Torn and frayed in Manila

Cinemanila 2010: Tulpan, Pandora’s Box, Hunger

The great Kazakh steppe saga, Tulpan

Cinemanila 2010 closes today. Although the standard of films has been extremely high as usual, the showings have been sparsely attended. That’s a great shame and I hope organizer Tikoy Aguiluz who does such a fantastic job every year of bringing the very best international art films to Manila, doesn’t give up.

I know the poor guy has received a lot of unsolicited advice on how to promote the festival, but I do feel that the lack of an overall schedule on the website was an unfortunate omission. That’s really what people need to plan their viewing.

There have been criticisms of Market Market as a venue for the movies, but I think that just goes to show how lazy most people in Manila are; if it is slightly off the beaten track, or a bit masa, they won’t make the effort. I was a Market Market virgin before yesterday, and although losing my virginity wasn’t quite as much fun this time around, I got a kick out of the loud rock’n’roll feel of the mall. The cinemas had nice wide screens, Dolby sound, and comfortable seats. What more do you want (apart from Greenbelt)?

Anyway, on to the movies.

The best movies can help you make sense of the strangest physical environments and social contexts and Tulpan from Kazakhstan did that brilliantly. Although the storyline hangs on the efforts of a young man from the steppe to wed a girl (Tulpan) from a neighboring yurt and therefore escape from servitude to his harsh brother-in-law, this is not a plot-driven movie. Or, if it is, it tells one of the oldest stories of humankind: large families living on top of each other and their livestock, battling an unforgiving environment to survive, and yet somehow creating moments of tenderness, song, and humour. That is pretty much how we have all lived for 99.9% of the time human beings have been on earth—my own family in Scotland practised subsistence agriculture up until less than 100 years ago, and you may not have to climb too far down your own family tree to find ancestors who would have also related perfectly to Sergey Dvortsevoy’s picture of life on the Khazakh steppe.

Technically, the film is a triumph. The performances, especially of the totally un-camera-conscious kids, were as naturalistic as I have ever seen on screen, and the cinematography brought the whole gritty reality of life on the steppe all around you. I felt as though I needed to blow my nose to get rid of the sand as I left the cinema.

Another film with plausible and interesting set of characters was Pandora’s Box, the box in this case being an old Turkish village woman’s descent into Alzheimer’s. As her three Istanbul-based children struggle with the dilemmas of coping with a dotty old parent, the old lady’s presence brings latent problems in their own lives out into the open. I guess that doesn’t sound too entertaining, but in fact the film is full of funny moments, most of them arising from Tsilla Chelton's quite brilliant portrayal of an old woman who is an unpredictable mixture of total confusion and brutal honesty.

Without laying it on with a trowel, the film also presented a vivid picture of a society in transition, from the mother whose life was probably much the same in its external aspects as those of centuries of her predecessors, to her nouveau bourgeois daughters and drop-out son, and onto her grandson, who is characterized by early 21st century ennui and alienation.

I honestly don’t know what to say about the British film Hunger. On the one hand, it is hard to credit that this is director Steve McQueen’s first film, so sure is his directorial touch. On the other, to describe it as unremittingly bleak would make it seem more optimistic than it actually was. I’m not great with on- or off-screen violence and I have to confess that after about 45 minutes of constant battering I left the theatre. Fortunately, Frayed coaxed me back by texting me with a prediction that the worst of the violence was over, so I returned for the last half hour, which, although incredibly depressing, at least did not involve fecal smearing or vicious beatings up.

I was living in Britain in 1981 and I can clearly remember the ghoulish way that the extended suicides of Bobby Sands and the other nine hunger strikers were covered on the evening news. “Has he died yet?” was often the first question people would ask as they returned from work. Hunger is an extremely well-made film about an important subject and I can understand why it won the prize for best film at Cinemanila. Still, I can’t say I took anything positive away from it, not even a deeper understanding of a sad and demeaning period of British history.

Hubad (Naked)

The new film by Denisa Reyes and Mark Gary, whose Sandalang Bahay lit up Cinemalaya a couple of years ago, is a searing investigation of sexual politics and Manila theatrical life.

