Return of the Melodrama

Kung Aagawin Mo ang Lahat sa Akin
Directed by Eddie Garcia
Written by Jose Javier Reyes and Gina Marissa Tagasa

If we were a little more conscientious and a lot less snooty about our film history, we would be able to draw out helpful lessons on how a community of film artists manages to acquire an acceptable level of competence within certain filmmaking genres. The corollary would prove even more significant: the movie-going masses necessarily develop a taste for quality or at least a tolerance for intelligent dramatic discussion, and the process by which this is brought about should provide invaluable insights beyond the realm of aesthetics. Those who slummed around a great deal in movie-houses during the last two decades will agree with me that the late 1960s had an abundance of above-average Pinoy Western (or koboy) movies; the mid-seventies, a wealth of alternative-style attempts; and the early eighties, a series of inspired gangster films, bringing us full circle to the early sixties coming-of-age of the genre with the antics of the now-antiquated Lo’ Waist Gang. Those with predispositions toward academic complications will even be able to point out three related observations: First, koboy movies were the same gangster movies masquerading under another form to evade the expansion of censorship powers during that period. Second, the last decade’s experimentation may have been brought about by the challenge of a cultural breakaway resulting from the declaration of a (fascistic) New Society by the past regime. And lastly, the resurgence of gangsterism onscreen would be indicative of the movie system’s longing for an age of innocence after the disillusion effected by the militarization of the censors body.

11011So it’s a new era all over again, but this time local moviemakers are treading the path of filmic progress too carefully, so much so that they have reverted to an even more ancient convention in movie presentation – the melodrama, which, from available evidence, reigned supreme during the fifties. On the other hand, the generic elements of Pinoy melodrama circa the mid-eighties are being refined to the point where, save for a few exceptions (offhand I could name only one, Gregorio Fernandez’s Malvarosa), the current crop of such movies has already surpassed its 1950s counterparts. If the present trend develops further, and if this trend gets reflected in reality (in fact our political experience is already beginning to exhibit the same plot twists and character reversals typical of high melodrama), then the period after last year’s revolt may yet be known as an extended season of melodrama.

11011Kung Aagawin Mo ang Lahat sa Akin would be a representative sample; a more accurate rendering would be the same statement, but with the title replace by “the typical Viva movie.” Granting the limitations inherent in generic formats, particularly the ones that get in the way of thematic and character development, one should grant that no other outfit does it better than Viva Films. One could name a number of relatively superior works – Laurice Guillen’s Kung Mahawi Man ang Ulap and Maryo J. de los Reyes’s Saan Darating ang Umaga? to name a couple – but this kind of hairsplit distinction would be tantamount to much ado about something that doesn’t deserve too much fuss in the first place. To be pedantic about it anyway, I’d rank Kung Aagawin director Eddie Garcia’s Sinasamba Kita somewhere above this confection; for additional controversy, I’d say he’s improved a lot, artisanship-wise, since Atsay. At least Kung Aagawin progresses from an awful opening to a less offensive conclusion, although a final concession to unqualified happy-ending requisites (the heroine meets her Prince Charming in the most unlikely location) has been appended, as if pleading to more critical observers not to be carried away by preceding achievements.

11011The only trouble with melodrama, compared with the other genres mentioned so far, is that it could become reactionary to the point of giving anti-hero characters a most difficult time. In Kung Aagawin, the only liberated character, the heroine’s natural sister, is saddled with Electra-complex motivations and an unbelievably moralistic comeuppance. That snide aside, I suppose one could let down one’s defenses for a genuinely unproductive but perversely engaging outing with this piece of, er, pastry? Next shouting match, please.

[First published March 18, 1987, in National Midweek]

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Mellow Drama

Paano Kung Wala Ka Na
Directed by Mel Chionglo
Written by Ricardo Lee

Reviewing early this year a movie titled Kung Aagawin Mo ang Lahat sa Akin, I recall having given the much-maligned genre of melodrama more potential than most critics were willing to concede. Just to give you an idea of how ivory-tower snobbish mainstream film observation can get, what I’d written was tantamount to saying that melodrama could achieve its intention to entertain without being downright insulting. Maybe it was because the film under discussion then happened to have flowed out of the run-of-the-mill melodrama-maker, which in these shores can only be equated with a singular production outfit: Viva Films. Well, I had some quibbles then about the title being reviewed, and the only constant reaction I’ve had to Viva melodramas hadn’t differed before and hasn’t differed since. Somehow, somewhere, something just doesn’t work out, usually in terms of story development, internal logic, or characterization – or what the academically inclined would call the classical values in narrative craft.

11011This time we’ve just had another output that contains all the elements of the melodrama we’ve come to be suspicious, if not intolerant, about. Happily, for the purposes of my thesis, the film works in several crucial areas, except maybe for the fact that it wasn’t produced by the company I was hoping would be able to perfect the form. Paano Kung Wala Ka Na has a beginning and ending that are unmistakably happy, unless you’re one of the few misanthropes around who denies the celebratory tone commonly associated with partying. All the main characters are unmitigatedly and unforgivably rich, and by that token could pass for being beautiful; the fact that they are physically so increases their distance from us lesser mortals.

11011They enjoy the luxury of playing at love, though not as intricately as the old French romantic comedies could depict it, but then who among our audiences have been exposed to this tradition, much less understand French? When these characters cry their hearts out, which at the most occurs roughly every other scene, only the heartless can resist agreeing that such perfect specimens don’t deserve such cruelties of fate. Even the hoariest convention in contemporary romantic works – the Lovers’ Interlude, a meaningless montage of a young couple having their fill of life (to the tune of the movie’s theme, for which reason blame MTV) – can be considered herein a mere irritant, a distraction if you will, justifiable only in the sense that the film’s plot complexities could use some breathing space. The best part of all, the one aspect which local melodrama, for some strange reason, finds difficulty in presenting, is the fact that all the characters are given equal time – not in the literal sense, but according to a great classicist’s dictum that everyone, most especially a character in a well-told story, has her reasons for acting (in the dramatic, not the histrionic sense) the way she does.

11011In Paano Kung Wala Ka Na this realization is pursued through a clever ploy. In the guise of allowing the marital problems of elderly couples to reflect on their young, the movie proceeds to develop the oldies’ stories into a finely woven tapestry held taut by a commanding sense of irony. The fact that the young ones’ love triangle inadvertently reverts to a disconcerting triteness is one way in which truly creative film artists could subvert conventions while seeming to indulge in them. In this sense Paano Kung Wala Ka Na could still be considered at best a transitory milestone, whose final goal would be a product that manages to discuss the problems of the elderly according to updated notions of morality, without having to resort to young stars seemingly being taken seriously for understandable (though not always acceptable) box-office reasons. More important, it points the way for current state-of-the-craft melodrama-making: that twists and reversals associable with the genre are best employed in the service of humane characterization rather than the plot complications that typify current approaches. I’m sure someday someone will castigate Paano for making all melodrama characters predictably likeable, but for the moment such a device is innovative enough, and therefore desirable in itself.

Snooky Serna and Miguel Rodriguez as young lovers whose elders play out a more complex roundelay of relationships in Mel Chionglo’s Paano Kung Wala Ka Na (1987).

11011The film’s director-writer team-up (Mel Chionglo and Ricardo Lee respectively) has had some even more commendable output before, including Playgirl and Bomba Arienda, plus what I consider one of the most underrated movies of the current decade, Sinner or Saint. What an assuring development to realize that their decision to play around with current conventions of commercialism has provided them with invaluable skills and insights into that kind of challenge, and some sensible entertainment for the viewing public as well.

[First published October 14, 1987, in National Midweek]

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Failed-Safe

Walang Karugtong ang Nakaraan
Directed by Leroy Salvador
Written by Rene O. Villanueva and Raquel N. Villavicencio

A season of blockbusters they called it, with not one or two, but three or four major stars (Fernando Poe Jr., Dolphy, Sharon Cuneta, and possibly Christopher de Leon) vying for box-office supremacy: a Christmas film festival ahead of schedule, as certain drumbeaters alleged. As to the potential for good cheer – well, three satisfied producers out of an industry patronized by millions couldn’t be too bad a statistic; even a savage yearend typhoon could cancel school and office activities but never (and only in the Philippines, I’ll bet) the opening-day movie-going ritual. There must have been a whole lot of head-scratching among audiences who valued their money. All three movie projects were komiks-sourced one way or the other: the Dolphy and Sharon entries were adaptations actually, while FPJ’s involved a komiks writer outright, the better perhaps to save on expenses for purchase of copyrights.

11011I went for what I thought would have been the choice of those who’d have been aware of the said ritual but wouldn’t have the most ideal option of rejecting it altogether. Walang Karugtong ang Nakaraan had two sensible writers working on a relatively acceptable komiks story, plus some promising thespic talents. And all right, I confess I was lured as well by the prospect of discovering Sharon Cuneta’s breakout movie as a serious actress, having sensed a qualitative difference in her capabilities since her last two or three projects. Alas, I was to lose out in most every way, save for some minor observation or two about the current state of melodrama moviemaking. First lies on the creative level of story formation: that is, a plot can be made too agreeable for its own good. The characters in Walang Karugtong ang Nakaraan spend practically all their screen time tying up preceding developments and foreshadowing future ones, and for the genre in which they function, that amounts to a near-impossible task. To the characters’ credit they succeed admirably, especially in the crucial instance where the lead male explains to the lead female that he never noticed her virginity because he was too obsessed with his late wife.

