Harana (2012)

Selasa, 07 Agustus 2012

Harana (2012)

The Lost Kings of Serenade in Benito Bautista's Harana

by Francis Joseph A. Cruz

Nothing is ever truly obsolete. When something loses its supposed relevance because its functions have been taken over with more efficiency by another thing, it gains a different use altogether, as a product for nostalgia, a beacon for the past that is an unstable depositary of memories. Nothing is ever truly obsolete, unless forgotten. Memory, being a product of human thought, is needed to be urged to exist. Remembrance is not automatic. It requires an impetus, a switch to initiate the rollercoaster ride down experiences and emotions guarded by used time.

The harana, a traditional means of courtship where the boy would recruit a troupe consisting of a guitarist and a crooner to join him to the house of his beloved who is about to be serenaded to romantic submission, is on the verge of obsolescence. In an age past emotion-laden mixtapes, an age that is obsessed with speed, love has no more use for rustic rituals and ceremonies that enunciate what nowadays is perceived to be a dethroned and antiquated sense of romance. Filmmaker Benito Bautista and renowned guitarist Florante Aguilar, in their documentary that proudly bears the name of the courtship that is embattled by the natural course of time, intends to redeem the tradition from being completely forgotten.

Aguilar, motivated by a diaspora-charged obsession to preserve his native culture, decides to go back to the Philippines from the comforts of the United States to look for the last true remaining practitioners of the harana. Aguilar would at times play timeless melodies with his guitar to unlikely crowds in unlikely places, gaining further motivation for his search and hope that there remains an audience for whatever he is trying to find based on the resounding reactions he would garner from the most unadorned and unsophisticated of audiences.

Bautista dutifully follows Aguilar in his seemingly quixotic quest to revive the musical tradition by picking whatever remnants he can find. The film starts questionably, making it more a profile of Aguilar than anything. Thankfully, the film progresses away from Aguilar’s persona and further into his mission. Aguilar generously disappears into the background, and allows himself to play backup literally and figuratively to the long-lost troubadours he found and assembled into a charming troupe.

The old men that Aguilar deemed fit to represent the dying tradition have stories worth telling. Bautista carefully allows them their own narrative threads, emphasizing the intriguing possibility of their noble talents converging with their humble livelihoods and living conditions. It seems the sincerity that the music offers is a product of very modest circumstances, of timid gentlemen with nothing but their voices and their hearts to craft melodies from. They are unsung heroes passionately singing to save their songs’ fragile relevance. Harana marvellously allows their timeless voices to get heard and enjoyed along with memories of romances that persist or could have been had they not been rendered obsolete by the unstoppable passage of time. The best parts of the documentary are when ageless serenades are allowed to drown cinematic and narrative conceits. It is most moving when it graduates from the search and the struggle and becomes an unabashedly hopeful celebration of music.

(Cross-published in Twitch and ABS-CBNnews.)

Boundary (2011)

Selasa, 08 November 2011

Boundary (2011)

Boundary (Benito Bautista, 2011)

Confined mostly within the very small spaces provided for by the cabs, taxi drivers live lives that are well-suited for cinema. Although they are forced to interact with people of various personalities, needs and intentions, this human interaction is limited to services being offered and stories being shared in the interim. They are constantly embattled, by drowsiness when forced to drive nights, by paranoia when a particular passenger raises suspicions, by desperation when the shift’s earnings are not enough to cover the cab owner’s quota leaving them with hardly any income to live with. Within the rigid confines of their cabs and their means of livelihood, they witness, either through the endless tirades of newscasters in the radio programs they listen to or through actual experiences, the worst of what a corrupt society can deal to a person.

Boundary starts ominously. Coke Polipata’s violin wails in the background as a dishevelled and obviously paranoia-stricken cab driver (Ronnie Lazaro) opts for a snack in what seems to be an ironically idyllic riverside park. Within the first few minutes of the film, director Benito Bautista orchestrates a view of Manila that is intriguingly unhinged. He carefully sows the seeds of suspicion, which will eventually color the atmosphere of the film. The film retreats from the temporary comforts of day as it follows the cab driver as he plies the crowded streets of Manila well into the night. At this juncture, Bautista allows a glimpse of the city from a distance and away the jaded eyes of his overworked protagonist, evoking a certain calm amidst the chaos of the city before plunging his viewers into a more intimate yet intense look of how that seemingly disconnected bigger picture finds its way into the most contained of spaces.

From then on, Bautista follows the cab driver as he picks up a well-dressed man (Raymond Bagatsing) who asks to be driven to nearby Antipolo. Beneath exteriors defined by random acts of decency and conversations marked by normalcy, both the driver and his passenger are in fact brewing plans of their own.

The action is mostly set inside the cab, with the storytelling done mostly through the conversations the cab driver has with his passenger and the characterization limited to the stories relayed, the mannerisms, gestures, and other occasional quirks. The paranoia Bautista invested in early on manages to color the prolonged sequences within the cramped interior of the cab with tremendous foreboding, carrying the film despite being constricted with its location with a sizeable portion of uneasiness and tension. From within the cab, safety from the viciousness of the street is in fact an illusion as desperation creeps into the picture, forcing the cab driver to survive amidst all odds.

Boundary falters only in narrative logic. Bautista succeeds in establishing the dangers of uncertainty in the familiar. However, the screenplay, which Bautista co-wrote with John Bedia, is peppered with holes, raising more questions of logistics and practicality rather than answering them. This, of course, is a minor and forgivable problem considering that everything else seems so masterfully orchestrated, from Bolipata and Paolo Peralta’s unsettling score to McCoy Ternate’s aptly economic cinematography to Chuck Gutierrez’s intelligent editing. In the end, Bautista has crafted a firm and suspenseful thriller whose clever twist in the end puts both perspective and pertinence to its constricting but intriguingly exciting process.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)