Written by Michiko Yamamoto and Erik Matti
Directed by Erik Matti
Cast: Joel Torre, Piolo Pascual, Gerald Anderson, Joey Marquez

The hype surrounding On the Job confirms that a sizeable fraction of Filipino moviegoers, contrary to popular belief, is not in front of a display window looking for something good: it is on an island waiting for rescue. This audience, whose taste in cinema is diverse and self-assured, is a proud bearer of positive news. Any hint of deliverance, whether it’s the sound of a moving object or a slight change of light, suggests emancipation, and the timing and technical skill of On the Job happen to fit the mold it has in mind for years.

In light of the issues confronting the country at present, the film’s resonance is impossible to overlook. The association between the social unrest it depicts and the impassioned reviews is persuasive, but it also has a tendency to magnify its actual merits. Clearly, On the Job is a far cry from Sister Stella L. and Orapronobis—both movies carried out under a strong political climate, their stories depicting a deeply rooted struggle, their sentiments continuing to echo with fear—but director Erik Matti does not envision his film to be either, and that decision works somehow in his favor.

There is no denying that Matti is not keen on insights: he is more concerned with viewer interest. He is after amusement, that delight of seeing pleasure in the faces of his audience as he gets away with his smoke and mirrors. His fascination with genres over the years has served as an inadvertent preparation for this—from action and horror to fantasy and erotica, he understands the tropes and squeezes entertainment out of them—and On the Job not only marks a turning point in his career: it also becomes his status symbol.

The shower of praises it receives, however, implies a certain misguidance—a misreading of Philippine cinema’s condition, quite similar to a doctor prescribing dentures to a patient with a healthy set of teeth. Most of the manic reviews speak of banalities and fall short on describing the virtues of the film. Worse, they raise alarming concerns. For example, why does faith in Philippine cinema being restored turn up? Why do some people take pride in disliking Star Cinema releases yet when a decent one comes about, they make it a point to express full ownership of it, loudly and smugly? Why is On the Job—a passable prison drama, a passive political picture, and a telling thriller with impressive splotches of hardboiled noir—being deemed a manna from heaven? What is the point of using it to decry and invalidate other local movies?

One argument hardly raised, which is probably the most pertinent as far as the current state of Philippine cinema is concerned, is that there exist (and there have always been) worthy movies outside Cinemalaya. They are few but they are being made. Demonizing Star Cinema and the Metro Manila Film Festival is easy, but gray areas such as grant-giving bodies that do good and cause harm at the same time are given the benefit of the doubt, rarely argued, and left untouched. On the Job has taken years to complete and has been to hell and back, amid all the logistical nightmares and financial risks involved, but it only goes to show that it can be done and it’s realistic to set high expectations.

Needless to say, its centerpiece is its brazenness. It creates a picture that never for once looks like it needs any help, leaving the viewers with an impression of freedom and luxury. It holds them by the neck and steer their emotions to one specific route. What Matti does is untighten the screws in succession, first the ones in the corners and then those in the middle; but along the way one screw refuses to be undone, and that’s where the narrative stores some surprises, unleashing them slowly in the final act, the characters finding themselves on a dead-end street and between concrete walls.

A second viewing of it highlights the buildup of relationship between the two hired killers. The result of such development is rather strange, for the death of one of them is less striking than the death of the character pursuing them, the latter creating a fork in the road while the former coming across as something supplementary, like a whimsical afterthought. As the second death is revealed, the impression made by the first is still there, and the effect of how it wraps things up feels slight. Writers Michiko Yamamoto and Matti may have anticipated this effect, hence their footnotes show eagerness in establishing a resolution through a grand gesture, owing to the genre’s requirements.

There is also a special significance attached to the no-nonsense parade of grit, emphasized by the urban setting.  Manila exudes so much flavor that the story would hardly make a dent in the viewer without it. The geographical dynamics slides on the glossy surface and leaps from it, making room for a lot of pursuit and gunshots that never feel out of place, the elements in the backdrop rearranging themselves surreptitiously. On the Job’s finest moments are those that allow the city, specifically the culs-de-sac and buildings occupying it, to create necessary distractions and participate in the action. Should one pay attention to the stylish enactment of its major sequences—the shootout in the public hospital, the chase at the train station, and the gunfire outside Manila City Hall, not to mention the evil pair of rain and traffic being indifferent to everything—one feels a spark of splendor, a momentary blanket of thrill, as these scenarios are seldom captured in local movies. Seeing them onscreen causes a sudden jolt, like the taste of hot sauce in a slice of five-cheese pizza, waiting to be acknowledged as they hit the senses, strong and aching for water.

Putting more emphasis on its technical proficiency is the manner in which the production design of Richard Somes rounds out the camera work of Ricardo Buhay, particularly in bringing to life a prison built from scratch. Buhay does justice to Somes’s meticulous visual details, showing the gracelessness of objects left to smear on their own, uncared for and unwashed, unacquainted with social order like the inmates around them. The narrative moves forward confidently because Buhay and Somes are able to make the tone of the film consistent, the exterior and interior sequences achieving fluid transitions. Furthermore, the tracking shots do not feel like decorations; they create a pleasant contrast with all the shooting and running, the camera looking for an angle of attack and finding it, surprised at its own discoveries.