Hubad is different in many ways from its predecessor. Whereas the scenes that linger from Sandalang Bahay are the shimmering seascapes and the children running through the grass, Hubad is framed in claustrophobic interiors; the rehearsal room, the bedroom, the car. This allows cinematographer Miguel Fabie to work the tensions between the actors, both as characters in this movie and as lovers in the play they are rehearsing. The lack of a clear boundary between the two roles is the main driver of the work, as the excellent main actors Irma Idlawan and Nonie Buencamino find themselves constantly on a borderline between who they are trying represent and who they are.

It is sex that draws the characters in Hubad together, and it is sexual infidelity and fears of inadequacy that drive a wedge between them. Hubad is an engrossing film, but not a comfortable one and some of the bitterest dialogue reminded me of Albee’s Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf in its instinct for the jugular. Fortunately, it is excellently edited and paced, so never becomes merely depressing; even as the characters are gouging lumps from each other, they are caught up in the larger project, their play; although cruel and unforgivable words pierce to the bone, the show must go on.

The main positive force in the film is the way the rehearsals and the creation of a work of art raise the protagonists above their messy lives onto higher ground. The film celebrates not just the importance of art, but of art in poor country. Far too many stories ignore the fact that all of us spend far too much of our time worrying about money, either actively or subconsciously. I particularly liked the way money, or its absence, was an ever present in the movie, both in the characters’ lives (the phone bills unpaid, the auditions for demeaning theme park jobs) and in the way it threatens the integrity, or even the existence, of the play they are rehearsing. It is the play’s director, sympathetically played by Peque Gallaga, who has to juggle his personal and professional priorities to get his work performed. Hubad’s treatment of the practical side of the theatrical experience is fascinating—no doubt artists in other countries have to struggle with censorious arts bodies, brutal telenovela directors, and penniless actors, but these issues are that much sharper when intense poverty is just outside the door.

Denisa Reyes and Mark Gary have shown that they can handle the large themes with great skill; it would be interesting to see them now tackle a smaller, less intense, and more impressionistic subject that would bring their considerable film-making skills to the fore.

Robert Altman (1925–2006)

I was sorry to hear of the passing of Robert Altman, whose rambling, improvisatory, and eccentric movies lit up American cinema, especially in the 1970s. As the BBC website put it:

His film credits alone serve as a roll-call of classic contemporary US cinema: MASH, Nashville, The Long Goodbye, The Player, McCabe and Mrs Miller and the resolutely British Gosford Park.

To which one could add Thieves Like Us, Short Cuts, and, one of my favourites, “A wedding”. This interesting review classifies it as a “forgotten gem of the 1970s”, which is about right:

The unfolding of the story is deftly handled -- for the first half hour we haven't a clue who anybody is, and working out the connections is part of the fun. The dialog is witty, and the deliberately paced (but always rising) dramatic tension builds to a satisfying crescendo before the resulting chaos at the film's end. Altman uses his trademark zooms, which allows him to film from a distance, thereby leaving the actors clueless as to whom he's focusing on -- a brilliant technique.

Still, for the complete Altman movie, I think you have to head to Nashville. A lengthy and perceptive review in Salon a few years ago described the circumstances of its release in 1975.

"Nashville" seemed to incarnate a film buff's hopes for American movies. Here was an artist putting the machinery of popular culture to work for the sake of art, yet entering into the spirit of popular culture and partaking of its energy too. That was the dream: the power of popular art combined with the complexity of fine art, high and low not at war, and not blurred indistinguishably into each other, but embracing.

"Nashville" was debated in the mainstream press in a way that seems inconceivable now: The New York Times ran at least eight pieces about the movie, and editorial writers and critics weighed in with opinions and interpretations for months after the film opened.

However, the same review points out that 1975 also saw the release of Jaws, and it was the latter film that was to set the tone for the next 30 years of American cinema. (I actually quite like Jaws, but when compared with Nashville … .). When we contrast Altman’s "pursuit of the imperfect moment" to the neat and vapid packages that Hollywood now requires of its directors it’s clear that Nashville, far from representing the beginning of a brave new era, in fact imarked the end of a brief period of hope in American movies.

There are so many classic lines in Altman’s films, but my favourite comes from the beautiful mouth of Geraldine Chaplin (a regular in his films) as she tries to blag her way into a party. “No press ma’am” – “But I’m not with the press” protests Geraldine in her most cut glass accent, “I’m with the BBC’.

Thanks for a lot of fun Bob.

