The Battery (2007)

Senin, 05 Juli 2010

The Battery (2007)

The Battery (Yôjirô Takita, 2007)

Japanese Title: Batterî

The meaning of life, as it turns out and according to the logic of Yôjirô Takita's unapologetically sentimental The Battery, can be found in baseball. The film, which tells the story of Takumi Harada (Kento Hayashi), a talented young pitcher who relocates to a rural town for his sickly younger brother, is ostensibly directed towards the youth, with its treatment of persons of authority, from the bumbling parents to the inutile teachers, with manifest naiveté of the driving force of the youth. In that sense, Takita's function as director is nothing more than to provoke empowerment among the youth; that independent of limitations enforced by authoritarian entities yet guided by virtues exemplified in team sportsmanship, one can be triumphant in a chosen field.

That being said, The Battery is a frustratingly close-minded film, typical of the many youth-directed narratives whose singular goal is patronize the faults of the next generation in the guise of some life wisdom fetched from deep within the elusive pertinent virtues of baseball. With hardly any attempt at subtlety from Takita, the films bludgeons its audience to abide by its strange logic and morality, all for the sake of genre and market conventions. Thus, there's an abundance of emotionally manipulative techniques at use here --- from the frequent close-ups to the perpetually smiling mug of best friend Go (Kenta Yamada), who also functions as Takumi's catcher; the predictable musical orchestrations that swell at the most opportune moments in the film; the numerous sidekicks who provide diversion from the sugary best bud plot by being inanely humorous.

The Battery is middlebrow entertainment, at its most efficient, with its unwillingness to be waylaid by any form of ambiguity. Should one survive the arguably impolite and inarguably impractical sweetness that is being rammed down the throats of its audience, the film proves to be surprisingly profound in its observations about baseball. In fashioning Takumi and Go's friendship and sports partnership not unlike a domestic relationship, the film suggests a quasi-conjugal overview of the game where more than manly prowess and skills, the requisite for success is something less physical and more emotional, something more within the arena of conventionally conceived feminine traits. In a sport that is crazed with strength, muscles and steroids, the idea that the possible key to a perfect game is love and harmony is jolting. To see baseball matches where grunts and sweat are replaced with communicated smiles and sticky stares is some sort of unexpected undercurrent in a pastime that has been unduly for years, a test of manhood, at least for the cultures that regard the sport that highly.

At a purely moralistic analysis, The Battery purports to connect family, friendship and character with baseball. However and more than that, The Battery is further proof, along with the girl-y boy bands, the effeminate anime heroes, polka dot clothes, shirts a size or two smaller than normal worn by slender male bodies, and the exaggerated demand for everything bug-eyed, cute, and cuddly, that Japan has perfected the art of advertising androgyny.

It's A Free World (2007)

Senin, 03 November 2008

It's A Free World (2007)

It's A Free World... (Ken Loach, 2007)

In Ken Loach's It's A Free World..., there are two generations of the working class that are separated not only by age but by their immense moral gap. Geoff (Colin Caughlin) is retired and spends his day taking care of his grandson. He lives comfortably with his wife, despite his acknowledgment of his limited financial capabilities, and goes about life with his head up high although his belt is tightened. He is representative of most of Loach's protagonists, those who maintain an adamantly dignified stance against the afflictions that plague the working class. Angie (surprisingly terrific newcomer Kierston Wareing), Geoff's daughter (and if we are to follow Geoff's logic, a severe disappointment) is in her early thirties, a single mother and has been switching jobs year after year and unable to find decent employment opportunities in a modern world of increasing wealth and diminishing integrities.

After being fired (presumably for violently reacting against the sexual advances of a male superior) from an employment agency that recruits immigrants for manual work in England, Angie returns to London and convinces Rose (Juliet Ellis), her flatmate, to start-up their own manpower agency in the backlot of a local pub. Angie's operations reflect her roots. Riding her motorcycle around town, recruiting overstaying aliens and convincing businessmen to provide work for her recruits, Angie's irresistable demeanor, consisting of a mix of unique confidence brewed from both desperation and years of economic and social struggle, would carry her entrepreneurial experiment to modest successes. She establishes rules at work (for example, she would not provide aliens without any papers employment), and in the process, protects whatever dignity and integrity from the probable repercussions of her chosen endeavor.