11011On the other hand, the price paid for such a fail-safe method is twofold: first, the essential logic behind melodramatic developments – that of keeping the viewer from knowing what comes next – loses its raison d’être, since in this case the viewer tends to rely on the characters to figure out for her benefit why something has happened and what next could transpire. Bad melodrama of course does nothing except confuse in this regard, but Walang Karugtong proves that the solution lies between minimizing the confusion and sustaining the unpredictability, rather than providing all of one at the exclusion of the other. A more serious consequence, particularly for the movie under discussion, is that the characters become so able in defending themselves that they all turn out similarly wholesome. Once more, as I’ve pointed out earlier (than this review, in fact), better this sort of approach than the usual fallback of stereotyping. But best of all to find ourselves full circle in upholding the primacy of social and psychological imperatives as these impinge upon our self-conceived notions of goodness.

11011A tall order, you might say, for a not-as-ambitious undertaking as Walang Karugtong, and I have to agree. The other minor comment would be more in the direction of such an assembly-line product. I refer here to the use of original sound in the film, which simply means that in some instances, the filmmakers opted for the field recording of the actors’ delivery instead of dubbing in their voices in the sound studio. In the case of such artifice-laden performers as Christopher de Leon, Carmi Martin, and Tommy Abuel, this works out just fine. As might be expected, however, the use of the technique is downright haphazard, relying it seems more on whether the field recording could cut down on post-production expenses rather than capture what has come to be called “original emotion.” As a result, the actors in Walang Karugtong enjoy some moments of histrionic credibility, aided in no small measure by the replay of their voices during their on-location performances. Other times the self-consciousness that the sound studio promotes comes through, and we get to thinking if the past is really as disjointed as the title maintains. Indeed, Walang Karugtong ang Nakaraan, and so much for advanced Yuletide treats.

[First published December 16, 1987, in National Midweek]

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Reversals

Misis Mo, Misis Ko
Directed by Carlos Siguion-Reyna
Written by Bibeth Orteza

The best local motion picture debut since Chito Roño’s Private Show two years back also happens to be Viva Films’ best output so far. Now that his uneasy business of declarations has been done with, a qualification is in order. Misis Mo, Misis Ko, for all its inevitable association with its production outfit, is far from being a melodrama. From this observation does the movie derive its strong points, which are considerable, and its weaknesses, which deserve further qualifications. It would be easy to commend Misis Mo for not doing the things we’ve come to expect of Viva Films, not to mention local cinema. The countless plot twists and the overscaled production values are two items in particular that are mercifully spared the sensible viewer. But it would be unfair for both the filmmakers as well as concerned film observers to admire the work for merely being daring enough to run counter to expectations; if so, Misis Mo would have been in all probability pretty boring, conditioned as we’ve been to the visceral and emotional excesses of local cinema.

11011Actually Misis Mo creates an impact that could best be served by re-viewing or by post-viewing discussion, rather than by the very act itself of viewing. Only after the last plot point, a genuinely affecting coda where two couples at odds with each other meet again after a few years, does the realization occur that the entire foregoing body of development was intended as a comedy of manners. Sure, the humorous moments were all there all right, but roughly in the same proportion that may be found in typical melodramas. What’s problematic in Misis Mo is the amount of dead space relative to the absence of laughs – and by this I don’t mean the belly-natured slapstick-cum-witticisms that we’re treated to on the surface. Misis Mo is the sort of work that relies in the main on the credibility of its performers’ functions and interactions; you could probably dispense with the premise of a filmic reality and still come up with an acceptable work – which in fact is what the French court dramatists, by force of circumstance (film hadn’t been invented yet), had managed to do. The fact that the filmmakers correctly decided to emphasize close-ups demonstrates this point all the more clearly. It’s a measure of how accomplished all the other elements in Misis Mo are when one makes a statement to the effect that none of the four leads delivers satisfactorily, although all of them meet the level of competence required by melodrama.

11011This is where I think the movie embodies a uniquely medium-based tension. Apparently someone forgot to tell the actors that although they were in a Viva production, the project itself required something far different from Viva acting. All throughout the characters do mostly mugging of the mannered sort, but don’t get me wrong here – this approach could excel given the appropriate kind of vehicle, which unfortunately Misis Mo doesn’t happen to be. Among the four leads the relatively minor roles of the underprivileged couple are easier to take. Ricky Davao falls back on well-honed technique, while Jackie Lou Blanco works well precisely when she doesn’t try to, which is about half, the first half in fact, of the time; the other half she goes into a tremulous hard-edged whine that would normally pass off as melodramatic intensity, except that such an approach constitutes a misreading of character in this case. The rich kids, for their part, are completely off in their attack: Edu Manzano plays for glamour without comic reserve, while Dina Bonnevie is merely haughty where she has to be snooty. Such subtleties may be dispensed with in traditional melodrama, where the sheer narrative momentum helps cover up and in many cases even negate such lapses, but never in drama of a sophisticated order, to which Misis Mo comes admirably close. For this reason any foil-player with the correct balance of intellectual distance and emotional involvement can upstage any of the above – which is precisely what Jaclyn Jose, for all her prior restraint, does in her highlight of a confession to Manzano.

Jaclyn Jose, in a still from Chito Roño’s Itanong Mo sa Buwan (1988), anticipating the reflexivity of Carlos Siguion-Reyna’s Misis Mo, Misis Ko (1988).

11011I’ve already mentioned the well-advised use of close-ups in relation to how it exposed the movie’s less-than-adequate histrionic properties. One other technique has to be discussed as well: the filmmakers’ awareness of the so-called mirror potentials of their medium, in which it could be allowed to comment on itself by self-referential devices. In Misis Mo this is facilitated by setting the couples in an audiovisual profession, where they encounter both creative personnel and final creations, and do some creating themselves; this echoes the scriptwriter’s first effort in Lino Brocka’s Palipat-Lipat, Papalit-Palit, but this time there’s a conscious effort to provide contrast and suggestion (too much of the latter, though). Again a more filmically alert ensemble would have found ways to maximize this contribution by intelligent interaction with their environment – but then, of course, they would still have to surmount the problem of presenting themselves and relating with one another to begin with.

11011This last feature, the movie’s throwback to the mirror-construction propositions in recent film theory, shows the benefits obtainable in formal film study and training. The ability to draw out appropriate responses from otherwise capable actors is something that comes from life in the round, but considering the dire need for new and well-informed talents in the industry, what we’ve got in Misis Mo will do. I might have a whole lot more points to raise about the movie’s ideational orientations – its notions about women, for instance – but I’ll be the first to admit to the subjectivity of my motives here; besides, conflicts between the sexes date back to antiquity and still have to be resolved with finality anyway. What’s more feasible is the expression of responsible support for a needful situation, so meantime I’d rather thank the stars (heavenly, of course) for whatever blessings I’ve been able to count so far.

[First published March 2, 1988, in National Midweek]

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Progressions

Isusumbong Kita sa Diyos
Directed by Emmanuel H. Borlaza
Written by Orlando Nadres

Kapag Napagod ang Puso
Directed by Maryo J. de los Reyes
Written by Jake Tordesillas

Nagbabagang Luha
Directed by Ishmael Bernal
Written by Raquel Villavicencio

Proof of how difficult it is to handle melodrama can be seen in the fact that no follow-up successes to Misis Mo, Misis Ko have been released this year – taking into account last year’s midyear outputs Paano Kung Wala Ka Na and Tatlong Ina, Isang Anak as gauges. Three successive releases, however, are more than just conveniently alphabetical in their chronology. They also serve to demonstrate for us certain lessons regarding the inherent and implicational aspects of film craft, on a level so basic that one might at first wonder how somewhat mature filmmakers could have overlooked them. These titles are Isusumbong Kita sa Diyos, Kapag Napagod ang Puso, and Nagbabagang Luha, although for the purposes of our framework we could begin by enumerating them according to decreasing technical competence: hence, Nagbabagang Luha, Isusumbong Kita sa Diyos, and Kapag Napagod ang Puso. One by one then.

11011Nagbabagang Luha must be the year’s model of plastic perfection, superior in this respect to its producer-director-writer team-up’s predecessor, Pinulot Ka Lang sa Lupa. Multiple credits for its visual elements – three cinematographers, two production designers – attest to the production’s concern for surface quality. The cynical could contend that this also indicates that the movie may have taken too long to finish, but this only confirms what has already become a rarity in these times: Nagbabagang Luha was definitely not intended to be a quickie. Before it came along, however, the year’s standard of competence was set by Isusumbong Kita sa Diyos, whose cinematographic achievement is more impressive in the sense that it observed a stylistic consistency. My objection to this, however, is easier to formulate, and so this is where the discussion really begins. Isusumbong actually employs film technique to compensate for an entire absence of verisimilitude. By the last polysyllabic term I don’t strictly mean the reincarnation angle on which the film plot turns.

