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war and wonder in Tsardyer

it might be easy to dismiss Tsardyer a reenactment of the Ces Drilon hostage taking, except that you’d have to be stupid, and half-blind, to see only that in this movie. because if its connection to the Drilon hostage taking is to even be discussed, it must be seen only as a spoiler here, i.e., so now you know that there will be that in this wonderful movie by Sigfreid Barros-Sanchez.

but it isn’t what all of it is about. there is a journalist, Leslie, and her two companions. they are kidnapped in the middle of Maguindanao because the journalist was careless about getting a story, thinking that all they had to worry about was whether or not their cameras’ batteries were charged enough. the layers of this story though happen extraneous to these media people, and within the lives of people within the war torn land that is Sulu. here we are shown how families aren’t just torn apart by death and violence and disorder, but also by the fact of two extreme poles that exist within it: the Muslim who wants peace Ahmad (brilliantly played by Neil Ryan Sese) is up against his brother-in-law Karim (hauntingly played by Pipo Alfad) who heads an Abu Sayyaf splinter group that holds their area of Sulu captive. a little boy Shihab is what links these two, son to Ahmad and nephew to Karim, who finds that he is tied down by his father in a way that his uncle would free him: let him run through the jungles of Sulu, give him a role in the fight against government soldiers.

the soldiers that Shihab had seen kill his mother, the one soldier whose face he remembers is the face of the military officer who enters their house without permission or warrant. it is clear why Shihab would rather be on the side of his uncle Karim.

but he arrives there and finds himself in the face of a kindness that is unknown to him, that he lost when his mother was killed by the evil face of the military that has remained in his head. all that Shirab is required to do in the terrorist camp is to go down the mountain, run to the nearest home with electricity, and charge the cellphones — the lifeline of the hostages, the line to money of the hostage takers.

and then Tsardyer becomes the story of life and death, the dynamic between family and childhood, the familiar and the strange, making the possibility of death even more stark, the loss of life even more possible. the hostages are forced to reckon with their own carelessness, their lives at real risk, their need for freedom. Ahmad goes on a journey to recover his son, get him back as a matter of being father, as a matter of life. Karim is static, but remains the main reason for action, his demands make the world of the hostages’ families move, his phone calls the reason for hope. Shihab goes up and down the mountain for the task of charging the phones, thinking it crucial to his role on Karim’s camp, but later and slowly seeing it as reason for keeping Leslie alive. all these happen with music that changes and shifts depending on whose perspective we are seeing; all these are given life through music, one of the many reasons to watch this movie, one of the many reasons its storytelling succeeds. it has imagined the way it would sound if these characters had a soundtrack in their heads, the songs that would make for their particular journeys to be only their own, separate from everybody else.

but maybe the most wonderful song here is one that speaks of the change in Shihab’s relationship with Leslie. this is unspoken and silent throughout the movie, and just might be the most beautiful thing to come out of it. because elsewhere in it, we are shown how war gives space, if not creates, the crazies, be they from the terrorist group or the military. because elsewhere in it, we are given a sense of how women are necessarily on the losing end, in the face of two other men taken as hostages. because elsewhere in it, we begin to know of the tragedies in war that we rarely see, given the truth of violence and how it affects the psyche of the people within it. in the midst of these, Shihab’s actions allow for a fact of love and compassion for a woman who could be his mother, and who spoke to him as if he deserved the conversation, as if he was the most important person in that terrorist camp.

in the final scenes where the one who was happy with the existing notion(s) of peace, the violent terrorist, the crazy military all kill and are killed literally and/or figuratively, the realization is painfully clear: in wars like this one, where the money transfers hands between the two sides, there is no one who is free.

Tsardyer in fact tells us that everyone, including us who are farthest away from it, is held captive in a war. that war knows no age, no position in society, no space: when it happens elsewhere in this country, it is ours to stop. when it happens in our faces, it is ours to demand peace, right now. otherwise, Tsardyer reminds us, war just continues to senselessly kill. as it has all this time.