However, the capitalist world is not nearly as predictable as Angie thinks it is. Businesses fail. Employers become bankrupt and unable to pay wages. Commissions are unearned. Mobs of dissatisfied immigrants become unruly and her and her family's safety is compromised. Her rules are bent, first to favor an Iranian refugee who is desperate to find any job to feed his family, and later on, to finally complete her transformation from exploited to exploiter. No matter how Angie insists that there are borders to her profession, it is this uncomfortable meshing of her two roles (as a member of the exploited middle class and as the superior and empowered recruiter) in the bigger scheme of international economics and politics that forces her to choose which side she really belongs to: the abused, or the abuser.

To make matters worse, Angie's privilege is not her innate industry or other talents and skills, but the simple fact that the world also has arbitrary economic classes among nations, where Britain is hardly the working class as compared to its Eastern European neighbors whose citizens spend decades worth of their savings to gain entry to London, forced to be employed with meager wages and hardly any benefits, where promises of decent living and income is mutated into paranoia and nightmares of either being cramped into decrepit buses, factories, and inhumane working places or being chased out of the country by the immigrations police.

Loach's concern is hardly these impoverished illegal immigrants. Their stories have been told and retold by countless other filmmakers, almost always with the emotional efficiency of daytime soap. Loach pits his beloved middle class in the center of this contemporary world, where nations are interconnected by trade treaties, loosened borders, and easy communication. Although afflicted with the same working class problems (poverty, lack of professional recourse, and a youth that is being pushed to delinquency by lack of proper parenting), Angie's generation is provided with a pressing choice: of living the same lives as those who preceded them, or exploiting the more desperate and desolate members of the enlarged and supposedly freed world.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

Jumat, 24 Oktober 2008

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007)

French Title: Le scaphandre et le papillon

Jean Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), editor of the French Elle magazine, suffered a stroke while driving his son. He wakes up, completely immobile except for his left eye. His condition, aptly called "locked-in syndrome," makes it extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible, for him to communicate to other people. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the novel Jean-Do (Bauby's nickname) authored and released a few days prior to his death, proves otherwise. Jean-Do dictates by blinking his left eye as his assistant (Anne Consigny) patiently connects the dots through the process, involving the complete alphabet organized and spoken in the order of frequency of use, Jean-Do's speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) devised.

Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly opens in overt absurdity, with Jean-Do waking up to the flurried questionings of the doctors around him, for which he has legible answers for but is unable to vocalize due to his locked-in condition. Jean-Do's inherent wit and personality is reflected by his internal monologues while his initial confusion and later on, other emotions which cannot be enunciated effectively by his immense wit and vocabulary, are communicated through Janusz Kaminski's cinematography, which exquisitely approximates Jean-Do's limited visual perspective. Amidst the atmosphere of prevailing excitement, the camera swings back and forth the faces of the doctors, though limited in reach and motion causing the frame to be composed of incomplete figures and visages. When he blinks, the camera blinks with him. When he cries, the camera moistens, blurring the frame and turning the figures into indecipherable clouds of emotions repressed and covered by his physical paralysis.

Jean-Do sees his reflection from the metallic walls of his hospital as he is moved from his room to the balcony. His internal monologue provides ample humor to the travail of seeing himself in a sorry state, his face carries a permanent grimace while pasted in a head that is nestled uncomfortably by his static shoulder. Previously, Schnabel visualizes a portion of Jean-Do's memory, where he dashingly blasts through a photoshoot for his fashion magazine, with the studio teeming with half-naked female models and photographers, all of whom worship beauty. Schnabel fathoms the unpredictable and cruel nature of fate, prompting Jean-Do's internal and external torture with memories of the past that painfully connect to his present situation.

