each other’s company, the lyrics say otherwise—because it speaks of how relationships can be trivialized nowadays. The man must have left the woman that the singer says “I still got sand in my shoes, and I can’t shake the thought of you—I should go home forget you—I know we’ve said goodbye—I wanna see you again.”

Like most of Dido’s personae in other sensible pieces, the voice here sounds very dependent on the presence of a lover. There is much truth in this portrayed reality—because as they say, the lover and the beloved love differently—there is always someone who loves more, as in the case of this persona who always seems to value more the one whom he/she loves. The reality of love—and the failure one gets out of it—has never been so sweet, acceptable, and bearable—as in these love anthems by Dido. Her soulful voice chants away the auras of skewed relationships in all its dregs—as if it’s bearable, very light, very trivial.

In all these incantations of the heart, we cannot help but be reminded of the cliché adage that reads—”Faith makes all things possible/Love makes all things easy.” Of the two noble virtues, love proves more beneficial, more benevolent. Her music is wholesome, honest, and ethereal. It is wholesome because it cuts across social boundaries. It is honest because it chronicles the ways and lifestyles of the modern man. It is ethereal because it speaks of life’s frantic concerns and its little lessons.

 With these soulful renditions of one heart's tugging or being tugged, and with all these reflections and heartfelt introspection on life’s realities, all burdens and cares of the day and all it offers—become a bit bearable.

Dido's music—compiled in two album masterpieces—tells us she’s a messenger of our own truths, a herald of our own pains and successes and glories and achievements despite ourselves, despite ourselves.

Everything about the Girl

Music Review

Everything but the Girl, Adapt or Die: Ten Years of Remixes

Rhino Records, 2005

Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, the duo also known as Everything but the Girl is one good influence for the youth today. Collaborating with their friends to innovate songs and tempos out of their classic hits, this European band has always made makes sensible songs [dance music, at that] and has donned a lifestyle that certainly grooves with young professionals today.

Ranging from urban trance to rock and pop to recently techno trance, their dance music which converts ballads to danceable tunes] caters to soothe the soul of perhaps the wounded workers, as termed by Bob Rosner’s “Working Wounded,” to refer to graveyard shifts and boardworks.

For instance, EBTG helps articulate the clamor of sedentary souls one that makes a living, in the dead of night. Corporate yuppies, call center agents and even office employees can easily relate to the tempos of this duo.

In the dead of night, the repetitions of a console programming bring the listener to places he’s never been before. Easy, cool listening and grooving are the name of the game for this duo’s masterpieces. Their techno approach renders their songs much volume and depth.

Their urban themes of isolation and even companionship and camaraderie can make it easy for the young professional to cope with the signs of the times.

In this era when one’s professional competitiveness is rather gauged not by fulfillment in the personal sense of the word, personal fulfillment has now come be defined by the parameters of financial capabilities to support a technological lifestyle.

This is the creed of this duo’s album. With their decade of dance remixes, they have made urban habits of night life certainly a sensible lifestyle.

“Adapt or Die: Ten Years of Remixes” has much to say about how urban music has come to the fore. Music enthusiasts will find it a good treat to listen to a tapestry of songs and techno inspired compositions that do not bore the listener who wants to relax after a tiring day.

Their collection contains soothing classics as “Wrong,” “Single,” “Mirrorball,” and “Before Today.” The group must have been so fixated in remixing, but mind you, these remixes and reprises merit a second listening. Though it may appear as a series of clichés, the collection renders fresh insights at relationships.

While “Walking Wounded” presents a lover’s self-effacement when he sustains the pains of togetherness that does not get to proceed somewhere definite, “Wrong” dissects the persona’s self-remorse after realizing his own shortcomings in a failed relationship.

“Five Fathoms” and “Downhill Racer” can certainly take you to the dance floor, and “Corcovado” sounds both mystic and ethereal, you are transported to a restrained Latino dance party. “Missing,” their classic disco mix, shall find you dancing to the coolest groove, while “Lullaby of Clubland” takes you to a high-end street walking from Smallville down to the coffee houses where you can wash down other pent-up emotions with a friend.

There are countless merits in the album that renders it totally soothing, wonderful treat for the tired soul. The 1999 “Temperamental” was tempered down in that it proceeds with a slow tempo, unlike the danceable original. “Driving” slowed down to a pace that rather gives the listener a clue of a ballad.

The other cuts are a profession of an urban philosophy that can influence young professionals whose work and lifestyle border individualism and consumerism.

