The Sentimentality of Cinema in Tsai Ming-Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

Maybe it does happen — a lone cinema in its quietude of unseen shambles, is where ghosts reside. Maybe it is resting place, or maybe it is the idea of rest personified in the absence of a human audience inside a rundown theater. The film being screened is the legendary King Hu’s Dragon Inn, but anyway, who is watching?

“Do you know this theater is haunted?” says a fellow male cruiser to another. “This theater is haunted,” he reiterates, as if to punctuate emphasis. “Ghosts.”

And maybe this is why, why people refuse the experience of the cinema inside its territory, because of the ghosts that linger in every empty seat. Maybe it is why, why people have stopped seeing movies the way movies should be seen.

Here, Tsai Ming-Liang captures the breathing space of absence — the long takes framed in uncomfortable angles so as to allow observation in the fine, quiet stillness of motion. Here is the parable of a lethargic cinematic culture — the audience is tired, the movies demand no reaction. In its unbearable sentimentality we ease our way towards the inevitable closing of — what? an entire generation of movies never to be seen? — what could be any cinema theater, in any anonymous city, in any part of this country, or probably anywhere in the whole expanse of this world.

If there is nothing to be told, let it be seen. Here, we see the machination of curtain call. The crippled lady attendant is watching the projectionist. The projectionist is a question, a mystery — who is he watching? The male cruisers are watching other male cruisers. Who is watching the film inside this moviehouse? Only ghosts. Only these ghosts.

Film Backlog: January

Ghost World, dir. by Terry Zwigoff (2001)There is a terribly palpable disconnect of the two heroines in Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World, in the sense that their worldview is a diversion from the ordinary, and that their angst is the female personification of Catcher in the Rye‘s Holden Caulfield. Sort of.

From the naivety and the recklessness of decisions grounded on – what, you constantly ask – possibly the free-spiritedness of an owned youth, Rebecca and, mostly, Enid surfaces on the realities of the world they live in as floating, troubled aliens. They seek comfort in the most desperate and oddest of ways.

There is a beautiful ambiguity in the way this film ends, and it is as if Enid has boarded a bus towards that place where all these invisible ghosts appear and reside. (5/5, January 1 2013)

Damsels in Distress, dir. by Whit Stillman (2011)It began, as I thought, only a slight permutation of the Mean Girls formula, but grew into something inherently peculiar and dealt with an implausible milieu of not-so-rich not-so-intellectual but seemingly the sort of Ivy League brats would attend to. The characters are machinated by the common stereotypes, but the narrative propels these marionettes into something fresher, that it feels like the film outgrows the already tired hip indie comedy formula that films like Clueless and Ghost World have once masterly achieved. Doesn’t quite cut it at that par, though, but still worth a watch. (4/5, January 2 2013)

Shame, dir. by Steve McQueen (2011)(4/5, January 3 2013)

The Day He Arrives, dir.  by Hong Sang-soo (2011)(5/5, January 3 2013)

Life of Pi, dir. by Ang Lee (2012)Ang Lee’s Life of Pi is masterfully paced, considering almost the entire film is only a lengthy version of its premise, and brilliant already at that; is elegantly shot, as its breathtaking visuals translate from spectacle after spectacle, without failure; and owns such a unique perspective, that you can’t help but agree with that thing I’ve read about it, that there comes a time when the right project is done by the right director at the right time – nothing else can be so wrong. (4/5, January 12 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty, dir. by Kathryn Bigelow (2012)Funny how one of my friends, who saw Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, points out a startling difference between Ben Affleck’s take on a partly – almost too off yet pretty much still in point – thematic commonality of his film, Argo, and Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Affleck’s Argo relies on the devices that make cinema both an art form and a source of entertainment. Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty is concerned with objective revelations, speaking in images with such seriousness and bluntness in tone there are heady instances of torture that seem to knock the sissy squeal of suspense Affleck’s Argo has, anyway, pulled off.