Young Critics Circle member J. Pilapil Jacobo, in the lead of his review, thinks that “On the Job preoccupies itself too much with the techniques of cinema which make ‘action’ a legitimate object of Filipino film that its so-called treatise on Philippine violence barely works even as police reportage.” What makes this argument regrettable is the presence of valid arguments that fail to register because they are not substantiated in the remainder of the essay. The preoccupation with techniques is true, but in defense of On the Job, irrespective of how its pack of supporters tries to make sense of its relevance, there is never an instance in the movie that suggests it’s a “treatise,” that it’s purposely making a grand statement on sociopolitical issues. In fact, it’s a film whose consciousness of its nature is obvious—“I’m a fucking movie, goddammit!”—and above all else, Matti has not veered away from his personality: he remains a filmmaker inclined to work on formulas and make a compelling picture out of them, by hook or by crook.

On the Job may not be “intelligent enough to launch a ‘critique’ of establishment,” but at this point, when the arts have most likely reached their most dramatic peak and society has seen its best and worst people and experienced its nastiest nightmares, isn’t it reasonable to suppose that intelligence, the boon and bane of human existence, has been prized too highly all these years? Is it unfair to presume that the kind of cinema that bears fruit is not conscious of what it can do for its people but one that is aware of its limitations and acknowledges them? On what condition can criticism not just be content with complimenting but also complementing a national cinema?

It’s a frustrating ball game when the need arises to distinguish art from entertainment for the sake of favoring the former, some people forgetting that entertainment is in fact an art: a discipline that follows a set of aesthetic principles for it to succeed, making use of skills and techniques to deliver its desired effect. It’s unfair to look down on it as a form of expression just because the gratification it offers is deceptive, and a judgment is not any less convincing or credible if enjoyment, no matter how short-lived it may be, is used as a focal point of critical discussion. The main weapon of On the Job is its unapologetic preference for action, its clear-cut view of crime and redemption, and its apparent lack of disguise. Gunmen don’t talk nonsense when they are being cornered, the police arrive when there’s still something else to do, Manila stinks when it rains. There is nothing tricky about it, so one must not overrate its own sense of importance, or belittle its plain straightforwardness.

Written and directed by Jason Paul Laxamana
Cast: Alex Vincent Medina, Joey Paras, Alma Concepcion

There is a tendency to question the merits of Babagwa on account of its unpleasant ending, but even with such lapse it’s hard to deny its earsplitting accomplishment. Seething with fervor, three-fourths of it is downright terrific: a persuasive, willful, and unapologetic display of skill that few local films in recent memory have come close to achieving. Everything seems to have been arranged to emphasize the impression of astuteness, pushing until it destructs itself. It’s proof that flawed movies provide stronger depictions of obnoxious realities, as though their faults were part of a scheme that makes the viewing experience rewardingly unsettling.

Depth, luckily, is not a concern. Writer and director Jason Paul Laxamana does not scrutinize his subject: his primary intention is to lay the narrative down with force and doggedness. Babagwa’s lead character, Greg, is a swindler. Aided by his two cohorts, he befriends people using a false Facebook identity and makes them believe that in this day and age emotions are foolproof. He specializes in sending romantic signals and ensuring that they reach their target. As soon as his prospects show a moment of vulnerability, sweet nothings are exchanged, then sexual innuendos, and lastly, bank account numbers. He gets by through this horrid scam, a livelihood wholly dependent on fraud, a web of duplicities made stickier by an excessive faith in the innocence of feelings.

A rational claim is that Babagwa, like most narratives that cause tremendous discomfort, is a horror story. Its haunted house is the Internet, and Facebook is its most visited room. It is impelled by a series of actions that escalates until the mood no longer feels comfortable, until drastic decisions are made and the turn of events moves obliquely in fast forward. What brings the frightening feeling is how the characters, motivated by terrible reasons, feed on the terror they create before going on autopilot. When Greg entertains the thought he will be forgiven for the harm he has done by doing what’s right, he runs around like a headless chicken: an impostor falling into a trap he himself has set up, a con artist oblivious of his own naïveté. Arriving at a crossroads, the movie builds up to a thrilling conclusion that offers numerous exits, only to settle unwisely for the nearest one.

Its nuts and bolts, so tight before the reveal, are covered with rust in an instant, and this stain, aside from raising doubts, also adds to the icky aftertaste. Granted, that catch at the end is supposed to be clever—a way of showing a reversal of fortune, a nearly fatal stab of karma, clearly intended to mess things up further—but it rubs distastefully because the film has gained so much steam that it deserves a riper sense of closure. The ride would have been more satisfying had Laxamana let the cunningness go and shifted his focus to a resolution that does not resolve anything; cutting it abruptly or leaving it open, in fact, would have made an exceptionally fearful impact, for apathy trumps any form of payback or vindication. The final act is played out with the fat lady (not singing but) drawing the curtain of what feels like a joke, turning a convincing story into a cautionary tale, giving unsolicited advice whose moral righteousness softens the blow.

The fuss over the ending is warranted because it brings out what makes Babagwa an engaging piece of work.  Bold, defiant, and aggressive, it doesn’t run for cover or ask for sympathy. Its propensity to go over the top pays off, aware that its display of vanity is designed to overwhelm the viewer. The pleasure of seeing Alex Medina, Joey Paras, and Alma Concepcion pull each other’s leg shows that catfishing is indeed a serious business, and that the Internet, the most extensive cradle of recent civilization—complete with history, culture, economic means, sociopolitical structure, and crimes—is also a place where only the fittest survive, a place where one lives and dies. And those left behind (people, things, and memories) have the ability to forget and take the next step, seemingly unfazed to let sleeping dogs lie.