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the saddest of dreams in Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria

on the surface, there isn’t much to deal with in the movie Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria written and directed by Remton Siega Zuasola (Panumduman Pictures). it is the story of Terya and her family’s struggle with her impending departure for Germany to marry an old man found through a mail-order bride service in her province of Cebu. the struggle begins and ends in Olango Island where she and her family live, one of those islands that’s removed from the cities that are familiar to us from Manila, a space that reminded me of Cuyo Palawan in the indie Ploning.  we see this stretch of space, with idle land and waters as two things: on the one hand the place of a rut, the rut that Terya’s mother speaks of; on the other, the space of possibility — surrounded by waters there is reason to leave, go with the tide, let it bring you elsewhere.

but Terya didn’t want to leave. the story begins with Terya missing, pretend-drowning in water, or maybe really wanting to drown herself, and her mother screaming at her father for having lost her. the father meanwhile is a funny guy, cracking jokes but also making fun of his wife, in the midst of the crisis that was in front of them, the one that involves the daughter who just refused to eat, refused to speak, refused refused refused.

save for showing tenderness and love for the younger sister, the one who didn’t know what was going on for most of the movie, but turned out to be crucial. save for showing compassion and friendship for the crazy man of the town, the one who was the literal crazy in the midst of the Baliw-Baliw Festival that the town was celebrating with, what else, but a bunch of crazy boys making like they’re pregnant women.

in the midst of this, Terya and her family kept on walking walking walking. the beauty of this movie lies in the fact that we don’t even realize how far they’ve walked, or how long. the point being this: Terya had walked from saying no to leaving, to saying yes. she had walked from the space that was familiar, to one that was unfamiliar and scary. she had walked from what was hers, to what she did not know.

in the course of this walk Terya meets up with the boy she loved and who loved her back. she thought of going off to elope, and then backs out: the town wants to talk to her, wants to say goodbye. she’s leaving, she’s one of them, and she’s leaving to become somebody else. her parents look for her and find her, but do not know her. the recruiter thinks she’s like every other girl who’s ready to leave, ready to become rich and send her family money. she doesn’t realize Terya can walk with no slippers, and can walk in her mother’s slippers, as her mother walks barefoot, hot concrete notwithstanding.

this heat was something that the visitor would complain about. but Terya and her family took it as default. on screen, the heat translates to an unbelievable brightness, as if we are being made to see this stark reality of making our young women’s bodies an export product, as if we are being made to see this spotlight on what is a sad sad dream of leaving. as if we are being challenged with its absurdity, if not its insanity.

because there is a dreamlike quality to this the story of Terya. the camera moves with the walking, moves with the people whose roles are important and relevant to Terya’s leaving, with the community small and impoverished and “crazy” as it was as they walked through it. the camera is always in the people’s faces, or highlights a group dynamic. the discomforts within the family, the refusal to deal with the recruiter, the need for Terya to stand with an old friend from school and reckon with both past and future in the face of her present, all telling of the kind of life she was to live, she was to leave.

when Terya finally gets on that boat that was to bring her to the city then to Germany, she is sent off by family, by a friend who’s just passing through, by a cousin who’s done it before and wants her to know it will be hard. and the town’s crazy sends her off, scaring the recruiter who stands for everything that’s horrid about the business of sending our people elsewhere. Terya is made to look at her small provincial town as the boat floats away, as they are all forced to see her leave.

and when the little sister looks to her ate with only the innocent sadness that the young can have, what could only become sadder is the mother telling her to grow up quickly so she can leave, too. and then you know that the mother’s dream, the family’s dream, that which Terya decided to fulfill as her dream, is the whole town’s dream.

it’s the saddest of dreams that we’ve come to think right and just, even when what it actually is, is tragic. and in Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria we are reminded of all this, without being all about poverty and oppression, because it actually also is ultimately about dreams. that one that’s about leaving to live and sacrificing self to survive. this movie reminds us that this is a dream we cannot begrudge the dreamer, a dream we cannot judge. and there is also our tragic existence as the ones who watch it happen.

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impotence in Astro Mayabang

Jason Paul Laxamana was obviously overwhelmed when he welcomed the audience to the gala screening of his movie Astro Mayabang, as was the crowd most of whom were in t-shirts with the movie’s title, Philippine flags (which i couldn’t understand), and banners for Aaron Villaflor who plays the title role. this is the difference between an indie with Ronnie Lazaro and an indie with a young commercial star.

i would wear a t-shirt with Ronnie Lazaro’s name anytime.

maybe Aaron Villafor’s name too, but let me give him a couple more indie films, and a decade more? in the movies. because if there’s anything that saves this movie it’s Aaron’s existence as Astro Mayabang. he is effective as the Kapampangan boy who walks in no direction other than the literal, who lives the days one at a time, who only cares for nation in as superficial a way as wearing his shoes. Aaron here is actually a surprise given his youth, and it was difficult not to feel for him when things fell apart, and think him crazy by the time the story ended.