“Single” professes and even glorifies the value of staying one all in one’s life. Much of the hits in this anthology were taken, rehashed but improved from their landmark “Temperamental,” a 1999 album, which reflects a cool influence to an individual’s simple life. The album caters to the lifestyle that borders isolation and individualism.

With terse and witty lyricism from writer Ben Watt and Tracy Thorn’s versatile girlish voice that cuts across thresholds of pain and redemption, Everything But the Girl tugs at your heart, they talk to your soul, and they look at you as if you’re the urbanoid lost in the corporate jungle, never ever knowing what’s in store in the future.

Whatever Happened to Joshua Kadison?

Do you remember the name “Joshua Kadison”? Clue: Two classics on love and belonging that hit the charts in the mid 90s. This is how we can remember Joshua Kadison, the artist who gained overnight fame with “Beautiful in My Eyes,” and “Jessie,” from his 1993 album “Painted Desert Serenade.”

In 1993, EMI Record released Kadison’s “Painted Desert Serenade,” a slim collection of eight piano masterpieces with short story lyrics that well define the modern ballads. They can be so called modern ballads in the sense that they tell stories embedded with relationships and conflicts that altogether create sentimental and memorable pieces for the heart and soul of the Filipino listener.

Some ten years later, the two songs have perhaps achieved the sentimentality of Filipino listeners, as these pieces instantly have become timeless classics [if such phrase doesn’t at all sound redundant] in the playlists in local radio stations.

“Beautiful in My Eyes” begins with the lover’s profession to his beloved about what she is to him: “You’re my peace of mind/in this crazy world/. And the cliché doesn’t appear or sound hackneyed, as the lover professes never to give up even when passing years make them older. “Jessie,” the name of the persona’s beloved, leads the list of ballads in the album which presents human experience bearing different faces. A number of women “serenaded” in the album included Samantha, Lady Jane, and others, whose stories are quite woven in the same cloth of love and life.

With these two powerful piano renditions of love and/or loneliness, Joshua Kadison resonates 80’s Jim Photoglo and even 70s James Taylor. The heavenly clear voice and the powerful sounds of keyboards—coupled with background choruses—make these songs worth our remembrance.

While the album slightly hints at male promiscuity--being involved with different women, it also lays bare the possibilities of the male specie who enters relationships and not being able to sustain them, unless both he and the woman seek to understand each other first, before being absorbed into their own selfish issues.

For your information, while “Delilah Blue,” his second collection released by EMI in October 10, 1995, featured “Take it on Faith,” this beautiful song which sounds more like a gospel love song, did not reach Philippine playlists.

Immediately after the two classics hit the charts towards the mid 90s, Joshua Kadison has been forgotten ever since. Not much was heard of him again. Like other one-hit singers [at least he had two], the Filipino listener never again heard of [or saw] his talent and artistry in crafting songs that tickle the soul after baring its honesties and conversions.

Frankly speaking, the artist named Joshua Kadison was simply shelved and categorized in the era of the mid 90s. We can perhaps attribute the loss of artists like Kadison to the way their music is marketed all over the world. Released primarily in countries like United States or Australia, Joshua Kadison’s art and musical masterpieces have yet to prove its worth to a Filipino audience that thrives on trash hip-hop and other no-quality music.

We can also trace this to who the Filipino listener is, what he wants, and why he wants music that he listens to. [Of course, the Filipino listener would rather prefer “Tahong ni Carla” or Black Eyed Peas’ retardate rhetoric to Joshua Kadison, one that is never heard of. Who was it, again? Who would even care to pirate one Joshua Kadison? Who is he?” Some people might even ask, therefore claiming that only Britney Spears or Sarah Geronimo can be worth their hard-earned month-end salary.] As a matter of fact, Joshua Kadison also appears in an Indyramp Music Page, more proof that his music has not at all permeated the mainstream listenership, especially in the black underground economy like ours.

Ranking with James Taylor’s greatest hits or Dr. Hook’s ballads, Kadison’s pieces always lifted our spirits in the mid 90s, the era that rather glorified angst in the grunge music of Kurt Cobain and the mushrooming rock and alternative bands that sold like hotcakes. That time, everyone just liked to sentimentalize or get angry at nobody-knows-what. We also recall how Alanis Morrissette, Collective Soul or the sleepy band named Lemonheads tried to dissuade youth from their optimism into their individuality, self-discovery, rage for order, splabberdeeh, splabberdah, all things that robbed the growing youth of his values, or potential good.

