This is a film that has no cohesive narrative, really, it's more of a series of snapshots, if you will, of the lives that revolve on a ramshackle movie theater that can be considered as the star of this film, like a living breathing creature that it is, all with its operators and the patrons that frequent it, a place that had seen better days which nobody seems to clearly remember. Actually, only Nanay Flor, (played by Gina Pareño, an actress that in her heydays was quite a vamp) who's an embattled matriarch undergoing divorce proceedings with the unpresent patriarch, still manages to be unperturbed, feathers unruffled (a bravura performance), while others in the building just soldier on and are left just going through the motions. Despite the progress of technology where people can easily find pornographic content on the Internet during the decade of the noughts when this film is set, it still remains but a stubborn bastion of sleaze with its sieve-like fortifications, everybody or anything can get in and out of it in the middle of a noisy city. Noise pollution be damned (at least I could just read the subtitles like other non-Filipino speakers). Such cacophony of sounds, though the unacquainted might find that to be a bit overwhelming, has a higher purpose and it doesn't even matter much whether that was coincidental or contrived. So it is best tho have that immersive mindset as one watches this.
Living in the same country where this film is set, I'm one of those people (though definitely not well-off) fortunate enough to have had my first experience watching cinema alone in my mid-teens in one of those up-scale mall multiplexes, and still does so occassionally to this day, which at the time I'm writing this, that viewing experience is in itself in a state of quandary as streaming services looms to replace the film viewing habits of people globally. Though cannot be considered that bad but it's also not that good either, imho, because I find theaters have that certain charm, and though at times they have their own fair share of annoying co-patrons to deal with amongst other things, the overall experience tend to be on the kinder side.
An evocation of such nostalgia brings to mind the films like Tsai Ming Liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn or Giuseppe Tornatore's Oscar-winner Cinema Paradiso, their love-letter to cinema both set in the theater space which does not shy away from detailing the seamier side of those experiences. But what we witness in Brilliante Mendoza's socio-realist masterpiece is that there is no energy to spare when it comes to sharing the mawkishness that that the Family Theater matron in the film have manifested. He instead went in and goes straight for the jugular, hastily sending subtlety to vacation to showcase the yuck factor in these kinds of places instead. And one just need and look at the film titles on offer that the theater exhibits. The poor uncouth masses subjected to the indignities of having to endure such filthy places just to ply their wares, in a place where the lower class people's only form of sporting entertainment are catered by these establishments, especially during the pre-Internet era. But a welcome escapism from such bleak narrative was the goat scene which is, like, the best live-action animal cameo I've seen done in the whole of world cinema ever (G.O.A.T., right?), even beats the rooster/chicken chase in Fernando Meirelles' City of God. The gracefulness of that animal as it scampered down that staircase centerpiece was just heavenly hilarious. Unfortunately, that is the only elegant treat in store for this film.
But as for Brilliante Mendoza's reputation as a filmmaker, I feel this has definitely cemented his place as a significant voice in the Philippine film industry. Though I was initially disappointed, having watched Kinatay before this, a film that I felt that something was quite lacking as I watched that one in full, I was left kind of dumbfounded as to what the hoopla surrounded Mendoza receiving that directorial accolade at Cannes. But only after watching this film that immediately preceded it, the more clearer it became to me what reflected their decision to give him those honors, and I couldn't agree more now. The dilapidated chic aesthetic of those two films, I dare say, go well together and should be seen as a double-bill feature instead because the director encapsulated all that needs to said without saying much with those two films he made back-to-back, providing the best way of presenting people who the people living in the Philippines really are, which is a quite very courageous statement.
So this film definitely functions as a quasi-document to express the lament of the silenced masses who have just resigned to their predicament, people that have no other way to voice out their despair, those of whom who don't have any more tears left to shed. Mendoza and his crew has facilitated that for them. So even if the passage of time inevitably replace of those dilapidated structures, at least the likes of me, we have this. Numquam obliviscar.
Rating: (A beta-plus).
Living in the same country where this film is set, I'm one of those people (though definitely not well-off) fortunate enough to have had my first experience watching cinema alone in my mid-teens in one of those up-scale mall multiplexes, and still does so occassionally to this day, which at the time I'm writing this, that viewing experience is in itself in a state of quandary as streaming services looms to replace the film viewing habits of people globally. Though cannot be considered that bad but it's also not that good either, imho, because I find theaters have that certain charm, and though at times they have their own fair share of annoying co-patrons to deal with amongst other things, the overall experience tend to be on the kinder side.
An evocation of such nostalgia brings to mind the films like Tsai Ming Liang's Goodbye, Dragon Inn or Giuseppe Tornatore's Oscar-winner Cinema Paradiso, their love-letter to cinema both set in the theater space which does not shy away from detailing the seamier side of those experiences. But what we witness in Brilliante Mendoza's socio-realist masterpiece is that there is no energy to spare when it comes to sharing the mawkishness that that the Family Theater matron in the film have manifested. He instead went in and goes straight for the jugular, hastily sending subtlety to vacation to showcase the yuck factor in these kinds of places instead. And one just need and look at the film titles on offer that the theater exhibits. The poor uncouth masses subjected to the indignities of having to endure such filthy places just to ply their wares, in a place where the lower class people's only form of sporting entertainment are catered by these establishments, especially during the pre-Internet era. But a welcome escapism from such bleak narrative was the goat scene which is, like, the best live-action animal cameo I've seen done in the whole of world cinema ever (G.O.A.T., right?), even beats the rooster/chicken chase in Fernando Meirelles' City of God. The gracefulness of that animal as it scampered down that staircase centerpiece was just heavenly hilarious. Unfortunately, that is the only elegant treat in store for this film.
But as for Brilliante Mendoza's reputation as a filmmaker, I feel this has definitely cemented his place as a significant voice in the Philippine film industry. Though I was initially disappointed, having watched Kinatay before this, a film that I felt that something was quite lacking as I watched that one in full, I was left kind of dumbfounded as to what the hoopla surrounded Mendoza receiving that directorial accolade at Cannes. But only after watching this film that immediately preceded it, the more clearer it became to me what reflected their decision to give him those honors, and I couldn't agree more now. The dilapidated chic aesthetic of those two films, I dare say, go well together and should be seen as a double-bill feature instead because the director encapsulated all that needs to said without saying much with those two films he made back-to-back, providing the best way of presenting people who the people living in the Philippines really are, which is a quite very courageous statement.
So this film definitely functions as a quasi-document to express the lament of the silenced masses who have just resigned to their predicament, people that have no other way to voice out their despair, those of whom who don't have any more tears left to shed. Mendoza and his crew has facilitated that for them. So even if the passage of time inevitably replace of those dilapidated structures, at least the likes of me, we have this. Numquam obliviscar.
Rating: (A beta-plus).