But an afterthought: I enjoyed Argo more than Zero Dark Thirty. Argo‘s gripping, biting storytelling gnaws on your skin like a parasite, while Bigelow’s is trapped in the politics of the whole search for the most popular terrorist in recent years. Yet Bigelow’s narrative suffers mostly because there is always too much to take in, what with all the stark jargons of CIA proceedings and all that jazz. But where it shines, it does, so blindingly a luster found in Jessica Chastain’s perfection of a performance as Maya, who holds on to her risky theory because she thinks she’s 100% certain, and she is. Chastain dominates in the realm of today’s cinema, and in here she is magnetic, pulling in your attention as you unblinkingly follow and admire, and be left in awe until the film closes to its impending end, a curious look at both the struggle and relief, of a Maya that has fought and won, and is it just that, she did? I wonder.

Too, of the whole point and intention. What is this film for? Almost the whole world is witness and in-the-know of the Bin Laden manhunt & capture. In the end I am left thinking how self-serving and fascist-leaning it is, to some extent. America as master of the world. They will kill anyone who will get in their way, in any way possible, may it include torture, the loss of morality, and so on, so on, so on. (3/5, January 13 2013)

This Is 40, dir. by Judd Apatow (2012)This Is 40 still holds the trademark Judd Apatow laughs, but is weaker in its entirety. I still can’t get over the post-pregnancy vagina joke though. (2/5, January 20 2013)

A Royal Affair, dir. by Nikolaj Arcel (2012)I’m not one to watch period drama pieces for leisure, but then sometimes I’m forced to, and it’s why I’m led to this Danish portrayal of the struggle of the Enlightenment age in the midst of an overly conservative and religious Denmark. It felt too long for the necessity of its narrative, but still nice to look at. Paintings-esque shots, anyone? (2/5, January 20 2013)

ParaNorman, dir. by Chris Buttler & Sam Fell (2012)In the tradition of Coraline, an “othered”, bullied kid can actually see the dead, and is scorned for it. ParaNorman is easy to watch, considering Anna Kendrick’s like, like, like banter portraying Norman’s dumb-blonde sister in full, pink, track suit beauty, is definitely a sight to see. (3/5, January 20 2013)

Celeste and Jesse Forever, dir. by Lee Toland Krieger (2012)
Celeste and Jesse Forever tries too hard to break the tried and tired conventions of the rom-com, but surely it shies away from its aim, and loses balance most of the time, hit-and-misses go by as it’s punctuated by its suggested melodramatic inevitability. Although, I must say: Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg prove to be actors with powerful chemistry. (2/5, January 20 2013)

Rebelle (War Witch), dir. by Kim Nguyen (2012)
The big winner of the Tribeca Film Festival 2012, War Witch greatly reminds me of Arnel Mardoquio’s Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim in their manner and approach on themes of war. It’s a compelling feature, complete with armed youngsters out to escape from their inevitable tragedies. In the midst of it, the pack’s very own “witch” and “magician/sorcerer” have their own romance arc, until it dissipates into a messy tragedy where in a young age of 14 we know our little heroine is doomed to be trapped in the labyrinthine landscape of war until the day she breathes her last breath. (4/5, January 20 2013)

The Kid With a Bike, dir. by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (2011)The Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid With a Bike works like a contemporary parable lifted out from the spirit of the Italian neo-realists; a portrait of a rebellious, troubled kid who is on his own search for answers that he never gets. Which is how the world works anyway.

Wonderful, delightful all throughout. (5/5, January 27 2013)

This Is Not a Film, dir. by Jafar Panahi (2012)Roger Ebert writes, “This Is Not a Film is not a film, because its director is not a director.” On a 20-year filmmaking ban and a six-year prison term, the great Iranian director Jafar Panahi with a documentarist as a literal partner-in-crime makes this earnest tale about the essence of cinema and the arts – some even shot merely on an iPhone camera.

What the two get out from the experience in the end is a grand narrative about the morality of the camera, and how it extends towards a nearer line of reality. It leads to a final sequence so unexpected and self-reflexive of the not-film’s own propaganda, though it blatantly has none. You are left in awe of the power that lies behind the lens and reaches out to the mixture of light and shadow. (5/5, January 28 2013)

Turn Me On, Dammit!, dir. by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen (2012)(4/5, January 29 2013)

Garbage Soliloquies, on Girls 2×5

At the beginning of its second season, Lena Dunham’s Girls begins to take out the leftover clutter that has been previously stacked up at everyone’s dusty closets. Everyone is in transit—letting go, moving on. What is life but a series of wrongs we persistently try to right every single day that pass us by?