The grunge era of the 90s lived like it was New Age Movement in the 70s again. It was an alternative philosophy brought to the fore, persuading the individual to let loose and let go of his anger and fear, so as to live more worthily. Such irony, such oxymoron, such dilemma.

Playing in contrast, in the midst of all negative energies and attitudes, there was Kadison’s light treatment of the human experience in his characters and persons in the songs themselves that brought us to the brighter windows where sun can still shine. Along with his light ballads, "Jessie" and "Beautiful in my Eyes” may be two pieces hardly influential because of the artist’s eventual obscurity, but remembering them, or just listening to them again makes us realize that in the midst of angst and unexplained anxiety, Kadison’s almost totally appreciated sense and sensibility can always be the most welcome relief.

Songs for Humanity, Songs of Ourselves

Some Generations of Popular Music with a Heart for All People

Musicians all over the world—singers, composers and even artists—do not fail to recognize the importance of their positive influence to the rest of the world. They make use of their celebrity and prestige to effect change in the society.

Through generations, they have made music not just to entertain the passionate soul of man. In so doing, they also make the world a better place, as in Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World.”

It is even noteworthy to realize most of these people who staunchly campaign for humanity’s sake are mostly Black Americans. With their powerful voice, owing to the fact that their race is said to the beast-like—one whose physical makeup doesn’t go far from King Kong, the Black Americans have achieved prestige and renown in all fields of human affairs. From sciences to sports to modern music, they have had massive influence to the world.

Reality Check
In 1971, Marvin Gaye released “What’s Going On?” The song was a protest to the US defensive stance in the Korean War and Vietnam War; in some two decades, America had had to acquire more influence and power through its armed forces. Reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” sounds like a helpless comment on the social reality that war is simply gruesome and therefore condemnable.

“Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying/Brother, brother, brother, there’s too many of you dying…” The singer just realizes the terror and futility of sending young men to war for the purpose and intentions of power serving only the ruling few.

“Father, father/We don’t need to escalate/War is not the answer/For only love can conquer hate...” It was clear to the youth in the Hippies generation that love is the answer to the alarming rate of war-torn tendencies and inclinations of the political leaders.

The youth are bluntly speaking to the grownups—they seem like since they know love, they know better. They know better: “You know you’ve got to find a way/To bring some understanding yeah today...”

The same sentiment has been brought to the fore anew when the new generation of pop artists—Christina Aguilera, Bono, Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, J. Lo, Destiny’s Child, N’Sync, Nelly, P. Diddy, and throngs of pop and R&B artists revived the song in an all-star tribute for a cause.

Originally penned by Al Cleveland, Marvin Gaye, and Renaldo Benson, P. Diddy and other artists rehashed the piece to accommodate the music genres that have been started since the original was released three decades earlier. Interestingly the piece has a number of versions—Dupri Original Mix, Fred Durst’s Reality Check Mix, The London Version, and Moby’s Version—to give new and fresher renditions to the Gaye classic.

Performed by Artists against AIDS Worldwide, the initiative of the pop community sought to benefit relief to victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks and to raise awareness and funds to fight the scourge of AIDS in Africa. In fact, 50% of the proceeds of the all-star tribute of "What’s Going On" will go to the United Way’s September 11th Fund and 50% will go to the AIDS relief effort which includes the Global AIDS Alliance.

Crooners for a Cause
Through the years the international world of music has produced sensible songs about humanity that cry out to the world out loud—in the midst of all the conflicts, problems, and dilemmas that have continually sought to divide men the world over, man can still love.

In 1985, USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” was a fundraiser to help awareness of the gross poverty in Africa. The initiative from USA songwriters and artists was a heart-wrenching act of the world towards itself.

“There comes a time when we need a certain call/When the world must come together as one/There are people dying/Oh, and it’s time to lend a hand to life/The greatest gift of all…” Everyone saw the need to help millions of people suffering from poverty and lack of means of survival in the monstrous continent called Africa. The scenario was not really over-hyped not because of Africa’s magnitude—but also because of the degrees of suffering that have yet dehumanized mankind.

“We are the world, we are the children/we are the ones who make a brighter day so let’s start giving…” The song was a hit, since it appealed to the hearts of every feeling [or unfeeling] human being. The concern even became a commercial phenomenon—when we were younger, the USA for Africa slogan was simply everywhere: T-shirts, wallets, and even papers and ballpoint pens. Such was the magnitude of the human concern. Such was the emotion of the human heart that needed to listen and be listened to.