11011Apart from the generally sympathetic readings of an admirably young cast, there hardly exists credible characterization in a context where logical behavior becomes crucial in advancing the cause of an essentially incredible system. To show understandable human beings responding to such a bewildering phenomenon would have enabled the viewer to identify with most, or at least any one, of the people onscreen. Nagbabagang Luha, for its part, somehow manages to take care in assigning proper background and motivations to its characters. This plus the principle of subsuming the visual factor to the requisites of plot ought to place it on equal footing, if not higher, than Isusumbong.

11011Yet there too exists a preoccupation with production values at the expense of thematic development in Nagbabaga. The handling happens to be largely a matter of directorial expertise (vis-à-vis the other movie’s cinematographic achievements), and so less obvious lapses are visible here. But the entire enterprise seems to flounder by an abiding lack of conviction in the project, as evidenced in a tendency toward campiness, especially in several lines of dialogue. All that this amounts to, in the case of both Isusumbong and Nagbabaga, is a fear of frank exposure of the limitations of material. To develop some amount of confidence, the filmmakers have overdone the polishing and finishing-touches aspect, with the correct assumption that careless film observers, not to mention the normally harried moviegoer, might either fail to take notice or be too appreciative of the effort expended in what essentially has amounted to a cover-up job.

11011Kapag Napagod ang Puso stands in stark contrast to these other two entries, primarily because it commits what Isusumbong and Nagbabaga were careful to avoid. As such it should have failed outright at the outset, with no redemption in sight even in the areas where the other two films also suffered. Strangely, however, it is Kapag Napagod that manages to sustain repeat viewings, relative to the other titles in question. By the very act of abandoning artifice, the movie’s creators paradoxically managed to disarm potentially critical audiences, making them more receptive to the smallest treats the medium could offer. If anything, Kapag Napagod might have finally been done in also by its reluctance to control the potential for excess of its merits. I refer here to the obviously improvisational delivery by a number of its performers, which were utilized as dramatic high points in the movie. The device begins to unravel when certain keywords (curses, in one case) get repeated too often for comfort, and in the editorial decision to dwell too long on uninterrupted takes.

11011Yet I must admit that such an approach has its charms, even for one already too over-exposed to the possibilities of cinema. For one thing, improvisation is rarely done in a serious vein in these parts; the practice is taken so much for granted that is has come to be associated with comedy. For another and more important thing, the sort of improvisation exhibited in Kapag Napagod works according to a mode of sheer rawness, rather than accumulated technique. In fact there is no technique to speak of in the film – whether directorial or histrionic. The movie shifts from carefully staged and rehearsed group scenes to nervous documentations of barely planned-out confrontations, with the acting seeming to dictate the style rather than the other way around. At first I was dismayed by the lack of consistency. Later I realized how necessary a semblance of planning is to fiction, even if only for the quiet moments to serve as breather for the “big,” showier portions.

11011I could only guess now what a mess the whole movie might have turned out to be if it had relied completely on its performers’ attacks of spontaneity. Besides, as it stands, it somehow supports my conviction that, within certain creative concerns, there is no such thing as correctness. The acting in Kapag Napagod will definitely not pass today’s textbook tests – yet its most powerful moments exceed anything done in recent memory. On the other hand, I dread to anticipate a spillage of improvisations from quickie comedies to high melodramas, as a result of the effectiveness (in box-office terms, that is) of the attempt in Kapag Napagod. Then again there might be some poetic justice in watching the very rich behaving in hit-or-miss method. Ah well, better the unpredictability of change than the complacency of competence. For now.

[First published August 24, 1988, in National Midweek]

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Campout

Natutulog Pa ang Diyos
Directed by Lino Brocka
Written by Orlando Nadres

Paano Tatakasan ang Bukas?
Directed by Emmanuel H. Borlaza
Written by Orlando Nadres

Sa Puso Ko Hahalik ang Mundo
Directed and written by Artemio Marquez

The trouble with prevalent local film criticism is that either it isn’t critical or it is. Either it’s an advertising package, with a usually minimal veneer of subtlety, or it’s the diametrical opposite – a pronouncement of definitive proportions utilizing criteria culled from the dwindling groves of academe. Hence the nature of incentives available to practitioners is encompassed on the one hand by publicity machineries of various makes and capabilities, and on the other hand by awards and ratings bodies, each designed to counter the other side: the academy award(s) for the studio system, the religious award for (presumably) the unscrupulous sector, the critics’ award for the movie press, and the movie press award for what seems to be the critics’ group. Currently the controversies in this aspect seem to center on the propriety of the existence of rivalries. Certainly one or the other so-named academy award group would rather be the only one of its kind, and even having the movie writers’ group divided between the critics and the, well, non-critics correctly implies one set of trophies too many.[1]

11011Lost in the lollapalooza is the reality that film output is actually more variegated than what the apologists of this state of affairs would have us believe. Never mind the alternatives – those products finished in non-commercial formats for usually non-commercial, or at least non-mainstream, ends. What about the majority – the film products that fall in between by refusing to pander outright to either side of the industry conflict? What we usually take notice of are the extreme instances that justify the polarizations within: the box-office success that proves the necessity of publicity, the artistic triumph that provides another excuse for the annual award-giving ritual, and rarer still, the popular and critically acclaimed product that reconciles both sides for the moment, until the next non-artistic top-grosser or artistic box-office flop comes along.

11011Few movies, Filipino or otherwise, are unqualified masterstrokes either way, and so for the most part (or so I believe) regular moviegoers actually attend to the national pastime more mindful of one another’s responses rather than what people in media have to say. Which is just as well. It would be the height of absurdity to subject movies like Natutulog Pa ang Diyos, Paano Tatakasan ang Bukas?, and Sa Puso Ko Hahalik ang Mundo to the declaration of the box-office winner, since the mere fact of doing good financially is already a reward in itself; on the other hand, it would also be the height of cruelty to impose criteria of artistry on efforts that may have set out to accomplish something more than just returns on investments, but definitely not “art.” Maybe one could approach them then from the perspective of entertainment? This would admittedly be difficult, premised as it is on pertinent cultural assumptions and connoting a good deal of subjectivity in the process. The easier option is to behave, instead of think, like a typical Filipino moviegoer, but then the responsibility of rendering some insights, however tentative, gets forsaken.

11011So here goes. Natutulog Pa ang Diyos is surprisingly effective, if you’ve been following Lino Brocka’s progression. Where he used to concentrate mainly on surfaces, testing a technical or technological approach or two while remaining faithful to a predetermined text, here he seems more relaxed about merely being competent and allowing himself or his actors some latitude in on-the-set explorations, and possibly even revisions. (The same atmosphere informed, to more effective results, Mike de Leon’s last commercial-format movie.) Brocka’s attempts are highly uneven, but when they work, they do so in unexpected ways, notably the clowning of Gina Pareño in the suspenseful expository portions and the rejection of reconciliation (and thus predictable sainthood) by the Lorna Tolentino character in the end.

11011Only time can tell how far Brocka can push this method (and look, no caps!); although widely practiced among local directors, so far only one, Ishmael Bernal, could exploit it and still retain some measure of integrity. Emmanuel H. Borlaza, for his part, has used it to better advantage in the past. Paano Tatakasan ang Bukas? evinces no perceptible amount of conviction whatsoever, save for the regionalist humor of Chanda Romero; the tandem between director and actress recalls their glory days in regional (Cebuano-language) cinema, although Paano Tatakasan may be forward-looking in its own way too. About midway through the story the lead character starts spouting evangelical propaganda, and the others straightaway follow suit. The instance demonstrates the supreme incompatibility of a conservative movement seeking legitimacy via a still-radical medium of expression; it upholds one’s faith in film just as it exposes the hypocrisy of moralists, who just as easily would have us reject the medium for its alleged immoral influences.

11011The upshot then of this triple-fare viewing is that Sa Puso Ko Hahalik ang Mundo may prove to be the least offensive, and therefore the most preferable, of the three. Well, nuts to the naïve. Sa Puso Ko is the most effective precisely because it dares to offend the most, and manages to sustain this mode of presentation, sometimes referred to as camp, to an admirably intolerable degree. Yet there is a value in Sa Puso Ko more felt than visualized. Where previous local efforts in modern-day camp, notably by the likes of Joey Gosiengfiao, proved too calculated (and therefore self-defeating), Sa Puso Ko contains the same deadly sincerity that made the same director’s previous outing, The Untold Story of Melanie Marquez, so difficult to dismiss in the face of its wholly dismissible material.