Laxamana is driven by a filthy desire to provoke and he does so without hesitation, allowing his happy-go-lucky spirit to capitalize on the fear of everyday correspondence. By breathing life into Bam Bonifacio—showing him around his condominium unit, dressing him up, and adding details to his fictional charmed life—Laxamana makes the crime even more palpable, leaving deeper teeth marks  as the juxtaposition of  two lives (Bam and Greg) underlines the desperation that draws them together. The sex scenes between Alex Medina and Chanel Latorre, filled with wet kisses and nipple licking, border on soft-porn, coming across as dirty and titillating without being repulsive. With these two key portions of the film, there’s a conscious effort to set things in motion, to keep itself away from anything dull, but the end of the game, as Greg regards his destination to be, is only the start of something else.

Written and directed by Arnel Mardoquio
Cast: Fe GingGing Hyde, Perry Dizon, Madz Garcia, Jillian Khayle Barbarona, Jeff Sabayle

Riddles of My Homecoming is a beautiful title, like a line from an ode or elegy written ages ago, waiting to be lifted by a curious reader. As the film cracks open many of its sorrowful ambiguities, it seems that there is more pressure for director Arnel Mardoquio to create something to match the elegance of these words than to carry the well-defined politics of his previous film, Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim. He finds painful comfort in abstraction, in images following a careless rhythm, in characters guided by voices. Riddles is hazy, elusive, and unreachable, dabbling in sensations and obscurities, but its surface doesn’t pull any surprises, its tone never betraying its modesty.

It argues: How can one depict the soul of a struggle without resorting to a personal language, without consulting a map whose locations are now ruins? Towards the end it whispers: The places are no longer here but their imprints remain, but what are imprints for?

To make people remember, or to make them remember not to forget, is what Mardoquio, with his gentle temperament, seems to say. His vignettes flow with dreamy pleasure; its edges are rough and pointed but they give off a warm and uncompromising feeling. Some stories are clear as they engage in universal themes (attraction, sex, murder, war, freedom) and some tread on unfamiliar territories, leaving a trail of puzzle pieces whose entire picture never form, but whose impact, conveyed through mysterious objects and behavior, is completely felt: fractured but whole.

Hinting at many things, it hits only a few, but those few manage to creep on one’s skin. Mardoquio shapes a silent film around subjects that require voices, people whose histories are defined by their sound, surroundings whose noises make up the legend of a land. But he gives them another tongue, offers them the gift of speech, and declares their independence.

A large part of Riddles is shot in Compostela Valley, where typhoon Pablo left hundreds of people dead and thousands of families homeless in 2012. Ravaged and razed, it’s a province that heaves a sigh whenever one reaches it, its bumpy and potholed terrain like a face full of pockmarks and scars, tired from having weathered too many battles. Mardoquio has chosen a place that has its own light, and Compostela Valley, with its bleak forests, pale skies, and murky waters, is a reminder of collapse and resignation that can erode any surface, that can empty any space that has an indistinguishable entrance and exit. The film’s baffling nature is given as it tries to condense many ideas, many failures of man between past and future, but it is never superfluous, never in its mosaic of phantasms can it be called thin or dull.

“It’s a short film. Don’t blink,” Mardoquio says in his introduction at the screening. And indeed it’s short: short compared to its ambition, short compared to the scale of his sociocultural issues, short compared to the breadth of its madness. It demands to be taken seriously, but it’s wrong to think that it is always serious. Riddles is a predictable route for Mardoquio—where else can he go after the marvelously radical arc of Ang Paglalakbay?—but he is steadfast in his activism, in his aching need to be heard. It is a cheerless vision driven by anger and regret, but for several moments it is tempted to make itself clear, to solve its own riddle, only to find itself unable, disabled, looking ahead with its eyes closed.

Let’s begin with a confession: the finest pop song of the year is not on this list. Haim’s “The Wire,” which blends exquisite songwriting and an oddly fantastic fusion of simple melodies, boasts a frenetic cadence that has a life of its own, a sumptuous tune that feels as natural as air, as carefree as a walk in the park. It wears the crown before this countdown starts.

But the Haim sisters exist on a different list, a list that I won’t even bother to make because that kind of list is already done by many. I believe the point of doing juvenile things like this is to let out a voice that would represent a person and not a collective, and that way it becomes less immature and more consequential, the meaning is carried from ears to fingers, from musical notes to descriptive words, seemingly intact.

So I’ve tried to come up with an equivalent list, one without “The Wire” but still satisfies me, a list guided by a familiar tone, and here it is.

20. “People Like Us”
Kelly Clarkson

There’s always something iffy about songs of empowerment, for they have a tendency to simplify and give too much credit to themselves. But perhaps the only important point is to make the sentiment believable. And Kelly Clarkson, who has been there and done that, who has been ridiculed for her size many times, who has been caught in an embarrassing situation with Beyoncé, who has starred in a god-awful movie called Justin and Kelly, who else but she can deliver a commanding anthem of rise? “People Like Us” is clear-eyed, straightforward, and pushy, qualities that also make it off-putting, but her voice has always been the highlight of her singles, her voice dictates the beat and tempo, her voice can definitely cause some damage. The formula of “Since U Been Gone” is still here, but the moment her voice lilts, there is no way one won’t be swept away.

19. “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)”
Fall Out Boy

Save Rock and Roll is a decent comeback, and its lead single, whose title shows Fall Out Boy’s difficulty to veer away from their emo roots, gives them enough muscle to stay ahead of the game. There’s too much going on: the hand clapping, the thundering drums, Patrick Stump’s howling, the second voice, the glossy and brooding atmosphere. Yet this kind of extravagance sounds cohesive—these elements are integrated well to create a convincing whole. It’s only three minutes long, but the feeling of being in a stadium full of people stays for quite a while.