We are human. Why we commit to mistakes, is why—we’re humans.

At its fifth episode, Girls meanders onto a different route, as if suddenly the show needed to stall from its crazy, hazy successions new episode after another one. This is its breather. The girls need to breathe. To recap everything that’s happened, the opening montage shows each one having their difficult confrontations with respective “lovers”. But none of that is tackled directly on this particular episode; rather, it’s Hannah’s odd two-day escape from real life that serves the purpose of this needed continuation and resolution.

It begins with an argument at Ray’s café and a nearby neighbor concerned about his garbage situation that seems to involve one of Ray’s employees. Hannah is stuck in between boasts of machismo, screams that complicate rather than clarify. However, Hannah provides us an explanation: she goes off ringing the concerned neighbor’s house, and introduces herself as the guilty culprit, while being offered a glass of lemonade by the wealthy doctor Joshua.

Hannah addresses her as Josh, which she thinks is the same name, but Joshua persistently corrects her, as if anything of this matters. See, this is swift easy-way-out escape, and in this episode are two individuals sharing a bad day—or say, what, a bad time, a bad period in their humdrum lives?

So of course, given that we know Hannah’s sensibilities as a person it is no surprise that she aggressively makes a move—kisses Joshua on the lips while in silent waiting—and Joshua doesn’t budge but actually goes along with it. At night Hannah excuses herself to leave, but Joshua begs her to stay. She stays.

Because why not? Also, why though?

We are human. The moment we open up to someone in whatever way—and most of the time, we lay ourselves bare firstly on the physical sense—we are presented with an illusion of comprehension from each other, a degree of comfort shared by half-strangers and pseudo-lovers. Hannah, however, derives this illusion from the deceit of language: “You’re beautiful,” Joshua utters while they’re face-to-face in bed, and she thinks no one’s ever said that to her, ever. These little things that differently weigh on our meanings and intentions are somehow that make us commit the wrongs instead of the rights.

Being Hannah, once she has felt her sense of control over Joshua the stranger she pours out her genuine feelings and sentiments, in a gist pleading—who and what?—that she wants to be happy, and only that. And she goes on and on until Hannah realizes the frightening mistake she’s made herself do. This man is still, however you put it, a stranger that wouldn’t budge, that probably wouldn’t care. Why is she telling him all this?

The next day Hannah is left alone, stripped off of the silly illusion of escape. Before she exits she takes out the garbage, as if in a grander scale and a figurative image, what she has dumped outside of herself when she threw out all of her pains and emotions at Joshua has to be thrown outside, where they rightfully belong. And in this simplistic ending sequence we are led to identify how we are like Hannah whose garbage she doesn’t know where to rightfully throw.

Sometimes, we are kept out of the confines of what we are used to. Hannah has lost the key to the proper dumpster where her garbage is supposed to be at, and why she wanders off elsewhere, illegally putting trash on someone else’s bin. Which she, then, does again at Joshua, stacking up all her excess clutter at someone else’s all-eyes-and-ears.

And it’s frustrating, as Joshua points out, to suddenly see that your own garbage bin is invaded by some stranger’s own, aggressively and without permission. So Hannah sets out on her own. As we all should.  2/12/13

Where Anne Hath a Way, All Else Hath Not: On Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables

Anne Hathaway’s close-up is kind of a waste when the director himself doesn’t know how to do a proper close-up.

This upcoming lambasting has nothing to do with my still existing bitterness derived from Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, albeit his stronger feature, still appears the weaker soldier in battle against David Fincher’s The Social Network that year. (And of course, winning an Oscar doesn’t define the greatness and value of a film, but the letdown it entails covers the overwhelming disappointment at the strike of that moment, so.) But anyway, yes. Hooper’s Les Misérables is indeed a mere pawn, an intentional bait for a much warranted trophy, unthinkable and sloppy in its most parts, leaving out the logic of good filmmaking in almost its ultimately tedious entirety. I’m sure its attention to every obvious detail on melodrama is a sure winner to the Filipino audience, why it’s much favored and loved, but as someone whose eye is subjected to notice its errors no matter how slight or palpable — I pay much to the recognition of its shameful off-key imbalances, both literally and figuratively.