11011Sa Puso Ko in fact does one better by having not one but three lead characters delineating impossibly lachrymose tales within the all-too-ludicrous contexts of virginity, proletarian dignity, and filial piety. This plus the added advantage of fictional premises have provided Artemio Marquez with what may arguably be his mortal best, Brocka and Borlaza notwithstanding. And so this is what one sometimes gets for giving a well-intentioned film practitioner a well-deserved break. No mind-blowing mergence of art and craft, or sheer commercialist actuations. Just a curiously convoluted and intellectually refracted achievement of sorts. The mark of a master lies in how easy to make the whole thing seems to be, until you try to figure out a personal project along the same lines. You could just wind up smiling.

[First published November 9, 1988, in National Midweek]

Note

[1] When this article was written, the only available genuine (guild-formed) academy group was the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP), whose name was shared by the oldest continuous award-giving body, the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences or FAMAS – which in turn actually comprised older movie press members; the younger press practitioners formed the Philippine Movie Press Club (PMPC) with their own set of prizes, called Star Awards; the specialized type of movie press was the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (or Filipino film reviewers circle), which was formed in response to the increasingly detectable influence-peddling in the FAMAS. Since then, the FAP has had a splinter group, as did the PMPC, each of which also hands out awards. The MPP, which is actually dominated by academics, generated two other types of award-givers: a teachers group, and another academe-based group calling themselves the Young Critics Circle. (Personal disclosure: along with another member, Mauro Feria Tumbocon Jr., I was involved with the MPP and the YCC, as well as with a third critics group called Kritika.)

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Slugged Out

Imortal
Directed by Eddie Garcia
Written by Orlando Nadres

Ang Bukas Ay Akin: Langit ang Uusig
Directed by Laurice Guillen
Written by Ricardo Lee

Convolutions in developments attended by mounting conflicts brought about by an array of star-players and capped with a so-far happy ending characterized the year, and the decade that ends with it, as the most successful Filipino melodrama ever produced. Why, even the international market paid it more than a passing glance, although the return of investments (in terms of additional aid and loans) might have been realized sooner if only our government had the foresight of selling the event per se, as a multimedia product, rather than the issues it raised. Whatever our wizards of movie magic manage to conjure up will never be able to equal the real-life drama that this year’s coup attempt proffered. Many viewers were even willing to risk their very lives to observe the, pardon the pun, shooting – and the cost of production proved so high that some such lives were regarded, at least by certain quarters, as dispensable. Come to think of it, the producers – our political and military elite – outdid not just the local movie industry, or the entire media system, but themselves as well. The only coup attempt that could hope to surpass this year’s performance would be something on the order of the February 1986 revolution, one that would result in political, and not just media, success: next year’s, perhaps?

11011For its part the industry, true to its survival methods, came up with its usual concerted effort at an all-around filmic counterpart: the annual Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), which has always enjoyed the distinction of closing the year, if not anything else. Its disadvantage, relative to a real-life star-performed crisis, is that viewers have to spend proportionately for the number of film-viewing experiences they want to savor; moreover, not every entry will be worth the expense. The high-minded would have been left with only the twin melodrama entries in this year’s MMFF – which confirms the highly developed state that this particular genre has achieved in these parts. Action films have lately been restricted by the misfortune of having to conform to real-life, usually sensitive, and media-illiterate sources. Comedy could never compete with the everyday routines of our political players, while sex-themed films tend to thrive for those deprived – of either the capacity for doing the roles themselves, or the financial wherewithal to afford basic video technologies.

11011Melodrama allows by its premises the multiplicity of characters and developments that makes possible the integration of the disparate forms of action and comedy and (softcore) sex, plus the cathartic function of tearjerking. This year’s MMFF melodramas, Imortal and Ang Bukas Ay Akin, also provide extra lessons by which future such products (and coup attempts) could be better appreciated. Imortal takes off on the epic scope and multi-character portrayals of Bilangin ang Bituin sa Langit, going as far as pitting against the Nora Aunor-starrer her former husband Christopher de Leon and status rival Vilma Santos. It may be pertinent to observe that what Aunor begins, Santos follows through, and in a more triumphant albeit less artistic manner: the former’s climactic monolog in Himala served as the latter’s model in Sister Stella L. and a number of other outings, and now this. Ang Bukas Ay Akin, on the other hand, crowns Laurice Guillen as melodrama moviemaker of the year – and the end of the eighties, if we count in her MMFF entry last year, Magkano ang Iyong Dangal? Between festivals she came up with an out-and-out tearjerker, Rosenda, and managed to create the only successful breakthrough performance (as serious actress) this year for its lead performer, Janice de Belen, in effect leaving behind such long-time aspirants as Sharon Cuneta and Alma Moreno.

Laurice Guillen (b. 1947), a theater and film performer who started making films in 1980.

11011Ang Bukas Ay Akin compares with Imortal on the bases of scope and thematic (as opposed to technical) direction. Both films acknowledge the possibility of larger frameworks modifying the dramatic givens – politics in Ang Bukas Ay Akin, metaphysics in Imortal. The difference lies in the nature of the influence: in Ang Bukas Ay Akin, the issue of bureaucratic corruption serves as initial catalyst, while in Imortal, karmic reincarnation assumes increasing importance as the plot progresses. Critical reaction has been heavier on Imortal, primarily because of the burden it carries as MMFF best-film winner. The movie tries to do Bilangin ang Bituin sa Langit one better by providing not two but three double incarnates, with the generations ending not with the past (as in the case of the Guy and Pip characters) but in the future. To see’s to disbelieve, however: Bilangin might have chosen to pass up the potential for politicized involvements during its 1960s State University sequences, but Imortal confronts 1970s Communist insurgency head-on by presenting it as an unworthy alternative to the then-existent Marcos dictatorship; quite unwittingly, most of the peripheral characters sport Russian appellations (including a girl called Vanya, a man’s name), necessitating a double-take. For not only did the insurgency in actuality single-handedly represent the anti-dictatorship movement then, it was also struggling against the Americanization (which is practically antithetical to Sovietization) of Philippine culture.

11011This oversight is arguably extrinsic to the story, but within, or actually between, Imortal’s structure lies the weight of an incredible prologue and completely preposterous epilogue. First we are asked to accept that a pair of children could look exactly like the parents of their respective sexes; this requirement came after the middle of Bilangin, so Imortal has, and used, the advantage of developing the body of the story in attempting to obliterate this premise via the distracting complications of plot. Then when all’s almost forgiven, the pair dies once more without the benefit of legitimized love but with some illegitimate sex, which apparently was not considered satisfactory by the filmmakers; so we have to flashforward to the next century, where the pair reappears (as children of the children of the first), this time assuring themselves of wedded bliss with outrageous costumes and hairstyles and dopey laser patterns on chapel ceilings as indicators of the period.

11011Ang Bukas Ay Akin also attempts Rosenda one better by throwing in the political agendum and having a plural, rather than the earlier movie’s singular, cast of leads demonstrate its machinations. The strategy of allowing interrelationships to dictate the course of the story is praiseworthier than the reverse observed by Imortal, but then on a different level, Ang Bukas Ay Akin suffers in comparison with its festival rival and even its predecessor. It’s the age-old malady of central casting, wherein less capable performers acquire the weightier roles by virtue of their perceived box-office clout, often at the expense of realist credibility. The absence of sharper edges in the husband-and-wife lead tandem, contrasted with the steely delivery of a trio (Cesar Montano, Cherie Gil, and Isabel Rivas) of second leads in peak form, has resulted in the usual morality conflict that typifies komiks-sourced material. When the husband acknowledges in the end the dispiriting possession that filthy lucre has arrogated in him, the viewer is hard-put to recall any such evidence of evil, though of blandness there’s plenty. And although the wife was the main target of the dubious intentions of everyone, including her husband, her attack remains just as crucial, since her character disappears for a considerable stretch of the story. As it is, she leaves no imprint whatsoever, and is allowed to return by the others on the too-obvious pretext of reclaiming her child.

11011What Ang Bukas Ay Akin and Imortal make clear in the end is that, as in political life, conflicting approaches generate misgivings of their own, even if reduced to a question of form. In which case, other criteria may be proposed – sincerity vs. competence, to use the ones in real-life currency – but the devices by which these may be measured can prove even more problematic, considering the subjective factors continually at play. One final standard, economics (translated into per-capita income for the country and box-office results for the industry), is widely accepted as the bottom line. By this token, unlike in the instance of the national conflict, the perpetrators of the MMFF melodramas, by making the audience cry, have earned the right to smile all the way to the bank.

[First published January 24, 1990, in National Midweek]

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An Update

With our serious filmmakers finally taking stock of local melodrama conventions, we expect increased political awareness along with more expertise in the genre. How else can Pinoy melodrama be improved? Some tentative suggestions:

• Implement strict viewing procedures based on screening hours. The come-anytime arrangement merely reinforces the tendency toward episodic and unstructured treatments, since the viewer’s attention has to be first caught and then sustained at any point within the film, instead of allowing the product to devote more attention to plot logic and build-up.
• Search for and launch a female melodrama actress who physically personifies the masses. The shock of recognition could result in another coming-of-age on the part of the audience, similar to that of Nora Aunor’s followers when their idol decided to pursue serious artistic concerns. The other, perhaps riskier, option would be to repackage Aunor herself, who after all is thus far irreplaceable.
• Explore and develop an aesthetic basis for males as melodrama leads. One direction would be to draw from the foundations of the action film, wherein the violence helps justify occasional displays of emotional weakness, and comedy, which distances the lead from the other characters as well as the audience. Currently, men in local melodrama are essentially defined by issues raised by female characters, providing the inaccurate and questionable impression that domestic concerns should not worry men at all.