and yes, i get ahead of the story because other than what happens, there isn’t much to say about this story other than it is brave, yes, in its use of Pampanga as context, the Kapampangan language throughout the movie, a look at contemporary Kapampangan culture. that is what’s brave about this movie. but the storytelling, the narrative, the world that was of Astro Mayabang’s, living in the bowels of Kapampangan society, is farthest from being special.

it’s like a soap opera really. Astro has a drunkard father and catatonic mother, one friend, a tiny room, and too many Pinoy pride paraphernalia. but what he owns figuratively is the park and people’s attention: Astro is called mayabang for a reason. he talks about his sexual experiences with the other park tambays, he fights with a white guy who refuses to give a beggar some coins, dances in the middle of the park by himself, makes and flies a kite like he owns the place. he walks through the streets as if he owns it, scolds the boy at the pirated dvd stall for not having more OPM, is easily irritated and seems to always be in a rush. which is a surprise because Astro Mayabang actually has nothing urgent going on in his life, save for buying Pinoy pride merchandise to celebrate his, uh, Pinoy pride.

but easily the question has to be about money and where he gets it, and in this movie Astro earns it via a relationship with a homosexual man who does nothing but sit in front of his laptop playing games. periodically, a man dressed as a holy week ritual flagellation sacrifice arrives in a mask, no shirt and loose pants, dances for him and gets some viagra. and always, after these instances, Astro holds money in his hands. of course this masked man is Astro, but that was suppose to be a surprise later on in the story, when Astro actually comes not for the money but for the viagra because he’s got a girl Dawn who he met in the park (where else?), and the movie reveals that he’s actually impotent. of course as with the masked dancing boy, this too was suppose to be a surprise. but given the way the story was told here, none of it was.

there was no big reveal here, and that is what made the story impotent. it could not be anything other than a superficial story about a boy who’s mayabang, who has a false sense of nationalism, and a false sense of his value to the world, and whose motivations are unclear, his anger at the Lord unexplained. when Dawn talks to Astro and tells him being Pinoy ain’t about what clothes one wears, and what one says, because what matters is what’s in the heart, this is almost an explanation for the movie’s whole point, and yet.

and yet, it also seemed so pointless here because when Dawn finally articulates these smart words (no matter that they are cliche), it’s barely important in the face of their hormones, the possibilities in an empty house, and Astro’s, uh, extra challenge of impotence. then it just become absurd: Astro travels from one end of the city to another, gets some viagra from gay fag then leaves him waiting, goes back to the other side of the city, forces Dawn to get it on with him because he’s ready, and suddenly a fight scene: Dawn throws him out of the house, he asks for everything he ever gave her, including a tiny bag of butong pakwan. and then Astro’s already non-life falls apart: he wants one of the limited edition jackets at the Pinoy pride store, finds out that the old fag now doesn’t care for him, he gets into a fight with the other boys in the fag’s house, loses the money he had to buy the t-shirt with, all this come to a head and he breaks down, tearing off all the posters of world famous Pinoys from his room’s walls, screaming “Wala ka, Astro!” over and over again, at some point hitting his thighs hard over and over again.

then Pacquiao has a fight, but he isn’t there. he’s in church talking to God saying that he’s unfair because he didn’t create men equal. and cut to next scene: the park, people murmuring about Astro, and him as loud as always, talking about the Lord. yabang transformed into preaching.

the point of course is that Astro shifted gods from nation to, well, God. the point of course is that he has found himself, but at this point this cannot be literal at all. it just becomes as absurd as the rest of the movie. and i don’t mean that in a good way.

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redefining the Pinoy action movie: or in love with Ishmael

Now I never like disclaimers before watching a movie, and usually don’t read reviews beforehand either. But boy, was I thankful director Richard Somes introduced his film by saying (among other things) that this was his homage to the Pinoy action film ala FPJ, Ramon Revilla, Dante Varona. Of course it still wasn’t enough to prepare me, at least not for the gore.

Because if there is one spoiler I will give you before you go and watch Ishmael, it’s that prepare yourself for some blood. Other than that, I think it would do every other Pinoy good to go and watch this movie, if only for two things: one, Ronnie Lazaro, and two, the Pinoy action film redefined.

Granted I would love to see Lazaro doing a movie where he ain’t a bad guy, here at least he was given something else to bite into instead of the standard fare. And so was Pen Medina. And Mark Gil. And as audience, we also had something new to be enthralled by, and yes this is an action flick, and I’m the girl who cannot for the life of her watch a Manny Pacquiao fight with conviction. For Ishmael, what does work though is the fact of it being an indie film, amorphous as the definition for that has become, confused as it currently is. For all intents and purposes the label of “indie” at least to me, allows for expectations to be suspended and surprise to be expected, in the way that new unfamiliar things do.