Schnabel further enunciates the irony of Jean-Do's fate, diverting the narrative to another of Jean-Do's bittersweet memories, where he shaves his father (Max Von Sydow, in a performance that is quietly spectacular, especially in one scene where he attempts to talk to his son by phone but gets irked by the unavoidable mechanicality of their communication) and they talk about their respective lives and ex-wives. Jean-Do returns to his miserable present, still surrounded by beautiful females and caring companions, yet burdened by his fated incapacity and diminished existence, altogether banished by his astounding feat of completing his novel.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly could have gone the road of typical underdog stories (glamorizing psychological afflictions the way Ron Howard did in the abysmally syrupy A Beautiful Mind (2001)). Instead, Schnabel withdrew from convention, knowing fully well that the a one-sentence synopsis of Jean Dominique Bauby's triumph is enough to inspire and that the tale does not require further amplifications and embellishments to elicit inspiration, and did something remarkable. He crafted a film that is fueled not by the uniqueness of the human story it intends to tell, but by the mostly internal procedures that dominate Jean-Do's struggles, from the gloominess of his stagnant predicament to the life-saving expanses of his vast imagination. Schnabel weaves into Jean-Do's story threads that direct the attention from the inspiring underdog tale to the intricacies of Jean-Do's persistence in maintaining his humanity. Schnabel succeeded not only in telling the story in a manner that is both visually alluring in a way that is technically intriguing but also penetrated the surface melodrama, examining the mechanism that drove Jean-Do from lavish Earth to dismal Hell and finally, into immortality.

United Red Army (2007)

Rabu, 22 Oktober 2008

United Red Army (2007)

United Red Army (Kôji Wakamatsu, 2007)
Japanese Title: Jitsuroku rengô sekigun: Asama sansô e no michi

Kôji Wakamatsu's United Red Army is a docu-drama (or if you prefer to be academic about it, jitsuroku eiga, the Japanese term for films that mix documentary and fiction elements, prevalent in the seventies, and often about the yakuza and other gangs) about the titular Japanese extremist leftist paramilitary group. In a span of more than three hours, Wakamatsu details several decades of the group's existence. While he breezes through the early history of the group during the first thirty minutes of the film, barraging his viewers with names, faces, and events too plenty and rapidly relayed to realistically remember, there remains a sense of awe as to how dedicatedly all the information has been stringed together and dramatized, all in the rhythm of Jim O'Rourke's catchy music. The prelude sets the stage for what's to happen next, a tensely intimate excursion up the Japanese Alps where the members of the army are mutated by their fundamentalist political beliefs, warped by extreme fanaticism and the lack of human encounter.

Wakamatsu is a former member of the United Red Army (where his links with the terrorist group has prevented him from entering the United States and other territories). His personal dedication to the film is reflected by the mastery and accuracy for which he tells the story. Most intriguing is how he, despite his actual experiences supporting the group and its activities, directs the film with a cool detachedness: unwilling to take any sides, persistent in portraying the events with as much objectivity as possible. The gamble pays off because United Red Army's investment in factual consistency, mixed with Wakamatsu's purposeful emotional ambivalence towards his subject matter and the multitude of characters, creates an atmosphere of alluring unsteadiness, which the film banks on to carry its audience through the three hours.

Atop the mountains, the army, torn apart by political intrigue only to be reformed with a primary objective of strengthening its membership for warfare, holes up in different makeshift bases where the members undergo rigorous training and indoctrination. Prompted probably by their self-imposed alienation from society, among other factors like psychological impulses and human imperfection, the political struggle becomes warped and twisted, with the members being forced into self-assessment, first through demanding physical exertions then through violent punishments, almost often leading to death. Fascism creeps into the group's communist principles, creating an atmosphere of unease and suffocation, which Wakamatsu paints so vividly yet with little or no emotional attachment to his subjects. Wakamatsu objective and journalistic approach relays judgment from filmmaker to the audience, creating a discomforting and challenging burden to the viewers, as humanity is further trivialized to serve the confused, irrational, and often impromptu purposes of their cause.

The film's finale, where a mountain lodge (which in reality is Wakamatsu's own house, which he used and later on demolished for the film) is seized by some desperate members of the group and is later on seized by the police, caps the cinematic madness that Wakamatsu so carefully weaves into an astounding frenzy. The hours of joyless pain and suffering culminate in a subtle revelation of the driving force of both the group's successes and excesses. As the youngest of the group starts exclaiming the most rational piece of dialogue in the film, an awareness arises that a single element brought out this irrationality and their predicament: youth.

Youth, which translates to the adventurism, gullibility, instability, cowardice, open-mindedness and strength they inherently possess, is the prime mover of the group and becomes the rousing centerpiece of Wakamatsu's effort. The film, from being a mere reiteration (although visually and emotionally stirring) of dates, characters, and events, turns into a something else: a compelling and daring commentary of the intrinsic power and the accompanying danger of the youth.