18. “Get the Girl Back”
Hanson

Despite featuring celebrities, the official music video for Hanson’s “Get the Girl Back” is far from reaching a million mark on YouTube—a number extremely unimaginable in this age of Justin Bieber and One Direction, when YouTube hits equate with marketability and eventual success—and this only means that the brothers can never be as huge as they used to be, regardless of the material they come up with. It’s sad, but at some point it also doesn’t matter—commercial success is something they have already experienced, and in this cruel business they’re actually quite lucky that their return as “grownups” is welcomed with more cheers than jeers. “Get the Girl Back” boasts a big band sound, which serves only to emphasize its pop-rock goodness, Taylor’s vocals, and the squeeze of juvenile love. It flaunts a straight up, rousing tune, loud and proud, no frills, nothing tongue-in-cheek. Just for Hanson’s return to the pop charts after almost 10 years, how can it be so hard to raise one’s glass to them?

17. “Do You Love Me”
2NE1

Hooks are 2NE1’s best friends, and their entry on every year-end list accounts for their ability to unwrap old-fashioned melodies and rhythms and wrap them new. “D-O-Y-O-U-L-O-V-E-M-E” is a predictable come-on, but when followed by “Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me like the way I love you babe?” it turns a drab assembly into an irresistible party, like a centrifuge that puts every item that comes near it in rotation. This is slight compared with their previous singles, but even its slightness can poke all the stimuli in one’s body and cause euphoria of inexplicable heights.

16. “#Beautiful”
Mariah Carey feat. Miguel

Mariah is a flirt but she’s the best flirt in town, this song seems to say, and its video, full of her booty shakes and vagina monologues, seems to say better. “Don’t stop till you thrill me, oh how you thrill me!” is something said during cunnilungus, but she gets away with it the same way she gets away with her lusty Christmas records: everything owes to the dynamics of her vocal package. Miguel showers her with adulations and she accepts every bit of it—I deserve all of them!—and something happens as they exchange lines, a spark almost imperceptible in the naked eye, a gentle flicker producing strong electricity, something that not even a cheap hashtag can taint. Unmoved by objectification and unfazed by Ariana Grande’s threats, Mariah simply holds her head (and boobs) high.

15. “Bakit Ngayon”
Julie Anne San Jose

Julie Anne San Jose is that rare breed of Kapuso star who doesn’t come across as cheap and trying hard like most of her contemporaries in her station. She’s no fluke. The weaknesses of her songs manage only to show her range and promise, and single after single there always emerges a reason to like her. On “Bakit Ngayon” she clings to the sappiness of ill-timed love, on and on until it reaches that magical middle eight, when she repeats “Dumating, nagparamdam sa akin” four times, each to different effect. And all the feebleness of the previous verses has been worth hearing because of this bridge, as it manages to tie up loose ends through something so dull and dreary, so humdrum in fact, but she sings it as though her world were about to crumble, as though her life depended on that stupid feeling.

14. “Still Into You”
Paramore

Goddammit, it’s about that guy from New Found Glory! And it’s a profession of love, of all nasty things! But Hayley Williams, almost always in danger of becoming a second-rate Avril Lavigne, is gifted with oomph, with a sparkle of youth that transforms her words into contagious glee, with a voice that over the years she is able to use with flair. It’s hard to find fault with “Still Into You,” for it’s a song driven by genuine emotion. Its candor allows its lyrics to flow flawlessly, and its chorus is cooked to perfection. The moment Hayley shouts “I should be over all the butterflies!” the song becomes a balloon that bursts suddenly, and the sound it makes brings a vibe of celebration: confetti, colors, candles, cake. It’s ridiculous, but what kind of love isn’t?

13. “Best Song Ever”
One Direction

It’s easy for some people to conclude that most love songs ruling the charts these days are fluff: hits that speak of almost the same thing, hits that take up so much space and offer nothing of value. This judgment is reasonable, but fluff, even at its slightest, is subject to various conditions, which make it interesting. Take the case of “Best Song Ever.” Its composers are accused of ripping off The Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” and though the similarities are blatant, the song becomes reduced to such reputation, which is a shame because it’s a single that does not aspire to be anything but be a One Direction song: a formidable piece of fluff, a pastry full of marshmallows. Parts of it are vexing, providing the boys more dead-ends than possibilities, but it’s the moment they are after, a silly fraction of a moment that happens in the chorus, a half-minute of unadulterated pleasure that puts a new spin on feeling blissfully stupid. The emphasis is on the adverb, of course.

12. “Move”
Little Mix

Listen to “Wings” and “Move” alternately and there’s this difference between them that’s hard to articulate without reaching a contradiction. The disparity is both subtle and glaring— subtle because they sound almost similar, the group’s distinguishing melodic chops are exhausted on both, though upon closer inspection, it feels as though they were separated by long years, while in fact it’s only 15 months; glaring because the vocals on “Move” are more confident and graceful, the transition between singers more evenhanded, the dynamics among the girls tighter and snappier. “Move” moves in different directions, possessed, happily intoxicated. It’s a banger in the tradition of Girls Aloud and Sugababes, and these young X-Factor ladies take pride in managing to stand alongside these fantastic female groups. Their common denominator? The British fondness for risky song structures. Little Mix? More like Little Minx.