[First published October 24, 1990, in National Midweek]

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Film since February 1986

The two years since the 1986 February upheaval have spawned various situations for each aspect of Philippine mass media. A reversal has figuratively taken place in print, with what was once the alternative press now lodged in the establishment, in more ways than one. Whatever the apprehensions of practitioners for the future, in terms of the drift toward conservatism, consistency of circulation, and activities of trade-unionists, local print media – flourishing as it used to before the imposition of martial rule – once more enjoys the approval of our American counterparts for being freer than it may have a right to be. An irony has occurred in radio, the very medium that more than any other was directly responsible for the turnout of people power crucial to the overthrow of the past regime. Today the airwaves are better known as the domain of loyalists of deposed President Marcos, but the notion doesn’t seem too farfetched when we consider that radio has a captive mass audience, print has a more discriminating readership, and television is simply too expensive. With television the status quo may be said to have obtained, once we take for granted the shift in political loyalties. Viewership is as high as usual, but the proliferation of outlets as realized in the example of print failed to come about in the case of TV, partly because the huge financial outlets (only so many channels on the dial) promotes too fierce a competition. In one instance, the only newcomer, Channel 2, has been accused of resorting to controversial marketing strategies, particularly in terms of piracy of other stations’ programs, since its resumption of operations last year.

11011For the spoiled darling of local mass media, however, all three descriptions have applied in succession. From the period of the contested election that led to open anti-Marcos defiance, to until a few months afterward, the movie industry suffered a reversal so serious that insiders were comparing it to the situation three years back – when the obscene success of an international film festival led to moralistic backlash in the form of revitalized censorship. The irony was that, instead of acceding to the call for progress with responsibility, the movie industry chose to fall back on formulae that had proved effective prior to the slump. As a result, the local audience, which was ready for a cultural reorientation and reliant on the movies for a significant portion of this function, has been reconditioned to respond to the lure of escapism – the same element by which the previous regime had maintained a fantasy of fulfillment among the masses. Once the process of miseducation had again taken effect, the entire system had of course regained its status quo.

11011But with a noteworthy difference this time: what had once been prevalent was no longer necessarily acceptable. The most obvious indication of internal dissatisfaction with the movie industry’s recent actuations is the shift of its best and brightened talents to the related field of TV with a few others practicing in print, whereas in the past the movement, if any occurred, was in the opposite direction. The reluctance of the system of movie production to advance with the times is not difficult to understand. Among all the existing forms of mass media in the country, that of film realized its potential for political advantage along with the emergence of then-presidential candidate Ferdinand E. Marcos. Two terms later, each credited in no small part to the box-office successes of self-serving pseudo-biographical movies, the mechanisms for institutionalized control of the film industry were set up: the militarization of the censorship body in the middle period of martial rule, then the founding of a development agency right after the announced lifting of emergency powers.

11011Paradoxically the repressive atmosphere induced a reaction so daring and, because of the multi-levelled nature of cinema, so creative that observers even in other countries took notice and expressed admiration. These instances, however, were the extremes that contrasted with the rest. Eventually the mainstream, as a counter-reaction, calcified into the production of propagandistic action movies, cynical bold films, sleek melodramas, and inconsequential fantasy pictures. Thus the current dispensation, during its period of struggle, found in print and radio, and later TV, less resistance to its messages of criticism and dissent. Film was too closely guarded, and more complicated as a medium besides, to accommodate what was in the main an informational need. The then-opposition took note, and responded accordingly. After President Aquino’s takeover, film became the most neglected mass medium as far as the new government was, and still is, concerned. Its function of providing revenues through taxes that reduced gross intakes by more than a third was deemed sufficient to allow its open-market operation. The measure of freedom granted the more cooperative media, however, was denied the industry, on the hoary pretext that, revolutionary accomplishments notwithstanding, the masses’ morals still had to be safeguarded. Institutional support, which was necessarily non-profit in nature, was similarly held back, again with the use of the false logic that the system might have to resort to immoral movie screenings, as it did in the past, just to be able to support itself financially.

11011A strategy for salvation may be found in alternative action – the same measure that worked for the other media under discussion. At the moment, only two – intensive film education and alternative production and screening – have proved workable, and even then, on isolated terms. While the State University has graduated the country’s first batches of film majors, a plan to introduce film appreciation in high-school curricula fell through. Though an independently sponsored alternative film festival succeeded, the sponsorship of short-film competitions, from which cash incentives used to spur further production, has only been lately (too late, some practitioners claim) revived.

11011One last example will help clinch the argument. Although virtually every aspect of the movie system has been organized – from concerned artists to critics and even journalists – the inevitability of unionism still has to reach the most ordinary of movie workers. What the industry has at present are the extraordinary apparatus of an academy comprising guilds as well as a setup for a workers’ welfare fund – both of which are dominated by producers. Most curious indeed is the progress visible in print companies, in which trade unions have proliferated since the revolution and, in one instance, managed for a time to take over the operations of a now-defunct newspaper. In mid-1986 a major effort was exerted to once and for all organize movie workers for union purposes but, as in the attempt to implement film appreciation in high schools, the project failed to attain fruition.

11011All the failures so far may be traced to the same source: the apathy of the powers-that-be toward the potential for progress of the movie industry. The presence of censorship and the absence of institutional support, these two abide. Marcos-era experiments in providing one without the other merely proved that both are expressions of the same concern, on the part of authorities, that could either encourage or discourage responsible performance on the part of the industry. Specifically, the lifting of censorship without an institution to nurture the creativity of artists led to excesses on the part of filmmakers prior to the declaration of martial law, while the provision of institutional encouragement amid stringent and arbitrary censorship led to excesses on the part of government after the lifting of martial law.

11011Freedom and support then: one cannot exist for long without the other, especially in industrialized culture. Perhaps such was the intention of the past regime in allowing one innovation exclusive of the other, so as to prove the industry’s incapability of addressing the demands of progress. The possibility of withholding both or either is out of the question. As to whether the government will overcome its bias against the movie system and eventually allow it the means by which it could measure up to the challenge of growth and development, the prospects are so far in increasing danger of flickering out.

[First published December 1986 in Philippines Communication Journal]

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People-Power Cinema

To begin with, there isn’t any celluloid commemoration, whether factual or fictionalized, of the February 1986 revolution. The only one ever attempted, Four Days in February (Marilou Diaz-Abaya directing from Jose Dalisay Jr.’s script) has been shelved and, due to the recent reversals in the political fortunes of the Armed Forces “reformists,” has been for all practical purposes rendered stale as yesterday’s pan de sal. All this may be for the better. For one thing, the revolution is widely perceived by all its major participants, regardless of their positions on the political spectrum, as still finished, although I shudder to think what further upheavals await us. More important, those heady days 20-or-so months ago (more like a generation since, you’ll agree) seem better consigned to memory: at least there’ll be a multitude, millions literally, of versions of what actually transpired, rather than a few interpretations unfairly imbued with the aura of credibility through plastic manipulations.

11011A problematic, however, can be sensed from the fact that local film criticism has been thrown into disarray by what outputs actually turned up, rather than by what have been turned down or out. Not a single serious product made since February 1986 – serious releases immediately after, but those could only have been made before the revolution! After is what matters, and the trail so far is littered with melodrama and fantasy, hardly the stuff for the sensible artistic discussion we used to know…. Well, not quite, if we count in the occasional bold and action film. But save for last year’s critics’ awardee Takaw Tukso, the former has been nothing if not the now-standard exploitation vehicle, while the latter has evolved into that most unsatisfactory mutant, the real-life hero’s story.

11011There may be a more positive stance one can take, and I believe it’s not only practicable, but absolutely indispensable, if our so-called critics are to assume once more their relationship of mutual nourishment with the industry. The problem is that the dark days of dictatorship, pardon the bromide, fostered in us an equation of grimness with seriousness. The fact that our culture is predominantly Catholic didn’t help: what comes easy is always suspicious, if not downright sinful, so value increases in proportion so suffering. The application of this sometimes-but-not-always valid assumption to film criticism becomes painfully obvious if we re-view (watch all over, that is) the titles that seemed to matter during the Marcos years. Admittedly a handful of great ones will continue to stand out, but I’ll bet my sense of vision that a disturbing proportion will emerge as having been admirable for some form of political or social daring, and nothing more. To an extent more than we care to admit, we were actually putting a premium on titles with an eye to watching the powers-that-were, who never had enough good taste to begin with, squirm from the references. Artistic achievement assumed secondary value, the icing on the pie in Imelda’s face, and sometimes, especially in the case of genre (standard box-office) titles, even became a liability because of its threatening nature. Why, if a bold or fantasy or action or melodrama movie were to be given serious consideration, who’ll pay attention to the latest academically engineered agitprop work of what’s-his-name, when his budget, not to mention his skills, couldn’t even begin to compare with the industry’s full-blast capabilities?