Invisible City (2007)

Minggu, 19 Oktober 2008

Invisible City (2007)

Invisible City (Tan Pin Pin, 2007)

The only thing that is constant in this world is change. Singaporean documentary filmmaker Tan Pin Pin acknowledges the wisdom of the saying and from that understanding, crafts an engaging examination of the victims of this ever-constant change. In Invisible City, Tan focuses on her home base Singapore, a city-state which in the early fifties, is home to mangroves and fishermen, in the mid-sixties, has transformed into a bustling port where varying cultures repel and attract, in the seventies through the new millennium, has evolved into a formidable economy. At present, Singapore is the model modern city: a city that is made of glass, steel, and concrete, and functions with the precision of a clockwork machine. It seems that the city-state has forgotten its tremulous childhood, and Tan reconstructs from the relics of the past: a ruined fort in Sentosa, archived colored footage of Singapore in the fifties, a survivor of the horrors of the Japanese invasion, and stocked photographs of turbulent times.

Memory is a scarce and diminishing resource. Tan acknowledges this and uses it to add a very poignant dimension to her documentary. It is the fragility of human memory that becomes the heart of Invisible City. When Tan suddenly removes the visuals save for an uncomfortable black screen, leaving the commentary of Ivan Polunin, an elderly man whose final work is to preserve the invaluable footage of Singapore in the fifties which he recorded while in a medical mission. In the midst of complete darkness, it is his voice, oftentimes faltering when his delicate memory fails him, that provides the only stimulus, enough to elicit a bevy of emotions: overpowering melancholy, comforting reminiscence, harsh frustration, and faint joy.

Memory, being impermanent, needs a repository to outlive change. This is the reason why Polunin insists that his treasure be re-recorded with his commentary in it. This is the reason why Han Sanyuan, a Chinese-Singaporean who vividly recalls the abuses dealt to him and his fellow Chinese during his student activist days, keeps the photographs that show these abuses as proof of what already seems to have been forgotten. This is the reason why a tree was planted by the Japanese royal family to commemorate their visit in Singapore decades ago.

A semblance of immortality is erected when memory is etched into timeless relics, like the ancient fort that is being excavated by the local archaeologist who observe mundane details (like coke bottles and other pieces of garbage) to discover the manner of living decades ago. Tan branches from the archaeologist's historic endeavor and spends time with the graffiti on the walls of the site: all of which are signals of man's insistence for immortality.

Memory, more than being impermanent, is personal. There is no assurance that our memories would have any impact except to the wall, the footage, or the photographs that contain them. Tan's documentary concludes with Han giving a lecture to a class of Chinese-Singaporean students. Tan's camera observes the faces of the youth: sometimes amused although overtly disinterested. Han exclaims his disappointed. There is no longer an audience for his memories. He along with all of Tan's subjects are living in a city that has changed too fast, not only physically but spiritually. With Invisible City, Tan lyrically mourns with them.

The Warlords (2007)

Sabtu, 06 September 2008

The Warlords (2007)

The Warlords (Peter Chan, 2007)
Mandarin Title: Tau ming chong

The Warlords is something of an anomaly in Peter Chan's career. Chan is most famous for charming romances and comedies like Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), a love story between two Mainlanders (Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung), both of whom migrate to Hong Kong and later to New York, that spans several decades and Perhaps Love (2005), which details a love triangle that arises in the set of a musical film. Going Home, the episode he directed for Pan-Asian horror triptych Three (2002), is about a father (Eric Tsang) and his son who moves in a dilapidated residential building where longtime resident (Lai) keeps a gruesome although ultimately heartbreaking secret. Chan's films have always featured strong female characters (Cheung in Comrades, Zhou Sun as feisty movie star in Perhaps Love, Kate Capshaw as forty something divorcee who gets intimate with a younger man in The Love Letter (1999), or even Eugenia Yuan as Lai's dead wife in Going Home).