Sure there’s Russell Crowe who spearheads the march towards off-key palpability, his nasal tune an annoyance that his last song during his aptly ominous suicide is sure a sight deserving of a massive applause. Hooper’s noteworthy visuals is a delving into a forced unconventionality, that sometimes even the structure of each sequence feels amateurish, seemingly all too abruptly thought out and executed.

I know it’s a film, and expectations on flawless vocals on every song is not a must. But in the end it’s a musical film, and you can never leave out the factor of it being tied up to its existence as being part-musical. Sure, live-recording every bit of it is an ambitious and interesting idea – a eureka! in the midst of a tired and tried and tested way of doing musical films in the past, and oh, you know, Tom Hooper is that great visionary and here is an apt legacy he leaves to cinema and beyond (end sarcmark here). But what travesty it entails when the decision of emphasis done by long takes of “singing heads”, close-ups that punctuate in full exclamation every tiring acts — not everyone in this film shines like Anne Hathaway does when she dreamed that dream we all wanted to dream for the success of this adaptation, to no avail.

And see! The edge and strength of this film boils down to its spectacular performances: Hugh Jackman who bullies Russell Crowe’s Javert fictitiously, and his nasal congestion of a voice, realistically; and Anne Hathaway, who as a corny angel of death, still radiates like no one else. And what a crime that you strip away the audience of this performance not even until through the thirds of the film, and that every persistent act succeeded by Eponine and Cosette is a pale attempt, not even the overly dramatic On My Own sequence can salvage the drag of the moment that precedes it.

In the end we calculate the other aspects that leave us in awe: the beautiful set design that Hooper wastes with lousy cinematography, the great performances that are denied of their value in the sloppy pace of the film’s structure, and most importantly, the much-valued narrative that Victor Hugo lent to future generations such as ours, scarred all throughout by the hands of the wrong artist who translated it to the moving image. (2/5)

Hey, Ma! I Made a List: 2012 in Local Cinema

This year was all about rushing to the theaters, wishing I’d never miss even the trailers (or, for the UP screenings of Cinemalaya the endless loop of promotional videos), wishing I’d have more time & money to support my little vice to see more movies on the big screen, wishing I’d have more time & energy to stay up post-academic post-org stuff to score for a much-awaited torrent leak (down with piracy! — or not?), wishing I’d have more anything and everything just to get to see all the things I want to see.

It was a blast. And since I’m a sucker for lists, here’s what I’ve come up, films I have been privileged to see, been privileged to be exposed to, that both inspire and intimidate, I as a film student who wish for the same dreams to come true.

And before this introduction extends to a sappy, cheesy speech about my personal venture to cinema, here, ten I’ve loved and five more I’ve liked all the same.

I VERY MUCH LOVED:

Colossal, Whammy Alcazaren

There are never enough words, never enough stories, never enough means, never enough voices, never enough anything–and this is what strives and emanates from the loud gunfire of provocation of Whammy Alcazaren’s youth. Hence, Colossal, a film of massive proportions in its ambition, but also of power, also of skill, also of talent.

There is nothing like it I’ve seen, at least, so far: a dreary dreamscape of the universe, and of the elements that build it–the temperament sea, the stealthy jungles, the noisy city, and even the expanding galaxies. The world evolves and so does the myth of Colossal‘s Man, and so does its pain (and so, also of the world’s), and so does its grief (and so, also of the universe’s).

Here we welcome not only the rally of an inimitable soul, but also of hopes and what it may ever produce, but also of dreams and whatever it may lead to build.

Pascalina, Pam Miras

When most Pinoy indie flicks of the digital era is tiringly shot with the unattractive gloss of DSLR sheen, Pam Miras’ debut feature Pascalina works as a glorious interruption–a film that values its inner chunk over the perfection of the image. In the humdrum drag of everyday nuisances over your boring boyfriend, your stuck-up office-mates and “friends”, your odd train-wreck of a family and everything else in between, nothing more emphasises the palpable extraordinariness of the mundane but with Miras’ camera-eye, which in unexplainable charm, exhibits the exceptional dirt of the grain than entrap the image with the crisp-clear clarity made possible by expensive lenses. And in so doing does Miras, in Pascalina’s character, bring out the ugliness reality could ever bring forth to our lives, served on our dinner tables with the stench of a live, beating heart taken out fresh from the deadened gloat of the literally dead mistress of your boyfriend whom you, of course, so triumphantly, devilishly executed.