11. “Nasa Iyo Na Ang Lahat”
Daniel Padilla

Failure to acknowledge this hit gives the impression of denying, or even invalidating, the curious case of Daniel Padilla, particularly the hordes of fans who shower him with affection, and to whom a meaningless gaze from him is enough to send them to the mental ward. One fascinating facet of his popularity is that he evokes the peculiarities of a Korean star, from his image of vanity and virility to the way his mere presence prompts screams, which is a welcoming development as far as pop culture phenomena are concerned. His ode to Kathryn Bernardo, “Nasa Iyo Na Ang Lahat,” describes his personality aptly: it’s cute, juvenile, and silly, which means that it is intended only for those who like him. It may not age well, for it gets tiring after multiple listens, but it’s a song that knows the moment, a song whose effect matters only at present, the unreasonable here and now, a comforting reminder that good things don’t leave too soon.

10. “Roar”
Katy Perry

Katy Perry doesn’t want to see you be brave. Unlike Sara Bareilles, she doesn’t offer any piece of advice or words of inspiration. She doesn’t tell you that “you can be amazing” or “you can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug.” That’s not her shit. That’s too churchy. Instead, she talks about herself—me, me, me, me, me—all for the sake of self-congratulation. But Katy has the ability to deliver clichés with exultation. She has the knack for debasing her personal experiences and enjoying it. She must have fallen asleep every time Russell Brand had one of those long discourses on politics, but she managed to catch the keywords for her personal use—rhyming “tiger” and “fire,” “lion” and “champion,” “zero” and “hero”—thereby producing “Roar” and its enjoyable display of narcissism. Perfectly assembled, cleverly foolish. It’s bullshit to call it a song of empowerment, made even more obvious by its facetious video, but it’s proof that charming songs, like attractive people, are hard to resist.

9. “Ilusyon”
Abra feat. Arci Muñoz

Gloc-9 has been on top of the mainstream rap scene for years, so it’s only about time that someone takes his place to offer something new, that is, to have someone interpret clichés differently. A firecracker onstage, Abra fits the bill—he’s younger, bouncier, freer. In this business where everything that sticks out is scrutinized, his height seems to go unnoticed, overridden by his comely face and briskness. While “Gayuma” announces his arrival, “Ilusyon” confirms his stay. Its rallying cry, “huwag niyo ‘kong gagawing tanga!” captures the fury and resentment of dissatisfied people, a society drowned in poor options and bad choices. His rants are ear-friendly: they do not ask for sympathy; they are meant to make his listeners nod. And all the way through “Ilusyon,” one can’t help but submit to his words, enjoy the rhythm of his tirades, and feel the clutch of its shiny refrain.

8. “Blurred Lines”
Robin Thicke feat. T.I. and Pharrell

So many things have been said about “Blurred Lines,” from the ecstatic reviews prior to its massive success to the scathing comments after the release of its music video, not to mention the 10-paragraph diatribe by Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield that only highlights the song’s infallible appeal, but they all boil down to the basic truth that, indeed, up to this century, sexism sells. And when chauvinism is bundled nicely, when it’s delivered by good-looking men with money, compromise arises, and people get divided by the complexity of their sensibilities. The funniest thing about this whole kerfuffle is that the only person who has been able to break Robin Thicke is Miley Cyrus at the VMAs—she gives him what he wants, she twerks and sticks her tongue out, she makes him nervous, she makes people realize the utter filthiness of being objectified—yet what happens? She is disgraced and becomes the slut icon. People have shamed her for standing up to him. Congratulations, society.

Yes, “Blurred Lines” is misogynist, indecent, and reckless. It is conceived by men who enjoy trivializing women; it is a song that actually understands its message and the impact it will have on listeners. And all of these are already clear at the onset, therefore making it an even more cunning piece of trash. And not to put too fine a point on it: it’s a pop song—teenagers dance to it at parties, it gets blasted at malls and supermarkets, people no longer give a fuck about its lyrics but continue to be carried away by its sonic luxuries, its “modern” beat, its “homage to Marvin Gaye.” Even the need to put words and phrases between inverted commas is its fault. Who says popular music is only about earning money? Obviously it can shake the ground like this.

7. “I Got A Boy”
Girls’ Generation

At some point on Girls’ Generation’s “I Got A Boy” one is tempted to exclaim: Huh, what’s happening? Clearly it’s a song that takes pleasure in defying conventions—it’s messy, ambitious, and confusing; its transitions are loose and bumpy; its hooks sometimes out of place. But one is easily swept away by its demeanor, the way it takes pride in its arsenal of snappy verses, the way the beats keep up with the girls who have no time for lyrical costume changes. In five minutes the song is able to travel places, to enter an arena and exit a cave, to go on a trip with only the senses moving. It’s berserk. It’s magnificently careless. Second after second, “I Got A Boy” looks for rules to break and the girls do so with knives between their knuckles, like characters from a Takashi Miike movie about to run amok.

6. “Get Lucky”
Daft Punk feat. Pharrell

This won’t be an assessment of “Get Lucky” because at this point one is already resigned to its refreshing brilliance, one doesn’t feel the need to discuss why in this industry full of surprises and inconsistencies it is embraced with no questions asked, one listens to it without hesitation and understands every bit of sensation it brings, the effortlessness of its groove, the kindness of its beats, the grace of Pharrell’s presence, the wisdom of Nile Rodgers, the way Daft Punk continue to reinvent their music without changing it, how any annotation on every year-end list does not affect its actual worth, because the song itself is beyond the usual critical appraisal, and sometimes that’s a good thing, for it makes one realize that melodies have the capacity to hold magic, and it’s one of life’s wonderful gifts better left unexplained.