Thus, The Warlords, which Chan claims as his attempt to bring back themes of male camaraderie and loyalty of 80's and 90's Hong Kong cinema, is a totally different creature in Chan's growing filmography. In fact, The Warlords features no strong female character. Lian (Xu Jinglei), the object of desire of both General Pang Qingyun (Jet Li) and Zhao Erhu (Andy Lau), is treated more as a plot device rather than a definite character. She indistinctly beds with both men, with her motives and aspirations conveniently overshadowed by the men who dominate the picture.

Notwithstanding this evident departure in themes, Chan succeeds in crafting a genuinely engaging picture. Inspired by Cheng Cheh's The Blood Brothers (1973) which is based on a historical event wherein a governor was assassinated in the late nineteenth century, The Warlords is about three men, Pang, Zhao and Jiang Wuyang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) whose fraternal pledge is tested under the pressures of surviving starvation and violence dealt upon by the Taiping Rebellion (whose death count supposedly outnumbers that of the second World War) and later on, the political ambitions and intrigues that accompany their wartime successes. Chan indulges in detailing the three men's intricate relationship, starting from explicating their personalities, differentiating their goals and motivations, inevitably leading to a clash of gargantuan egos, especially of Pang and Zhao's, who nearing the end of the film have come into a deadlock in their objectives.

More gargantuan than the clashing egos of the film's main characters are the battle scenes, choreographed, directed and shot with masterful precision and an exquisite attention to detail by Chan and his crew. The battle scenes do not have the operatic flourish of Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) or the theatrical affluence of Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet (2006). Chan approaches the battles with a grittier and more realistic tone, with dust and grime filling up the frames and severed limbs and fallen bodies punctuating the action. The battle scenes are simply spectacular. There's an undeniable visual splendor and energy beneath the pandemonium and violence that Chan adeptly orchestrates.

The Warlords also features one of Li's best performances. His embattled general, the lone survivor of a failed campaign where all his soldiers died, is vulnerable and emotional, traits that Li's usual cinematic personalities hardly possess. He performs alongside Lau and Kaneshiro, actors who have earned acclaim from more dramatic roles, and gives the most memorable performance of the three. Above everything, The Warlords, proves that Chan is a formidable filmmaker, with the ability to stage stunning and sweeping battle scenes without sacrificing characterization and storytelling.

Tambolista (2007)

Jumat, 29 Agustus 2008

Tambolista (2007)

Tambolista (Adolfo Alix, Jr., 2007)
English Title: Drumbeat

Fourteen year old Jason (Jiro Manio) and his older brother Billy (Coco Martin) aspire for two entirely different things. Jason is saving to buy a drum set while Billy, who has gotten his girlfriend pregnant, is finding ways to earn enough for an abortion. When their friend Pablo (Sid Lucero), a hustler who was recently evicted by his landlord after being caught stealing from and having sex with his wife, stays with them for a few days while their parents are in the hospital, a plan is hatched to steal from Nanay and Tatay Trining (played by Anita Linda and Fonz Deza, respectively) who reside across their house. The money they would steal from the elderly couple will supposedly pay for Jason's drum set and Billy's girlfriend's abortion, and fix Pablo's dire financial situation. However, things don't turn out as planned, and the repercussions of their actions are far graver than what they originally imagined.

Adolfo Alix, Jr.'s Tambolista (Drumbeat) is all about Manila's urban rhythm. It is about that rhythm's comforting inconsistencies and its hypnotizing unpredictability. It is also about the dire consequences of missing a beat. The city's unique soundscape is characterized by the barrage of different noises that swell into a distinct although cacophonous drumbeat. Alix consciously laces the film with a soundtrack of frequent ambient sounds: of the loud sirens that announce the arrival of the police, of the endless blare of cars rushing down a busy highway, of the nightly barks of the neighbors' pet dog, of the repetitive nagging of Nanay Trining, of the heavy breathing and the loud moaning heard from Pablo's bootleg porn videos. Even Khavn De La Cruz's musical score, a hypnotic mix of infrequent drumbeats and short melodies, possesses the same quality and rhythm that aurally replicates Manila's uniquely delirious moods.

The screenplay, written by Regina Tayag, is by itself a tense and engaging piece of work. The characters she created are not explicit stereotypes of Manila's poor folk, and in turn, deviates from being a mere repetition of the many images and stories of the impoverished urban dwellers Philippine cinema has and continues to conjure. The characters are poor and we see their surroundings as cramped, dirty and often hostile. However, the film concentrates more on the moral deterioration that accompanies the economic and social decay that perpetually burdens the city.