Ang Nawawala, Marie Jamora

It is difficult to correlate Ang Nawawala in this year’s Cinemalaya when you are armed with the presumption (or better yet, a silly superstition) of the ideal Pinoy indie anatomy–which,  to add further, should not at all be shot point-blank, should it even be triggered. It has been a strong subject of intrigue, criticism, and endless discussions and arguments; and hey, aren’t we glad about that to some extent, at least?

To carry on further, it has survived, albeit weakly, a week-long war on commercial theaters against the behemoths’ regular serving of their usual stinking shit. It is enough, then, to pinpoint the many reasons why Marie Jamora’s debut feature triumphs, a charming coming-of-age tale about twin brothers and the inevitability of the first-love-first-heartbreak spell and the heavy gravity of loss and the mechanics of the bourgeois family that is harshly broken like unassembled jigsaw pieces, as they dizzyingly puzzle themselves back to their wholeness.

Diablo, Mes de Guzman

I wonder how many Filipino families which histories work terrifyingly as in Mes de Guzman’s portrait of a family in shambles, that to be transformed into the art of the cinema it works as a horror shrouded with unseeable demons and all that jazz.

Diablo mesmerizes in the immersion of its entire span, that to replace the tiring dribble of words and melodramatic shrieks in argument we witness only what is in the silent periphery of reality, always existing in the terrors of the night’s dark spaces. That what releases the shackles that hold emotions is not of one’s own son’s death, not of one own’s son’s overdue resolution–certainly not the intangible, only the physical.

Kalayaan, Adolf Alix Jr.

What some person in the internet has said encapsulates this film: “An Apichatpong Weerasethakul film not directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.” But slight departures from the strong comparison, Kalayaan deserves to also be a film of its own greatness, masterfully weaved.

Give Up Tomorrow, Michael Syjuco

A remarkable documentary of palpable passion and rage, that the viewing experience is like seeing the justice system taunting you face-front, picking on you until you crazily, willingly want to decide to get up to fight from your seat and you realize there is nothing to do but digest each scornful image and swallow each difficult truth, and that’s that, that’s that.

REquieme!, Loy Arcenas

Another exhibit of injustice that also never settles without a good fight, Loy Arcenas’s REquieme! weeps and grieves not only for the literal deaths inside its narrative, but also the death of good character and the death of morality.

In the end there is nothing to do but move on, wait for the right moment and decide to turn away and never look back, your feet doing all the work, until your heart and soul finally would overtake the dreaded race towards acceptance.

Bwakaw, Jun Lana

This equally heartwarming and heartbreaking tale of old age manifests its narrative with an apt quietness, prolonging it until it reaches its dark punchline–the arrival of death, the inevitability of the cycle of life.

Catnip, Kevin Dayrit

A work that screams style-over-substance, and in no way does it pretend to unlearn this basic fact, Kevin Dayrit’s Catnip is still, after-all, a beauty to marvel at, complete with Lauren Young’s deadly smirk and Maxine Magalona’s big boobs, and all those hypnotic slow-mos you once thought of doing, too, when you saw Lars von Trier and Xavier Dolan do it in their films.

Anak Araw, Gym Lumbera

Complain all you want when you think Philippine cinema is overpopulated with its formulaic bull, and wait ’til you see Gym Lumbera’s audacious work, Anak Araw, with all its littered probinsiyano kids crawling acting as goats, a Squidard-looking kid with snorkel equipment passive as ever even when a shark is within reach while, this happens simultaneously does other kids get thrown and dipped into the sea. But beyond the crackle of humour we are offered are the strong images of post-colonial accentuation, how our ABAKADA is never ABAKADA in those old cardboard-tutorials, how the rendition of the ultimate kundiman “Dahil Sa ‘Yo” is that of Nat King Cole, listened to by some old men on a seemingly long drive, and how no matter we struggle through the cracks just like those old men disassembled from their probinsiya orchestra still we falter and surrender, we falter and surrender. But never, ever give up.

I ALSO LIKED:

The Animals, Gino Santos

Jungle Love, Sherad Sanchez

Harana, Benito Bautista

Alagwa, Ian Lorenos

Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim, Arnel Mardoquio