Marie-Antoinette

Early in her biography of Marie-Antoinette, Lady Antonia Fraser notes her subject’s “timidity and laziness” in matters of education, the lateness with which she learned to read (13), and her short attention span. At this point I imagine Sophia Coppola hurled her copy into the fire, put on her favourite Adam and the Ants song, and yelled “BINGO!” For Antonia had just given her a wonderful hook—attention deficit disorder, illiterate … 1980s girl! Desperately seeking Marie-Antoinette …

There is little evidence from her film that Coppola read much more of Lady Antonia’s book, for by now her stage was set, her Bow-wow-wow records were chosen. By design, Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is as vacant and shallow as the benighted decade that provided most of the soundtrack. If you are looking for the psychological underpinnings to Marie Antoinette’s Imelda-like shopaholicism or an understanding of her relationship with her husband (which, after two hours of utter contempt, the movie mysteriously transforms into unswerving loyalty, even to death) you will not find the answers here.

The only significant subject the film dwells on, at inordinate length, is the length of time it took for her to conceive an heir to the throne. Contemporary accounts indicate that the Dauphin was a reluctant lover. This throws up a range of interesting avenues for the story-teller: was Louis a latent homosexual, intimidated by his beautiful foreign wife, oppressed by the power being thrust upon him? In the movie these were all eschewed in favor of a nudge-in-the-ribs approach that portrays the future King of France as a prototype computer geek (locks = computers) lying corpselike beside his hot blooded Austrian Madonna. Over and over again. And then an encore.

This tedious little skit is most of what passes for plot in this tiresome and disappointing glossy magazine of a film. Marie-Antoinette’s life and brutal death are uniquely fascinating. Yet here it is flattened, beautifully colored, and set against a clamorous Babel of English accents until it has as much meaning as a Bananarama poster.

For less jaundiced views, see eevil midget and madame chiang.

Kubrador

This is a wonderful film, yet it is currently playing to half empty cinemas in Manila.

Kubrador follows Amelita, a jueteng collector (a stunning performance from Gina Pareño), through several days of her chaotic and stressful life in the lead-up to All Saints’ Day. (Jueteng is an illegal numbers game, played extensively throughout the Philippines. It has been regularly linked with leading politicians.) The film is made in a quasi-documentary style, with a lot of hand-held camera work and eye-level shots (it has English subtitles). I felt as though I could actually smell the narrow alleyways Amelita struggles through. Given the way most Filipinos react whenever there is a camera around, I cannot imagine how director Jeffrey Jeturian managed to coax such naturalistic performances from the kids, moochers, and sari-sari storekeepers who people the fringes of his movie, but the end result is completely authentic.

Gina Pareño wheezes and sweats her way through almost every scene and carries the film brilliantly. Although her’s is the most eye-catching performance, there is a fine supporting cast, none more so than Johnny Manahan’s sleazy jueteng “treasurer”. Manahan has one of the film’s more memorable lines, when he curses a councilor who is straying onto his patch, “if it wasn’t for that greedy bitch we could be making 300,000 a day” – this to Amelita, whom we have just seen slaving all day for a measly 57 pesos commission.

As will be clear from even the cursory picture of jueteng provided in the film, far from being a social aberration as its critics claim, this illegal numbers game is in fact a note-perfect metaphor for everything rotten in contemporary Philippine society. The system rests on the hard work and gullibility of an ignorant and desperate masa. As you progress up the jueteng hierarchy the rewards get larger and larger until, sitting fat and sleek at the apex, is the “gambling lord” of popular renown, whose daily earnings are measured in hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pesos. The “work” and organization in running this racket are considerable, yet despite the huge numbers of people employed, jueteng is totally nonproductive. Its sole function is to redistribute wealth from the very poor to the very rich.

Kubrador is dominated, as are the lives of the underclass it represents, by the money-go-round. The filthy lucre is seldom absent, whether on Amelita’s bed as she counts out her day’s grimy takings, on the lips of the slum-dwellers are they chat to each other, or in the “treasurer’s” fat envelopes for the officials who permit the game to continue. Money is not be saved or invested in this world, but merely consumed on transient pleasures like the bottles of water Amelita glugs down at every opportunity or on a hopeless punt on jueteng, where the chances are one to several million, but they are only chances life is going to give you.

Kubrador won the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI) prize for best film at the Moscow international film festival earlier this year. You can read about the Moscow award here as well as see cute photos of Jeffrey Jeturian and Gina Pareño in Moscow, dressed in Filipiniana. It also won three awards at the 8th Cinefan Festival of Asian Cnema in New Delhi (best picture, best actress, and another FIPRESCI award for best film).