5. “Royals”
Lorde

“I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh,” and upon uttering these cold words Lorde makes her entrance, her voice a few steps ahead of her body, her voice more naked than her flesh. She’s 17, she’s from New Zealand, and this is her first record. One is not compelled to decipher her: what she gives is enough. She is straightforward: there is only fog between her lines, nothing with obvious shape. Even the success of “Royals” is unsurprising: all her producers have to do is release it, show her face on the video, and let her sing. The odds are in her favor. Singing about her insecurity has made her secure, has probably allowed her to afford the luxuries she mentions in the song, which is a funny twist of fate but also inevitable. “Royals” provides a sharp contrast to the noise and disorder that permeate today’s music, and it proves that it’s possible to simply come out of nowhere and rule.

4. “The Way”
Ariana Grande feat. Mac Miller

Brenda Russell lends the piano riff that kicks off “The Way,” and it not only sets a distinctly chirpy mood but also complements the texture of Ariana Grande’s thin voice. This backing track is the red lipstick to her soft lips, the bounce to her walk, the frills on her dress. Her initial delivery of the chorus can either be a hit or a miss, and she hits it, graciously. But she holds on to that riff only to gain momentum after Mac Miller’s twaddle—the moment she delivers her breathtaking verses she untangles herself and sprints, light on her feet, exhilarated by freedom. She pronounces every word with delightful flirtatiousness, singing as though she had to choose between holding the crown on her head and holding her skirt that’s being ruffled by the wind. “The Way” is by all means a splendid single, and perhaps no one in 2013 has turned the lights on as brightly as Ariana Grande has, and more importantly: no one has ever stepped on Mariah Carey’s shadow as threateningly as she has done, no one with such vigorous promise at the very least.

3. “Gentleman”
Psy

Psy may be an anomaly in the landscape of global pop music, but his presence is a welcome deviation, a refreshing change from the tired formulas being churned out by Western music producers in the past couple of years. There’s no way he can top the rumpus brought about by “Gangnam Style,” but with “Gentleman” he proves that at 35, he remains the enfant terrible of K-Pop, and frankly the most gifted composer of joyful hooks. The dominant hook of “Gentleman,” which appears in the beginning, middle, and end, is a spectacle in itself, a quicksand that freezes the rapture contained in the song—the glee, the ecstasy, the gaiety, the fun, basically sucking in all degrees of happiness—and Psy, of all reasonable things to do, puts a hand under his chin and shakes his hips, introducing the world to a dance of utter smugness. There’s a lot to say about his polarizing popularity and his consistent critique of South Korean culture in his songs and music videos, but for now Psy’s genius for silliness of great consequence and magnitude is enough to consider him an icon of the offbeat, the heedless horseman of the bizarre.

2. “Ikot-Ikot”
Sarah Geronimo

There are two live performances of “Ikot-Ikot” that are worth watching before one decides to embrace or dismiss it.

First is its debut on Sunday variety show ASAP. Since it’s unfamiliar to everyone’s ears, there is that atmosphere of tension and anticipation, and even Sarah herself, in her red blazer and red pants, looks serious and uneasy, probably hoping that the color of her outfit would absorb her nerves. But her face is fierce: it’s ready to be wounded. Following her habit, she enunciates words more than what’s necessary, but she brings the beat in, the hand gestures, the body language. Before proceeding to the bridge of the song, she walks to a stage closer to the audience. And then, to everyone’s surprise, she explodes. That bridge resonates deeply to her, and that bridge is meant to be sung that way: manic, hysterical, and greedy, Sarah almost flying off the handle towards the end. It’s a flawed performance—and no bullshit, that’s actually the point: pain isn’t supposed to be perfect—but that last part alone is enough to consider it the song of the year. Or, sadly, the heartbreak of the year, Sarah’s politest way of saying “Fuck you and fuck it, Gerald.”

Second is the performance on Showtime, where she takes more liberties with the arrangement and shows the delicate side of the song. These melodic changes also display its supple quality, which points at the skill of writer Thyro Alfaro and producer Bojam de Belen. But the spotlight is still on her, and in this performance one is inclined to notice the quality of her voice. It’s powerful, there’s no doubt about that, but in her 10 years in the business, it’s obvious that she’s still grappling with it—she is still trying to whittle it. And that nuance is not present in the studio version of “Ikot-Ikot”: that first flush of youth, those jagged edges she thinks sound good live but don’t, that insistence on her established style. The version on Expressions is clean and commanding, with less vocal calisthenics and fewer overtones, but even after multiple listens it continues to throb, and it’s a relief that finally, after several years of middling covers, Sarah releases an original composition worth aching for, worth losing one’s head for.

1. “Wrecking Ball”
Miley Cyrus

“There’s method behind the madness,” writer Robert Copsey says in his review of “Wrecking Ball,” and obviously in addition to method there is motivation. Perhaps not even Miley has seen it coming, but the buzz she has created in 2013 is enough for another artist’s lifetime, and that she is still around, releasing and promoting the superb “#GETITRIGHT” as her next single, continuing to receive endless pieces of advice from self-important celebrities, it’s likely that the worst of it has already passed.

She has Liam Hemsworth to thank for “Wrecking Ball,” for despite being inferior to “We Can’t Stop” as far as novelty and technique are concerned, it has made an indelible icon out of her, which is always a great thing to carry, especially when your father’s biggest legacy is “Achy Breaky Heart.”