And here it is this. Lazaro as Ishmael is obviously farthest from being the clean-cut and the always clean action star in Pinoy movies, who will fight the bad guys, throw punches and kicks, without ruining his hair or getting his shirt bloody. Lazaro also doesn’t do death-defying stunts with motorcycles or helicopters, not even with a car. There is too the fact of age, that is, some middle age spread for Lazaro, though still quite the sexy guy walking through the darn town as if he owned it. Let’s not even begin with the tight-fitting shirts and jeans, and those boots.

The music and make-up had a lot to do with how this movie worked. Much of the scenes that established characterizations and were important moments happened to the tune of the music of good ol’ action, the kind that’s old school but so familiar I was bobbing my head to the beat. And goodness, the make-up was fantastic (save for Agnes having some glittery eyeshadow obvious in some of her close-ups), especially for Ishmael’s final wounds.

There were also no fake action sequences, everything was real suntukan, saksakan, mano-mano.

And all of it works. Lazaro as the ex-soldier who’s been toughened up by jail and is pretty much hopeless. Gil the man who the town has seen as saviour, sleazy and scary in equal turns. Medina as the blind man who traversed the line between friendship and religiosity, a history with one man and the truth of survival with another. Ria Garcia as the young girl Agnes who is symbol for ultimate oppression and abuse, the one that needs to be saved (and who I pray will not be enticed by commercial acting jobs because I tell you it will ruin the bright eyed acting she did so well in this movie).

But Ishmael ain’t just about its unconventional actors, it’s also about a lot of the new and modern and the now in the action genre. Yes, even when direk Somes insists that there was nothing here but “may pinatay, may naghiganti, ganon lang yon!”

I say, not at all. In this story of Ishmael, it’s clear that many things in the storytelling come into play, things which the Pinoy action film of old didn’t have. There’s the fact of space being important, the removed island that was setting the reason for such an absurd religious cult to be all-powerful, and the reason for escape to be almost impossible. There’s the truth of tragedy and any community’s contingent need for saviours and heroes, no matter that all they have is the gift of words and speech. There’s the fact of forgiveness and the dire lack of it in any Pinoy space, for those who have paid their dues in jail, but will never be forgiven by society.

Here is where the story of one guy Ishmael is delivered to us in medias res, because much of his life is over and done with, as the line about what’s done being done is repeated. Given his personal history, Ishmael is ready to die and therefore is the perfect character to be given a reason to live. Any other action bida would take heroism by the horns, but Ishmael resists it and in fact refuses it until the end.

Or maybe outdoes it to its surprising end.

Suffice it to say that there is nothing in this movie that is quite expected. Halfway through, I thought the movie was over. Yet when it continued I thought, how great that it did, and without clear redemption or forgiveness or life through to its end, though with a tinge of love and possibility, I thought it was the most beautiful Pinoy action movie I’ve seen in forever. Yes, the blood and gore notwithstanding.

Ishmael is one of seven films competing in the 6th Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival 2010 at the Cineplex of Shangrila EDSA. The festival runs until the 16th. Tickets are at P150, and for Ishmael it is SO worth it.

Ishmael screening schedule as of November 11, 8AM:
Thursday — Nov 11 — 12 nn
Friday — Nov 12 — 4 pm
Saturday — Nov 13 — 3:30 pm
Monday — Nov 15 — 9 pm
Tuesday — Nov 16 — 8 pm

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dreaming of Marian’s freedoms

If there’s anything that’s true about Marian Rivera, it’s that she doesn’t care what we all think: she presents to us what she is, which is probably the closest to a private self we’ve been treated to within the public space that is local popular TV and movie culture.

And when I speak of Marian’s private self, I mean the one that we don’t usually see of our celebrities, I mean that which is usually deemed unworthy of being made public. But Marian doesn’t seem to care that she doesn’t sound as classy or doesn’t move with as much finesse as the usual female star.

But maybe this is telling as well: Marian ain’t the usual run-of-the-mill female star that we see on local TV, and while she isn’t what we expect, I daresay that she’s exactly what we’ve needed all this time. And no, this is not the case of a diamond in the rough – that would mean having to smoothen it out and make it more acceptable. Marian, in fact, for all the negative publicity about her, need not change anything because she’s already the image that’s important for our times, and especially for women who consume popular culture.

the rest is here!