Thus, Jason, Billy and Pablo do not beg for the film viewers' sympathies or understanding, nor do they seek to represent the inhumane consequences of the nation's enveloping state of poverty like the petty crooks of Brillante Mendoza's Tirador (Slingshot, 2007), with their aimless and cyclical state of destitution. In fact, they are seen as repulsive with conflicts that arise, not from their financial situation, but from their own acts and decisions. While it is true that Jason and Billy's family is poor and Pablo even more so, they are not cornered into a life of crime and penury. Their decisions are not results of lacking the basic necessities of living. Instead, these decisions are emissions of a corrupted generation that venerates money, shallow ambitions and restless fantasies of the flesh.

Alix's direction here is commendable. His visual sense, with the aid of Albert Banzon's cinematography, is sublime, choosing to shoot the film in total black and white, save for some bits in color. Tambolista may probably be Alix's most audacious work, which is saying a lot since Alix has directed a few adventurous features like Kadin (The Goat, 2007), Alix's tribute to auteur Lav Diaz which is essentially a kid's film that features Lav Diaz-esque pacing, Daybreak (2008), which details the final few hours of a gay relationship, and Adela (2008), which concentrates on an old woman on her eightieth birthday. In Tambolista, Alix experiments in storytelling as he tells his story not with chronological logic but with the same aura of unpredictability that pervades the entire production. The narrative method is not entirely novel (Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams (2003) is similarly structured), but Alix pulls it off with admirable ease. More importantly, the structure does not feel pretentious, since the seemingly illogical sequence of scenes of verbal and physical violence or sex is apt to the chaotic cadence of the city.

Alone (2007)

Minggu, 06 Juli 2008

Alone (2007)

Alone (Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom, 2007)
Thai Title: Faet

With the strength of their first feature film Shutter (2004), directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom were able to momentarily deviate the attention of Asian horror film fans from Japan or Korea to Thailand, whose reinvigorated film industry remains to be one of the most promising. Shutter is just that kind of film, similar to Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) or Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo (2001), that had all the elements traditional to Asian horror cinema (like the effective sound design, the long-haired ghosts with gait or posture problems, the subtle attack on contemporary philosophies, among others) and was able to mesh them all effectively not only for cheap and quick shocks but for prolonged disturbances. The twist in the end of Shutter is indeed clever, but unlike M. Night Shyamalan's famous twists in almost all of his films, the film never relied on it and existed independently of the devious machination.

Alone, Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom's follow-up to Shutter does not have the latter's pitch-perfect supernatural tone from beginning to end. Instead, the directing duo opts to take risks by making their audience believe they're in for a similarly-veined ghost story, when in fact, the film mines something more disturbing than vengeful spirits and murderous ghouls. Alone has for its center that unmistakable and supposedly indestructible bond between sisters, complicated further by the fact that these sisters have been conjoined since birth. Ploy, One of the sisters dies when they are separated and Pim (Masha Wattanapanich), the living twin, now peacefully living in South Korea with Vee (Vittaya Wasukraipaisan), her dedicated boyfriend, since their separation, has to deal with such guilt when she is forced to return to Thailand upon learning of her mother's dire medical condition.

Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom do not forgo the typical scares that pervade Asian horror. As the film progresses, Pim gets persisting visitations from her dead sister who with her unkempt long hair, bleeding eye sockets, and decomposing skin, seem to be a mere repeat of every other Asian horror wraith. However, the film attempts to lace the tiring trope with creativity and ingenuity. Thus, the ghost haunts from commonly used places like the empty spaces of Pim's bed, the mirror, curtains, to more ingeniously conceived places like from the slowly spinning blades of Pim's room's ceiling fan, where the immobile mangled corpse is hanging.

Alone does not match the persisting eeriness of Shutter, but the film, at the very least, manages to ease my horror-craving eyes. The film makes that significant risk to branch out from just being a ghost story in the typical post-Ringu vein, and despite being a bit far-fetched (even more so than ghouls revealing themselves in developed photographs), it actually works. It is what essentially differentiates the film from Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom's Shutter. The film, while it initially makes us believe that it relies on the supernatural, mutates, during its final ten minutes into a completely different film: mellow torture-porn (as compared to the optic nerve-cutting, fingernail-removing, and limb-slicing antics of Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)) that is grounded on rather simplistic psychology, of violent sibling rivalries and unrequited love. Interesting enough to give the supposedly dying sub-genre a reviving nudge, I thought.