What more to say? Which stone to turn? Which angle deserves more light or shade? There’s no way to tell. Sadly, it feels that music critics, who, more than anyone else, should be immune to stigma, are turning their backs on Miley on account of her behavior this year; but truth to be told, it’s for this very reason that she is the most vital recording artist of 2013—not Kanye, not Katy, not Kendrick, not even Beyoncé—and it owes to her stunts that monotony has been dodged. Fortunately, when all her tricks have been exhausted, there still remains a soul in her, some dust to be collected, a completely talented person. Is it worth it? No. But it’s actually by doing something unworthy that worth is redefined, so there goes a perspective.

And “Wrecking Ball” is that unworthy thing that becomes worthy in light of all the fuss. Its ordinariness is striking. It’s a ballad filled with decent hooks, but technical composition is secondary only to the passion that Miley brings to the words and melody. She translates her pain into another form of pain, and her vocabulary of hurt helps her out. When listened closely, it’s the sound of a being about to die but doesn’t die, and Miley, like a word lost among phrases or a sentence hidden in countless paragraphs, lets out this final cry before submitting to rest. They say destruction creates new terrains and selves: in this new phase of her life and career, she may enter it completely hurt but at least she is in one piece.

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Omission or overstatement is always a possibility, and year-end lists thrive in risks, in flaws and fallacies, in misjudgment and misplacement. They exist for these reasons. They conclude a year the same way desserts complete a meal, hence at first they must capture one’s attention, and when eaten must be satisfying, must be gone in only a matter of seconds, leaving the plate and the spoon clean. Well, at least, that’s the idea. And the ideal.

This personal list tries and fails, but it has always believed in trying.

Honorable mention:

II, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Beyoncé, Beyoncé

Carrier, The Dodos

Faint Hearted, Miles

Field of Reeds, These New Puritans

The Flower Lane, Ducktails

Hummingbird, Local Natives

In Focus?, Shugo Tokumaru

MCII, Mikal Cronin

The Messenger, Johnny Marr

Push the Sky Away, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Season of Your Day, Mazzy Star

Slow Focus, Fuck Buttons

Stories Don’t End, Dawes

Sunbather, Deafheaven

We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, Foxygen

10. Amok
Atoms for Peace

Contrary to speculations, Thom Yorke has friends. Outside Radiohead the music he makes may not be totally different but it gives way to his lighter side, the gentler and warmer side of his that blooms when he’s not around his usual band mates. Amok is the first LP of Atoms for Peace, but it’s a record so sure of itself, so strong and steady that there’s something humorous in calling it a debut, especially since the people involved in making it are industry heavyweights. The sleekness of it is far from overpowering. One after another, the tracks move with seeming complicity and make sweeping gestures through minimal use of elements. Although it boasts a deftly polished surface, Amok also holds surprises for those who listen closely.

Recommended: “Default,” “Ingenue,” “Judge, Jury and Executioner”

9. The Hurry and the Harm
City and Colour

Although The Hurry and The Harm sounds more refined than Dallas Green’s previous records, to an extent due to the sophistication of its production, one thing hasn’t changed: his ace songwriting. This gift for lyrical flourishes is coupled with melodies that burst at the seams, turning melancholy fears into personal realizations, opening all doors and windows to let the air in. At one moment he sings, “I don’t wanna be revolutionary / No, I’m just looking for the sweetest melody,” and it sums up neatly what he has been doing all these years.

Recommended: “Harder than Stone,” “The Lonely Life,” “Commentators”

8. Hesitation Marks
Nine Inch Nails

The surprise on Hesitation Marks is not its arresting quality, which is expected from almost every Trent Reznor release, but the reason for it. Yes, it’s an album heavy with textures and atmospheres, and its starkness is breathtaking, but there’s less force and fewer demons, less brutality and more tenderness, as shown on its softer rhythms and looser tunes that feel like musical fondues: tasty and scrumptious, forcing the listener to dance in glee. Older but definitely wiser, Reznor has so much more to give.

Recommended: “Copy of A,” “Came Back Haunted,” “Satellite”

7. The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You
Neko Case

“This record was really autobiographical because my mind didn’t have room for anything else,” says Neko Case, referring to her latest album. And The Worse Things Get…, driven by the unforgiving power of her voice, the cruelty of its tone, and the burning clarity of her words, swells with the need to be let out, to be remembered less for its stories than for the emotional rawness they carry. Case is many things (a man, a tornado, a murderer) and shows many things (love, aggression, anger, loneliness, fear), and this record presents her at her most vulnerable, which is also her most beautiful.

Recommended: “Night Still Comes,” “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu.” “Afraid”

6. …Like Clockwork
Queens of the Stone Age

The recording of …Like Clockwork is marked by difficulties: the departure of drummer Joey Castillo, Josh Homme’s near-death experience at hospital, and a slew of distractions that have found the band members in a state of ennui, trying to figure things out after several years of not being at the studio together. But there have also been welcoming changes and additions, namely the contributions of former members Nick Oliveri, Dave Grohl, and Mark Lanegan, and the collaborations with Trent Reznor, Alex Turner, and Elton John, among others. All these make it feel like it’s a colossal, mind-blowing record, but it isn’t, for it is propelled by confident restraint and resolve to focus on the music, which remains intense and crunchy without losing that boldness to tread on uneven terrains. Truth be told, there’s not much to say about …Like Clockwork, except that every second of it drips with goodness.