And all these happened through a simple, good song, collaborated by artists like Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Cindy Lauper, and Michael Jackson and throngs of celebrities who shared a line or two to make the song the world’s anthem of unity and love between and among men.

Perhaps the celebrity lot took advantage of its fame to appeal to. Or without the celebrities, it could have been a different story. If it were sung by other non-showbiz or non-Hollywood entities, will it ever reach Asia, or Philippines? Answer is clear: “There’s a choice we’re making/We’re saving our own lives/It’s true we’ll make a better day/Just you and me…” USA for Africa also sought to even campaign against the luring modern plague called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in 1984. AIDS, a modern-day Black Death, has since raised hell among men around the world. After the outbreak, much have been said how to campaign against it.

The sad plight of the Canadian flight steward who was first diagnosed with the disease never fails to seek our sympathy. In this lonely planet inhabited by millions of people, the malaise that stings best is the human anxiety. In the midst of human advances in modern sciences and technology, the perennial need of the human person to belong has yet to be addressed.

More than two decades after the song hit the world and sought massive sincere sympathy from the rest of the world, the concern has not changed. With the plethora of NGOs in Africa and other third-world countries, the dire issues of poverty and AIDS have to be continually addressed.

Ironically even, the escalating numbers of deaths and mortality rates all over the world has is nothing to sing about. Humanitarian action, those concrete acts of charity generosity and service, are even of more value than any effort we can conceive.

Sadly, however, these perennial issues in the third-world countries especially in the mainland Africa, have yet to be addressed. Advocated in 1980s, the plight of the human race against AIDS has even elevated to alarming proportions—especially now that the modern lifestyle of Internet and digital technology affords more licentiousness and renders all open to more promiscuity.

But with one humanitarian initiative, one thing was clear, indeed: in the midst of all the conflicts and challenges that have continually sought to divide men the world over, man can still reach out to others because he is by nature capable to love.

Unrestrained Voices
In 1991, working in the same humanitarian cause, some various artists who tagged themselves as Voices that Care released “Voices that Care.” Directed by David Jackson, primarily an American TV director, the documentary project aimed to inspire the American army sent to the Gulf War during George Bush’s dilemma with Saddam Hussein.

When the American waged war against Arab nations on oil—some of the countrymen did not see the setbacks of the American initiative as something of domination and greed. Rather they thought of how to approach the issue more positively, more optimistically. Written by the people who were left behind as spectators of the 1991 Gulf War, “Voices that Care” has sought to say more about the issue at hand.

According to one student who wrote on the Gulf War, the people who wrote the song “wrote it because they didn’t want the soldiers to think that we forgot about them.” In interpreting the song, the student says that the voices “that cared” had great empathy for the men and women fighting for our freedom.

“I’m not here to justify the cause or to count the loss/That’s all been done before” doesn’t mean they make it sound like everyone that goes to was will die, and they believe that they will come home safe. “Voices that Care” featured the heartwarming and soulful voices of Celine Dion, Brenda Russell, New Edition, Bobby Brown, Luther Vandross, Warrant, young rapper Will Smith, Pointer Sisters, ex-Chicago Peter Cetera. In the same project, lots of other world-renowned artists, actors and actresses [international model Cindy Crawford, Bulgarian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, and actors like Richard Gere and Jane Seymour] were among who chorused, “Stand tall, stand proud/Voices that care are crying out loud…”

“All the courage that you’ve known,/The bravery you’ve shown/Clearly lights the way” articulates how the military service dictates the American way of life. The greed for power and influence seems like very innate in them. Regardless of the morality of the cause, the song rallied behind their countrymen. “We pray/To make the future bright/To make the wrong things right,” means that their fellowmen are behind them, whatever dilemma they are in.

In “Right or wrong/We’re all praying you’ll remain strong/That’s why we’re all here and singing along,” the clamor is clear—"we’ll help you because you are one of us." This is the American’s staunch stand on being patriotic, supportive of one’s countrymen, as brothers and sisters. Here, the national filiations and bonding are made articulate and marked.

Seeking to comfort the lonely and isolated American soldier fighting for their country, the voices cannot help but care, saying, “And when you close your eyes tonight/Feel in your heart how our love burns bright.”

By and large, inspired by human conflicts and similar startling issues, “What’s Going On?” and “Voices that Care”—two anthems of love and sympathy separated by some two decades—mark the same American sympathy for humanity. They are the same because the issues have not at all changed. The fight for human dignity is ever among us as long as we live.