See also Madame Chiang’s verdict: “I can honestly say that it was the best film I have seen so far this year....”.

The trailer can be seen here on youtube, but it really reveals too much of the movie, so you might wanna give it a miss until you see the movie. And you are going to see the movie now aren’t you …

Mel Gibson’s “disease”

I don’t want to kick a man when he’s down, but there was one aspect of Mel Gibson’s statement after his arrest for drink driving that did rankle with me.

I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse.

The film star’s statement was criticized in some quarters “for sounding like it was crafted by a PR person” and I suspect this is one of the sentences that led to this opinion. Despite its contrite tone, the way the “d” word was worked in at the end of the statement is a rather transparent attempt to engage the listener’s sympathy. The writer seems to want to put Gibson’s Jew bating on a par with “I’m sorry I wet myself and ruined your sofa but I have prostate cancer”. If you were the owner of the damp sofa, you would of course feel pretty bad for cursing this poor guy, since it obviously wasn’t his fault–like Mel’s diseased moment wasn’t really his?

Alcoholism and gambling addictions are dreadful states and sufferers deserve plenty of sympathy and treatment. Still, are they really diseases? How far does the disease net spread? Smoking is quite a good parallel I think: it causes plenty of diseases (as does excessive drinking oof f alcohol), but I don’t think it is one itself. Nor is habitual overeating. The labeling of alcoholism as a disease seems to me inaccurate use of a medical term that clouds our understanding both illness and personal responsibility.

Brokeback mountain

Ang Lee: the man

I’m allergic to (i) hyped-up movies and (ii) “issues” dressed up as art, so I was quite prepared to dislike this. Instead I found myself caught up in Brokeback Mountain, one of the great cinema experiences— 24 hours later I’m still flying.

A movie with a place name in the title has situate itself and that ole peak is just there in every scene (even in those scenes shot away from the mountain). Aside from its metaphorical significance, the mountain exerts a physical pull on the audience, especially early on. This is one of the great camping movies (excuse the pun)—you can just smell that clean water and feel that big sky covering you.

It’s lazy writing, I know, but I have so much to say (and you have so little time), so here are a few of my memories of the movie—skip ‘em if you haven’t seen it:

• half bottle of whiskey going round the fire;
• Ennis del Mar’s’s wife’s face as he leaves on another “fishing trip”;
• “sit down you ignorant son-of-a-bitch” in the dispute over TV sport;
• the way Jack drives off with a few mumbles and no physical contact after a summer that will determine the rest of their lives;
• that arm coming over the blanket;
• the look of pride as Ennis sticks down the numbers on the mail box outside his trailer;
• how differences in financial circumstances have an impact on any relationship;
• “what you waiting for cowboy, the mating call?”;
• the final terrible scene as Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar discuss “November”;
• it could not have ended any other way--Willie Nelson singing “He was a friend of mine”, one of my favourite Dylan songs.

Was this a “gay” film? A couple of people told me today that you “could forget that it was love between two men”. In way I completely agree, straights like me love it because of its universal feel: haven’t you ever felt outside of society, yearning for something that is there and yet not there? And yet, it obviously would not have been the same movie without the love that dare not speak its name … Lemme know what you think .. there’s a comment button down there.

Wise guy postscript: As I said, the music is fantastic, but there is one terrible musical anachronism. At one point Ennis and his waitress get up to dance to Steve Earle’s “Devil’s right hand”. Huh? The film is very clear about its time period and this scene takes place in the late 1970s. Yet, as any self-respecting rock snob knows, this song was on Copperhead Road, released in 1988. The soundtrack was obviously assembled with care so I guess they held a meeting and said --”well, it doesn’t matter”. All I can say is—yes it does! It’s not even as though the song was “essential”, any old cowboy song would have done—there weren’t any of those back in the 1970s?

But how can I leave you with a downer?

Brokeback Mountain is a life-affirming experience. I'm still flying ...

“Lebowskifests”

Yup, it seems they have festivals where “Big Lebowski” nuts gather and … well who know what they do, but I guess I wouldn’t mind popping in to one of these things.