11011Of course this entire state of things became possible only because the viewing public occasionally made known its support through its patronage, and so our sociological framework of the masses seeking enlightenment during a period of oppression comes full circle. But now they’ve come to prefer escapist entertainment, and our pinpointing responsibilities on film- and policymakers will only amount to so much barking up the wrong signpost. The February 1986 revolution remains, after all, a happy memory, a veritable dream-come-true no scripted theatrical experience could ever hope to match. The desire to somehow extend the good feelings, even if only in the confines of a movie house, is where we’re starting from. If we’re loaded with titles that provide nothing but happy endings – which is actually the current case, even among our favorite pre-revolution filmmakers – then we better start looking for new values to champion, rather than imposing old ones. And if I may add the obvious, this is a good an opportunity as we’ll ever have to return to simple virtues of classicism in cinema – the well-told tale done with utmost competence, adding appropriate points for imagination. Where this will take us is anybody’s guess, including mine, but what matters right now is that film artistry, though always somehow with us, has never had, for reasons often beyond our control, its proper place in our hearts.

[First published October 28, 1987, in National Midweek]

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Studious Studios

The return of the studio system used to be one of the most abused bogeyisms brandished before us by prophets of gloom of various persuasions and motivations in the local movie industry. The scare died down recently, for the simple reason that the threat of studio re-domination never really returned. That was then, of course, and now all developments, to use a euphemism, indicate that no other setup exists other than that founded by and upon our modern-day movie moguls.

11011To be sure, the early confusion may have been numerological in nature. The last time a studio system flourished, it was manifested in the form of a trinity: a major, a rival, and an underdog, more popularly known as Sampaguita, LVN, and Premiere after the war. Movie stars, in an apparently instinctive bid to appropriate the axis of power among themselves, contributed greatly to the reshuffling, by attempting to violate the rule against shuttling from one outfit to another. The collapse of the studio system may have been due to the studios’ resistance to the upward mobility of their personnel, including their most prized possessions, their contract stars. All that was needed was for an entire pack of aspiring underdogs, then as now calling themselves independents, to provide lucrative options for discontented performers who’d break away from their mother companies only to find themselves blacklisted (as a form of collective protection) by the other biggies.

11011The star system, however, never really prospered beyond an individualized basis, for roughly the same reasons that the independents eventually yielded to the superstars: the individual entrants were too self-sufficient to coalesce or forge alliances, and the local market could only accommodate so much – three at a time, it seems. In a manner of speaking, the industry’s system has never really been based on independents or stars, not once; only on studios. Once the inadequacies of the alternatives between independents and superstars became clear, the time was ripe for another season of studio domination. Three at a time, then. With Agrix and Bancom Audiovision battling for supremacy during the 1970s, and a number of worthy stragglers, notably Crown-Seven, striving for third place, warnings began to be raised. Agrix folded up, so did Crown-Seven, leaving Bancom at the top and Regal, for a time an underdog, the closest rival. Bancom was then dissolved along with its larger conglomerate, and the apparent jinx suffered by those in the position of major was enough to pacify the pessimists.

11011Without much fanfare Regal took top place, while Viva came on strongly enough to claim the status of rival. Only an underdog-newcomer, the Marcos government’s Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (ECP), made enough noise by way of threatening to dislodge both occupants, and the rest of the movie industry as well, from their profitable circumstances. It took the February 1986 upheaval to eliminate, among others, this last obstacle in the re-establishment of the studio system. Seiko assumed the unlamented ECP’s underdog role, and happy days, at least for the mogul-owners, were here again.

11011So far all the evidence favors the reincarnated versions over their predecessors. They’ve been wise enough to allow the sharing of contract stars among themselves – to the detriment of the personalized social-cum-thespic training the old studios used to proffer, impose even, on an in-house basis. Lately they’ve even outdone themselves on a conceptual level. For where the old studios employed certain generic trademarks with which to identify themselves – LVN with musicals and costume spectacles, Sampaguita with fantasies and tearjerkers, Premiere with gangster stories – the present ones have taken to exchanging their corporate images with one another: Viva, which prided itself on gloss, has been attaching its name, rather than that of its sister company Falcon, to low-budget crime stories like Ex-Army and Boy Negro (formerly associable with Seiko) and recently came up with a Regal staple, a quickie musical comedy, in Buy One, Take One; Regal, on the other hand, has been taking tentative steps toward comparatively big-budget but komiks-based products (after its quickie formula failed to work in recent succession), with Nagbabagang Luha and the forthcoming update of Dyesebel; Seiko likewise has begun glossy productions in earnest, what with the satisfactory box-office returns of Hiwaga sa Balete Drive (more Regal in its comic-horror bent) and Isusumbong Kita sa Diyos (definitely a Viva formula).

Bernard Bonnin and Susan Roces, and Sharon Cuneta and Richard Gomez (left to right) as one another’s generational counterparts in Pablo Santiago’s Buy One, Take One (1988).

11011Most of these efforts were premised on the prospects of renewed moviegoer interest after the usual approaches became too predictable for (financial) comfort. No doubt the novelty of the old images carrying over into the new offerings had something to do with the encouraging turnout of viewers: Viva’s Sharon Cuneta and Phillip Salvador shedding their long-cultivated glamor, Seiko’s struggling also-rans suddenly basking in lustrous production values, Regal’s campiness to be enhanced (or perhaps defeated) by an uncharacteristically big budget. What is left for these modern-day mammoths to do is confront their one last impediment to immortality. In more than just the spiritual sense, the old studios passed away along with their founder-owners. The way the present ones are being run, it becomes easy for opponents to hope, if not in the progressive enlightenment of the moguls, in the eventual demise of Mother Lily, the del Rosarios, and Robbie Tan – a sure thing anyway, given the still-limited lifespan we have all been heir to. Decentralization may be the immediate logical response, although there remains one better strategy, the very factor that keeps certain First Golden Age titles in the consciousness of current film observers despite the virtual inactivity of the original producers: the word – but are we ready for it? – is, of course, quality.

[First published July 20, 1988, in National Midweek]

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An Update

Legislated aid for film appears to be the only way to go, since the dictatorial whim that set up certain support bodies in the past could not assure their sempiternity. This type of recourse, however, takes too long and allows too many things to go wrong. In the rush to come up with much-needed solutions, what have we been given thus far? For one thing, a system of censorship that, through legalese mumbo-jumbo, claims it isn’t so, although the effects are very much the same. Then a system of rating (as opposed to classification) executed by the self-same body, with criteria preempted by moralist biases. And last, a proposal to restrict foreign-film importation – as if the video revolution had never taken place, and as if we, especially as audiences, could do without exposure to the latest strides in world cinema. Clearly these are halfway measures at best, the ideals consisting of: a classification system that doesn’t coerce its applicants in any way, and that doesn’t result in tampering with the submitted work on anyone’s part; a rating system with financially remunerative consequences and utilizing overtly artistic measures; and a rationalization, rather than delimitation, of foreign-film imports, prescribing a system of priorities based on obtained and provable merit: award-winners first, for example, then non-winning nominees, and so on down the line, with undistinguished entries coming in last, where they belong. Other areas our lawmakers should begin exploring are film education and the development of markets for export. Late as ever, of course, but better than never.

[First published October 24, 1990, in National Midweek]

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Underground, in the Heat of the Night

The kind of creepers offered by a special type of picture-stories are keen enough to distinguish the adults from the kids, sometimes. Once in a while a couple of runts browse through the stuff, maybe meaning to use the alibi that they thought it was the nicer kind, though everyone knows how quick kids are today with doubletalk. Couldn’t blame them, I guess – once you accede to bending down that low, literally even, I’ll bet your (alleged) normal youthful reputation you won’t be able to rise as quick. They’re picture-stories all right, spread out along with the more legit weeklies and song-hits mini-mags in the so-called capital city’s armpit and the country’s densest district, Quiapo or Po-quiaps or just plain (and vulgarly) Poks in kanto-boy and jeepney-driver lingo – nearly the only place in the country where an estimated minimum of two million souls in harried and hurrying bodies pass through, pass by, pass over and even under, and occasionally pass out in the course of a regular working day.

11011But those picture-story magazines, which we continue to call komiks despite the humorless attitude some sectors have adopted toward them, will be found, true to their nature, underground and in the heat of the night. At the Quiapo pedestrian underpass, which can be entered from among seven directions along the main thoroughfare just before Quezon Bridge, and during the hours between sunset and sunrise, vendors begin by arranging on the floor the safe items, reserving a middle section for the bolder versions once the underpass crowd composition maturates – that is, becomes on the average older and more masculine – to allow for easy retrieval in case of raids. With all the foolhardiness that youth and curiosity occasionally bestows, I descend the entrance alongside the recently renovated church, where the sellers of various herbs and amulets are packing up their wares in acknowledgment of the less spiritual nature of night life, and circle the central savings bank, fitting symbol of material aspirations even on the subterranean level, to pick out representative titles from about a dozen outlays.