Tirador (2007)

Rabu, 02 Juli 2008

Tirador (2007)

Tirador (Brillante Mendoza, 2007)
English Title: Slingshot

In Brillante Mendoza's Manoro (The Teacher, 2006), Jonalyn, a young Aeta girl attempts to teach her tribe to read and write so that they can vote during the upcoming elections. Along with her father, she traverses into the wilderness to look for her grandfather, the lone Aeta whom she needs to convince to be taught how to read and write. The grandfather only appears near the end of the film when Jonalyn, alone and defeated, sits by the voting precinct. Along with the wild boar which he caught while hunting for days in the wilderness, the two of them go back to camp to celebrate not the fact that almost the entire tribe has for the very first time voted, but the fact that they have food to eat and that they are alive. Manoro, for all its extraneous advertising of Jonalyn's heroic efforts to have her tribe take part in the Philippines' democratic process is actually about the insignificance of democracy. The film can be aptly summarized by the grandfather's parting words: "that doesn't make me less of a man," referring to his having failed to take part in the elections.

Tirador (Slingshot) is the urban equivalent of Manoro. While the two may have dissimilar milieus (the former is set in the filthy slums of Quiapo, Manila; while the latter, in the pristine forests of rural Pampanga), energies (the former relishes in its perpetual state of motion; the latter is far more relaxed), and predisposition (the former is bathed with gloom and cynicism, the latter is more hopeful), the two films nevertheless share the same lack of trust and apprehension for the Philippine political and democratic system.

Tirador opens during the dead hours of the night, where couples are noisily fucking each other with only plywood walls separating their moans from the cries of the neighbors' startled baby, junkies are taking crystal meth out in the open, and hustlers are busy servicing their clients. A man walks around the slums to warn the dwellers about the impending arrival of the cops, causing the crooks on the run to scramble towards convenient hiding places, which include filthy canals and narrow alleyways. Once the cops arrive, the film starts to burst with energy, with the camera rapidly capturing every sensational bit of action as each resident is persuaded, threatened, pushed and forced to be lined up in the basketball court for proper identification, and eventual imprisonment. The following morning, the men are freed by a political candidate, hoping that his gift of temporary freedom will be remembered by the crooks and their families once the day of elections arrives.

Tirador continues on that note of despondence. Survival, the film's vocabulary which is unfortunately limited to words that connote pessimism, is devoid of any of the euphemism humanity has attributed to it, but primarily exists in its most basic, most animalistic sense. Men prey on men, comrades cheat on fellow comrades, and virtues like honor, respect, and honesty become misplaced in a community where the nagging urge to just last another day reigns supreme. The film bounces from one resident's petty crime to another, usually examined with the intricacy, frankness and vigor of an enterprising documentarian. Much has been written about Mendoza's visual style, frenzied yet voyeuristic and observant (the last two descriptions basically differentiate Mendoza's camera work with Paul Greengrass' famed visual incomprehensions). The camera never allows itself to rest as it eternally races along with its several dangerous subjects to what feels like grating repetition.

The result of Mendoza's virtuosity with the handheld camera and the seemingly endless narrative may feel tedious, most especially because the film seems to be perpetually bathing in a formidable atmosphere of danger, depression, and grimness. It is precisely because of this intended inhumanity that the film manages to accurately approximate this soulless and heartless dimension of humanity, arguably endemic in a nation wherein democracy, religion and extreme poverty miraculously coexists.

Tirador concludes with a prayer rally which is graced by several politicians who have prepared speeches about their virtues and their promises for change for the thousands of devotees, all of whom are potential voters. Among the devotees are Mendoza's subject slum dwellers, complete with candles and authentic looks of pious hope. Before the credits roll, the camera catches something that is both startling yet unsurprising: one of the slum dwellers' hand reaches down the pockets of an unsuspecting victim. There is no change, there probably will never be change. In the midst of the heights of democratic and religious exercise, nothing can ever qualm the alarming need to for food, for sex, and for a brand new set of dentures.