“The Big Lebowski” is a cult movie in every sense of the word. Apart from the superb direction and acting, it’s the sense that here is this guy, “the Dude”, who basically chooses lead a totally hedonistic lifestyle drinking his White Russians and smoking dope and lazing around in the bath with candles, and in one sense he’s a total loser, but on the other hand he knows exactly what he is doing, he has made his choices and that can be very appealing to many of the rest of us, slaves in one sense or another.

If you flirted with that kind of excess in earlier years and then straightened out there will always be a part of you that wonders whether at the end of your long and worthy life you may look back and say: “I had a choice: I could have just hung around smoking dope all day like the Dude or I could have gone to the office doing a job I don’t like that much with people I don’t feel much affinity with. And I chose the second option—why the hell did I do that?”

Anyway, I somehow stumbled on an interview with Jeff Dowd, the guy “the Dude” was based on. Since the Dude is a minor hero of mine, I was glad that his real life version came across as a pretty smart and funny guy. He’s good on the reasons for the film’s appeal too.

But what I think is interesting about it is that this movie brings so much pleasure to people in a world where so many of us have to put on a mask everyday to go to work and be somebody that we’re not. And it helps us relax. It’s a hell of a present to give to a friend who, during the day, has to be a little more uptight than they actually are. My friend Huey Lewis would say, “I want a new drug.” Well, in a certain sense, “The Big Lebowski” is one. If you go on my website, JeffDowd.com, there’s a letter from a New York fireman who was a 9/11 fireman and suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome for months; it was just a terrible situation, and he tried therapy and drugs...and then, one day, he picked up a copy of “The Big Lebowski” that he had sitting on a shelf. And he put it in, and, for the first time in months, he started to smile again...and, then, laugh again. And his wife sat there and talked to me and said, “This is what brought him back as a husband and father, and thank you for being in some way a part of this ‘Big Lebowski’ thing.” And, so, I think that’s...for a movie that, on many levels, is just a lot of fun, let’s not underestimate how important fun is in this world, y’know, and having fun with your friends is. And I think that’s kind of why this movie endures in so many ways.

Sandalang Bahay

Sandalang Bahay (Tagalog, English subtitles on the way) is a sumptuously filmed and elegaic family tragedy that is essentially Filipino yet draws on broader, especially European, film-making trends.

The story of three sisters begins and ends in the capiz-shuttered family home by the beach in the province. At the beginning of the film, the happy innocence of the girls and their friend Alex is overshadowed by storms in the adult world, yet the dreamy filming and the superb and unaffected “acting” of the kids create a nostalgic atmosphere that is retained throughout the film. Essentially this is a story of remembering, of returning to and perhaps resolving a lost past. From the beach house we are pitched forward 30 years to the sisters and mother as they are today, scars and all. The basically circular plot then takes us back to the house to, literally, bury the past.

It is a beautifully made film, particularly in the way producer Denisa Reyes skillfully uses music to create an emotional canvas for the visual image. The soundtrack includes Erik Satie, Puccini and contemporary Pinoy rock (which is particularly effective in a rockin’ sequence as the sisters leave Manila at the beginning of their road trip). Sandalang Bahay has a sure sense of place and manages to bring out the familiar motifs of provincial Philippine life—tricycles, bankas, aggressive jeepney drivers, the omnipresent sea—in an affectionate and affecting way. The camerawork and cinematography by Mark Gary and Miguel Fabie is artistically done, without ever being fussy. A shot of the banka bearing the coffin as the wind lightly ruffles the water was particularly memorable. The story moves along at a snappy pace and is never predictable. And, hey, no overacting! Great.

I could go on, but I guess you get the picture. Sandalang Bahay is a wonderful film! I think you'd like it (next showing is at UP on 4 August, 5pm). I hope it gets shown at foreign festivals too, especially in Europe, where its artistic sensibility, exotic feel and dark humour would go down really well. Everyone involved can feel really proud of what they have achieved.

Meanwhile, back in the real world

I’ve never been a Star Wars kinda guy, but you know what? The Chinese dvd of Revenge of the Seth (The Backstroke of the West) might convert me. Check out the translated from English to Chinese and then back to English again subtitles below on winterson.com – I have included only three, there are plenty more on the original site (go on, have a look).

Here is the explanation of the last one from Julian (keeper of the flame at winterson): "this seemed completely random until i figured out that 'jedi council' was being translated into chinese then back to english as 'the presbyterian church'." That's great.