11011One of the stands, or rather seats, happens to have the only male vendor around at the time, so the prospect of frank discussion doesn’t seem so embarrassing; he even opens a conversation by suggesting some of the better issues and offering discounts. Lito, as he introduces himself, has been in the trade (of selling komiks, that is) for almost exactly three years or, as he pertinently puts it, “mula nung assassination ni Ninoy.” The association by which he reckons his shift from carinderia operations becomes more germane when he explains that he started out by selling “Mr. & Ms. at kung anu-ano pang bawal nuon na hindi na ngayon. Siguro swerte ko na yung pagtinda ng babasahing hindi pa tanggap ng mga naghahari sa ’tin.” He admits that the “bold” versions he resorts to as a matter of necessity. “Ito lang talaga ang pinaggagalingan ng kita namin. Kung karaniwang komiks o magasin o song-hits lang ang aasahan ko e walang mangyayari.”[1]

11011I begin to get an idea of the economics involved only after skimming over the wares’ cover prices: the song-hits mags begin at ₱1, regular komiks at ₱2, and neither goes beyond thrice the rates, while the soft-core versions begin at ₱3.50 and reach as much as … ₱25! “Siyempre me tubo na kami agad,” Lito explains. “Nagkakaiba na lang sa kung alin ang mabenta.” Past issues can be bought on retail at bargain prices, which means they get sold for much less than their cover prices. “Yung nabebenta naming sa tigpipiso, nabibili namin ng 25 sentimos isa.” Moralists may argue that the profits are not that clean, and Lito agrees, on a purely monetary basis. “Wala ngang upa sa lugar na ginagamit, napupunta naman sa ‘pakikisama’ yung kita namin minsan. Pero mas matipid pa ’yon kesa kung ma-raid kami: ₱160 ang multa, umaabot ng ₱200 ang piyansa, napakalayo pa ng kulungan, sa Fairview, kaya yari ka rin sa pamasahe.” Either for profit maximization or for additional security, or more likely for both reasons, Lito claims that “magkakamag-anak kaming mga nagtitinda ng komiks dito” – maybe a literal reality, although just as likely a euphemism for the necessity of forming close-knit alliances against the free-for-all from several sides that a non-legal business regularly attracts.[2]

11011As to the items in question, much has been made of the case that both publishers and guardians of morality claim to have won over a year ago. A semi-legitimate status has been granted the more established outfits by allowing (or requiring, depending whose point of view you take) them to publish staff boxes; an obvious drawback here is that, as in the movies, such items may not go, as we love to say and sometimes do, all the way. Recent uncredited items such as Checkmate (₱25 each, all photos with word balloons) and Senswal (no price indicated, picture stories and features in song-hits-size format) get away with more than just the apparently allowed penetration scenes. Yes, María (Clara), they do have close-ups, as graphic as pen-and-ink or offset photography could allow, of genitalia in coital entanglements.

11011And yes, the relatively milder ones contain sexual couplings, or at the very least total nudity, as staples for each and every picture story and feature or narrative, which runs for up to five pages. Imagine a minimum of thirty pages per komiks issue, and titles running up almost the same number, and frequencies at weekly, fortnightly, or, at the rarest, monthly intervals – and you might find yourself reaching for a list of litanies or ejaculations (pious, if not anything else). The Man of La Mancha to which faithful beneficiaries like Lito play Sancho Panzas in this endeavor appears to be a certain “Atty. Amador E. Sagalongos,” publisher of about a half-dozen titles including the celebrated Sakdal and Tiktik and their spinoffs Tiktik Bold, Erotik, and so on. In certain titles he has run installments of the court ruling on the earlier mentioned obscenity case, while in most others he prints, under his by-line and with his picture, erotic verses that aspire to some measure of political relevance by castigating the previous regime or hailing the present dispensation.

11011In fact, for the rest of what Americans would call blue (or the Japanese, pink) publishers, social consciousness is the rule rather than the exception: certified Pinoy phenomena like overseas labor, illegal emigration to America, the presence of foreign military bases, double standards for domestic sexual practices, problems in premarital pregnancies and contraception, as well as the universal concerns of prostitution and poverty – all these and more define local erotic reading fare rather than do the psychological or anatomical fantasies found in foreign counterparts. From the twenty-or-so titles I bought, I was able to count only one instance each of a picture story that dealt with impotence, incest, bestiality, and urolagnia (translated on a Tiktik cover as “pantasiya sa ihi”). Homosexuality seems to be a different, er, affair altogether. Apart from specialized titles such as Silahis and Macho (another Sagalongos publication), there are stories or features in every other “straight” title that dealt explicitly with the subject.[3] Feminists may perceive another attempt at discrimination, but the male condition is almost always presumed in these pages to be more permanent in nature than lesbianism, in which the errant lasses get “converted” in the end by some guy or other. The incursion of this singular social taboo into the supposedly heterocentrist milieu of erotica may after all only be a throwback to the goings-on aboveground, where at this time of the night the members of the so-called twilight sex earn their epithet (and sometimes their keep) by cruising about, mostly on foot, for prospects for carnal communion, and where mainstream comedies now allow effeminate gay-male characters to retain their flamboyance all the way to the end but insist on tomboyish women capitulating to the dictates of (to coin a should-be disparagement) reproductivist patriarchy.

11011Whether gay or merely happy, the new breed of erotic komiks has come a long way from the BTS or “bedtime stories” type that used to flourish in the neighboring Recto-Avenida area during the late sixties and seventies. I remember mimeographed or photocopied issues going for the equivalent of a day’s allowance in high school, and heave a sigh – of gratitude, honest – from the thought that today’s social misfits would not have to spend proportionately as much as we did then. The advantages of legitimization go beyond consumer relief. According to Lito, “Natutulungan kaming mga vendors nung mismong mga publishers kung sumasabit kami sa batas.”[4] The publishers, writers, and artists themselves occasionally print declarations of war against government censorship on the very pages of their publications, although their defenses lie within the realm of social relevance, as pointed out earlier, rather than the standard Western reliance on artistic merit.

11011Again, as in the instance of cinema, I couldn’t help wishing that genuine literary expression could find its way into some of these items, so that their redemption, elitist as it may sound, will be complete.[5] Before that could happen, of course, the mainstream komiks publications may have to upgrade their quality, probably by infusing inspiration from the allied medium of film, rather than contributing mayhem, as they are wont to do, in the opposite direction. Thenceforth we may be able to watch the benefits trickle down the likes of Dalaga and Pic, the gamer Game, Lips, Hot Legs, New Boobs, Playmate, Intimate, Swank, For Gents Only, and the Sagalongos titles, and even the truly illegal items that refuse to identify the people behind them. Come that time, we may not have to envy those who check out a public library just to realize that some in-your-face rags might just be more sensible but still profitable picture stories, worthy of regard as vital and lasting contributions to the national heritage, you betcha.

[First published October 16, 1986, in New Day]

Notes

[1] “Mr. & Ms. and other items that used to be dangerous to be identified with. I guess it’s just my luck to sell reading materials which don’t sit well with authorities.” “This is actually where we derive our income. If I rely on ordinary komiks or magazines or song-hits items I won’t be able to survive.”

[2] “Of course it’s sure-fire profitable.” “The difference lies in terms of which items sell more.” “What we can sell for a peso each, we could purchase at 25 centavos.” “We don’t have to pay for rent for the space we occupy here, but ‘cooperation’ takes a toll. We just think it’s cheaper than the consequences of a raid: the penalty’s ₱160, bail could reach ₱200, the jailhouse is too far, at Fairview [a suburban district], so you also wind up spending a lot for transportation.” “We komiks vendors are related to one another.”

[3] “Fetishizing urine.” “Silahis” and “macho” also happen to be code words in Philippine gay lingo, referring to bisexual males and gay-available straight men respectively.

[4] “We vendors are helped by the publishers themselves whenever we run afoul of the law.”

[5] A couple of colleagues who became scriptwriters for world-renowned films, as well as a university instructor (who sadly experienced oppression, from left-leaning seniors who should have known better, when she was outed for her experience in erotica authorship) were some of the few people I have known to engage in the profession.

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Home Sweet Home

In My Father’s House
Playwright Elsa Martinez Coscolluela (trans. Raul Regalado)
Directed by Tony Mabesa

As an extra-active in-house editor for the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (ECP), I was once assigned to the screening committee of the third (and last) scriptwriting contest. Only two winners were chosen, both of which were endorsed to the board of judges by none other than yours truly. The inside news, however, was that the preferred top-prize winner was disqualified on a double technicality: not only did the script proposal require a more-than-modest budget (for which the consideration of a few other entries would have to be set aside), it would also have duplicated the themes and setting of the first ECP production, Oro, Plata, Mata. Flashforward to the present, when one of the contest’s judges, out of a refusal to allow the ECP’s demise to negate its noteworthy aims, convinces the writer of the said screenplay to revise her work for the medium out of which he has made a lifetime career: the theater.