Even if it only concerns their own citizens, it tells us—“If you’re one of us, rest assured we’re behind you, we’ll support you, and if anything happens, you have a place in our hearts, and your act of heroism no matter what motivations you had, will always have a place in our hearts, because love is what binds us all.”

Modern-day but Age-old Sentiment
According to a source, 2003’s Elephunk was a breakthrough album for the American hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas, vaulting them to a level of success unparalleled by any other hip-hop group. Facts and figures do not even lie: They sold 7.5 million albums worldwide, earned 4 Grammy nominations, won 1 Grammy award, and had an unforgettable performance on the 2005 broadcast.

With their first hit single, “Where is the Love?”, Black Eyed Peas’ Elephunk was said to have heralded a new sound for the modern age, one inspired by hip-hop, one that steers clear of boundaries and inhibitions, and one that cuts across ages, races and backgrounds. This hip-hop-original turned-youth’s-anthem is noteworthy for its heart.

An offshoot from the tragic fate suffered by the Americans in the 9/11 terror, Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the Love?” articulately draws the sentiment of the modern youth being barraged by the constant reality that is always depressing, if not totally depressing.

“What’s wrong with the world, mama/People livin’ like they ain’t got no mamas/I think the whole world addicted to the drama/Only attracted to things that’ll bring you trauma…” the rap music that edified street language into popular anthems is not saved from the same concern involving the destruction of humanity.

Discrimination is the disease that plagues the world. Superiority complex or inferiority complex—this is the saddening tragedy that befalls modern man. The world over, men hate other races. Thus, hate begets hate—“Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism/ But we still got terrorists here livin’/In the USA, the big CIA/The Bloods and The Crips and the KKK…”

The song vows for all mankind to consolidate all efforts to unite humanity despite diversity—“But if you only have love for your own race/Then you only leave space to discriminate/And to discriminate only generates hate/And when you hate then you’re bound to get irate…” Differences, however irreconcilable—can just make sense, only if we are bound to do away with out biases and prejudices.

By the way, the real dilemma is the human wrath against his own kind, which virtually works against himself—“People killin’, people dyin’/Children hurt and you hear them cryin’/Can you practice what you preach/And would you turn the other cheek”—thus suggesting that the Christian way of doing things might at all make sense.

And it does, it does: “Father, Father, Father, help us/Send us some guidance from above/’Cause people got me, got me questionin’/Where is the love”—the question is rhetorical. The question “Where is the love?” does not really seek an answer—it indirectly points out that we know very well there is none [no love at all].

It is nowhere to be found. With the way things are going on, we need love because we have sort of forgotten it.

“It just ain’t the same, always unchanged/New days are strange, is the world insane/If love and peace is so strong/Why are there pieces of love that don’t belong/Nations droppin’ bombs/Chemical gasses fillin’ lungs of little ones/With ongoin’ sufferin’ as the youth die young..”

This groovy danceable piece “hits two birds with one stone.” While the dance music agitates the tired soul of the youth, the message sinks in the mind of the youth who has yet to grow up and realize more gifts of life in the world. Positive messages and power dancing are here to stay.

The song acknowledges the burdensome life created by the overwhelming modern living: “I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder/As I’m gettin’ older, y’all, people gets colder/Most of us only care about money makin’/Selfishness got us followin’ our wrong direction—” In other words, ours is an age of anxiety in which people do not know what they’re doing, what they’re doing. Because what the world offers to man may be signs of progress, advancement, and modernity. It always does so, but without a heart. It does so without humane determination.

While it acknowledges life’s tragic deformity, the song particularly attacks the bad influence of the media on the youth. Modern media, according to the song, borders sensationalism in order just to sell: "Wrong information always shown by the media/Negative images is the main criteria/Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria/Kids wanna act like what they see in the cinema…” Truly, media preys on the impressionable adolescents who will take the next generation’s boon or bane.

“Whatever happened to the values of humanity/Whatever happened to the fairness in equality/Instead in spreading love we spreading animosity/Lack of understanding, leading lives away from unity” spells the young mind’s helplessness.

The songwriters very well know what the world needs, not because they are the modern day messiahs, but because they certainly know everyone knows what he can do, in a piece of advice to all: “Gotta keep my faith alive till love is found…” Indeed, this hip-hop original turned into a youth’s heart-wrenching anthem is noteworthy not just for its heart, but for its humanity.

As another song goes, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love,” the music culture will just keep on playing these themes because there’s nothing else to be concerned about but the virtues we have forgotten or simply have taken for granted.

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.