11011Like Oro, Plata, Mata, In My Father’s House has seen rough commercial sailing. And if we take an optimistic course and regard its ultimate destination as the celluloid product it was originally intended to be, then its odyssey from judges’ favorite to future film product through the legitimate stage may well be one of the most unusual transitions in contemporary local culture. To be sure, In My Father’s House stands several cuts above the disturbing succession of stage plays that actually aim for ultimate preservation on film (or even just video, via television). Our local playwriting contests have much to answer for in this case; works are judged according to how they read, not how they may be performed, and in several depressing instances writers who employed misappropriated cinematic techniques tended to impress their respective jurors, who should have known better.

11011I hope I don’t sound too condemnatory in pointing out that these cinematically obsessed playwrights were in a sense the predecessors of our so-called independent film practitioners, who dabble in media or formats apparently alien from the mainstream movie industry, but actually aim for stable long-term employment within (as evidenced in their output as well as the number who grab too eagerly at opportunities for commercial film assignments). Nothing wrong with having to survive, I submit, except that sometimes the struggle has resulted all too often in a hierarchism of media forms and assignments: this here’s a mere short film (or play or article), it could get me some attention so I could get away with a little slothful artisanship – after all, this isn’t the big time … yet.

11011Hence my sense of appreciation and gratitude for In My Father’s House. The play’s film-script origins are still detectable, particularly in the inordinate number of blackouts (equivalent to the film medium’s fadeouts), but the whole presentation has amounted to a cherishable and well-grounded discourse on the dehumanizing effects of war on the best intentions of those caught up in it. The story details the plight of a Negros-based family, chronicling the members’ confrontation with the realities of the Japanese occupation from the start of the war until the impending liberation (or, as per Renato Constantino, the re-occupation) of the country by American forces. The siblings find themselves in opposing camps, though hardly by the passive nature of their characters: one realizes firsthand the effectiveness of the enemy’s brutality and decides to collaborate to preclude whatever further harm may be committed against his loved ones, while another is outraged by the very same reports, though from a comfortable distance, and decides to join the guerrilla movement.

The rural gentry confronted by the tragic divisiveness of World War II, in Elsa Martinez Coscolluela’s screenplay-turned-stage play In My Father’s House (1987, dir. Tony Mabesa).

11011The worst that the invading forces visit upon the family is the occupation of their residence by an officer, who is never seen; instead he is represented by his clown of a deputy. In the end the tragedy that befalls the family is directly caused by the guerrilla offering to save his collaborator-brother but inadvertently betraying him to a rival unit. An acknowledgment of classical traditions pervades the entire production, with deaths occurring offstage and the action being continually summarized and assessed by the survivors. The only onstage tragedy, the suicide of the fiancée who could endure repeated rape by the Japanese officer but not the contempt of her guerrilla-lover, serves to maintain the essential context of the drama – i.e., that the enemy, no matter how harmless in appearance, is capable, on a near-bestial level, of the civilized but still-harmful actuations of his captive hosts, and that in a sense this doesn’t make him any different from them after all.

11011Such perceptions about the wartime behavior of the bourgeoisie could only have come from finely observed and fully felt experience, and whatever the arguments against the dangers of romanticism, there ought to be room for such theses in the first place, the better to form possible answers from. In My Father’s House can be taken on its own, with the reservations (and then some) I already mentioned, but it can also be appreciated as a creative inspiration’s long (and unfinished) journey to realization. I suggest viewing it as a companion piece to Oro, Plata, Mata, with the notion of the voyeuristic peek into the bourgeoisie’s not-so-discreet charms this time replaced by an Areopagitica of sorts, a plea for tolerance and soberness from a people who are still figuring out what to do with themselves.

[First published December 2, 1987, in National Midweek]

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Film-Writing

Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon
Ricardo Lee
Quezon City: Bagong Likha Publications, 1988

It’s been a long wait – three years – since something that can remotely be called a local film book got published, and even then the pickings were pretty slim, mostly confined to anthologies and published screenplays. Now one of our more active film-and-print crossover writers, Ricardo Lee, has come up with his fourth book, and it happens to be another anthology that happens to include another screenplay. The first thing that anyone can say about Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon, however, is that it isn’t, strictly speaking, a film book. Aside from the film script and a few articles on local movies, Si Tatang comprises the author’s short fiction, all except one dating to as far back as the early seventies.

11011Si Tatang is also packaged with some pretty formidable raves from just-as-formidable names in local film and literature. Amazingly, though the comments seem to have been made with Lee’s specific accomplishments in mind, the book itself adds up to more than what one may be led to expect. This it accomplishes largely through the merits of “Kabilang sa mga Nawawala,” Lee’s latest piece of writing, classified in the book as fiction but actually a summation of the author’s thematic and stylistic concerns during the inordinately long spell when he forsook short-story writing for scriptwriting and journalism. “Kabilang” (at novelette-length the longest of Lee’s short fiction) will be capable of enduring more discussion than anything Lee has ever done before in the short-fiction genre, but as earlier stressed, its arrival in the book, as in Lee’s career, is itself worthy of careful consideration.

11011The build-up toward “Kabilang” is managed through a deliberate breakdown of classification. Journalistic pieces alternate with fiction, and even particular approaches vary from piece to piece. As if to literalize the point, Lee’s “Mga Batang Lansangan” series is evenly spaced between most of the rest of the book. This arrangement demonstrates that, superior as Lee’s earlier achievements in fiction were, it was actually the practice of journalism that served to provide him with the ideal laboratory for experimentation. His evolution in this regard is paralleled by the experiences of new journalist Tom Wolfe, who lately has also been turning to fiction after practically a compleat career in factual writing.

11011Where Lee outfoxes Wolfe is in the appropriation of magic-realist devices that come as a genuine surprise, appearing as they do (and as they are wont) from seemingly out of nowhere. That is, if we take the book as a faithful representation of Lee’s writing. Actually those who’ve been following him closely enough to observe even his work in film will have had enough warning of where he was leading himself to. The selection of Himala then assumes red-herring status in this anthology; relative to other Lee-scripted films, it’s a conventional achievement whose contributions lie in extra-literary aspects, specifically the circumstances attendant to its production and Nora Aunor’s performance (both of which are appropriately played up in production notes).[1]

11011More forward-looking works would be Lee’s previous book publications, especially the screenplay of Moral, plus other unpublished (but fortunately produced) scripts, particularly Sinner or Saint and Private Show. Of course this only means that there ought to be more film script publications done, but then this applies to a whole lot of other writers, not just Lee, and meanwhile Himala in the context of Si Tatang can be taken as proof that the author could be capable of above-average competence in disparate writing formats. The journalistic pieces evince more diversity and, most important, an abiding populism that heightens whatever the stylistic and even politicized interests of the moment happen to be. Journalism, by the very transience of its nature in general, has proved most productive for innovators like Lee; the challenge of holding responsibility for correspondences in real life supplies a discipline that could never have been available in fiction.

11011Hence a return to imaginative writing, as Lee does in “Kabilang sa mga Nawawala,” could only be logical enough in its evolution, yet indicative of more miracles up ahead. Outside of Si Tatang, “Kabilang” arrives alongside a revivification of stylistics in Philippine literature in English, but none too late for either current appreciation, or eager anticipation of what writers, those who’ve transcended trends, genres, and even language, will have to offer next.

[First published February 8, 1989, in National Midweek; excerpted in Ricky Lee’s Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon: Koleksyon ng mga Akda (Quezon City: Writers Studio Foundation, 2009), page 11]

Note

[1] Upon compiling a comprehensive bibliography of Philippine film-book titles, I was floored to discover that, after over a half-century of fits and starts, the still-continuing contemporary wave (more like a tsunami) actually began with several volumes devoted to Nora Aunor. See “The Aunor Effect in Philippine Film Book Publications” in Amauteurish! (January 28, 2020).

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An Update

Unlike in developed countries, local television is being treated as an extension of the film industry. The logical and historically validated trend, of course, is in the opposite direction, so either the industry, with the necessary government support, shapes up, or TV eventually bears down. The other audiovisual medium, theater, will increase in importance once film is regarded as more than just a national pastime: where TV (via video) provides technological familiarization, theater will be hard to beat when it comes to supplying highly developed and properly oriented talent.

11011Print media ought to be the best venue for critical discourse of all kinds, including film – except that mainstream dynamics arrogates unto politics the status of serious object of study, and unto culture the role of jester. No doubt culture, film especially, can excel in this function, but it is also capable of raising issues as grim as they come, whereas politics is hardly ever constructively entertaining, unless and until all other options have ever been exhausted.

11011At the moment broadcast media are serving as popularizers for film awareness, which makes print the equivalent of discursive level for this activity. The manner by which all the other major forms of mass media treat film regularly, but not one another and not in the other direction (film regularly treating other media) upholds, like it or not, the primacy of filmic discourse in media and the arts, a stature that will be supplanted not by any of the other available forms, but by some possible future advancement in media technology.

[First published October 24, 1990, in National Midweek]

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