Recommended: “Keep Your Eyes Peeled,” “If I Had A Tail,” “Smooth Sailing”

5. Julia With Blue Jeans On
Moonface

It’s sad that Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown, arguably two of the finest rock bands from the 2000s, are no longer around. But Spencer Krug—an overly gifted songwriter and crazy singer; a sufferer, a poet of immense talent, and a storyteller of mad predilections—always finds a way to free his work from himself, to find an avenue for his compositions. Leaving Canada for Finland, he continues making records as Moonface, and this year, having gone through many changes like the characters in his songs, releases Julia With Blue Jeans On, a tempered work compared with his previous records. Accompanied only by the piano, this album also happens to be his most heartbreaking: his excesses, instead of acting as flourishes, create a haunting effect, and his voice remains compelling, beer-friendly. The moment the album reaches its final seconds, the listener feels completely heavy, skeptic of playing it again, and that’s how it is with everyone.

Recommended: “Barbarian,” “Dreamy Summer,” “Julia With Blue Jeans On”

4. m b v
My Bloody Valentine

Who would have fucking thought? After 22 years, there’s no way that a fan, possibly in his teens or twenties when Loveless came out, can confront m b v without eagerness, without looking forward to basking in its shoegazing glory, without hoping to place his hands in its embers. Its mere presence is enough to move him to tears. And thankfully m b v leaves no room for disappointment—it’s a constellation that keeps on twinkling, a record so generous that it gives its listeners plenty of reasons to press repeat. It’s an album with a long and rewarding life, with a soul that never leaves. Once people get past the comparisons with Loveless, all that’s left is this huge gratitude to a band that has suffered a lot to deliver this astonishing piece of work.

Recommended: “She Found Now,” “Who Sees You,” “New You”

3. AM
Arctic Monkeys

Record after record, Arctic Monkeys prove one important thing: their growth is never tiring. Suck It and See finds them in a difficult situation as it sets down what seems to be their total strengths as songwriters and musicians, and what comes next may pale in comparison. AM, however, doesn’t, and this is a noteworthy feat that owes to their willingness to develop their sound without losing the verve and vibe that have made listeners cling to them over the years. Driven by the band’s captivating personality and tracks that are too irresistible to ignore, AM simmers after every spin, and the whistle it makes is a reminder that good things may come to an end but that end sometimes connects with better things.

Recommended: “Do I Wanna Know?” “R U Mine?” “Knee Socks”

2. The Next Day
David Bowie

While listening to The Next Day one is tempted to find a moment when it wavers, when David Bowie, a pop icon who’s had many fits of inconsistencies in his career, loses grip and indulges pointlessly, but there isn’t any. It sounds so brisk, spontaneous, and spirited that it doesn’t feel like a comeback record, it doesn’t feel that Bowie has been gone for long, it doesn’t feel that words will do justice to its seeming lightheartedness, to its exhilarating moments. Bowie’s well never runs out of interesting ideas, and every time the bucket emerges, it brims with pleasant surprises. The Next Day stands as proof of this.

Recommended: “Valentine’s Day,” “I’d Rather Be High,” “Dancing Out in Space”

1. Trouble Will Find Me
The National

What the members of The National have been consistently doing since 2005’s Alligator is shape their experiences into beguiling pieces of music, and though most of them teem with anxieties and forebodings of fathers in their thirties and forties, they are likely to strike a chord with any listener who revels in exquisite descriptions of dark feelings, who sees humor in the mundane, and who has always imagined rock music mixed with gentle poetry. High Violet may be a tough record to follow, but Trouble Will Find Me, in its searing moments of inscrutable joy, marks an achievement that is impossible to overstate, a record that only confirms The National’s intolerable kindness, their unbearable and stubborn greatness.

Recommended: “Sea of Love,” “Graceless,” “Pink Rabbits”

Stars
February 16, 2013
Metrotent

Bloc Party
March 22, 2013
World Trade Center

The xx
July 30, 2013
NBC Tent

Japandroids
August 19, 2013
Hard Rock Cafe

Explosions in the Sky
October 30
Samsung Hall

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Reading a book: happiness, like peeling an apple, warming a slice of pizza, chewing a sweet piece of gum, seeing a shooting star a second before it disappears, entering a library, breathing that familiar smell of dust, sitting in a corner, admiring the silence, looking up a word, looking out the window, going down an endless flight of stairs with no sense of hurry, finding a place to sit, lying down on the grass, resting your gaze on the sky, seeing the clouds move, closing your eyes, losing it, recovering, finally losing it.

Following are the finest books I read in the past year.

45. EVERYMAN, Philip Roth, 2006

“Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious folderol meaningless, childish, couldn’t understand the complete unadultness—the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers. No hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself, that was it—he’d come upon it early and intuitively, and however elemental, that was the whole of it.”

44. WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK
Nathan Englander, 2012

“They were all heroes to us, every single one of Russia’s oppressed. We’d seen Gulag on cable television, and learned that for escapes across vast snowy tundras, two prisoners would invite a third to join, so that they could eat him along the way. We were moved by this as boys, and fantasized about sacrifice, wondering which of our classmates we’d devour.”

43. MONKEY GRIP, Helen Garner, 1977

“At last,” he said, “I’ve found someone who fucks soft.”

42. SELECTED STORIES, Adolfo Bioy Casares
Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, 1994

“Getting off at College Station, he had the impression that people were staring at him. He was going to continue on his way but then thought that to imagine people were looking at him strangely was in itself a symptom of insanity.”

41. A BREATH OF LIFE (PULSATIONS), Clarice Lispector, 1978
Translated by Johnny Lorenz, 2012

“Last night I had a dream within a dream. I dreamed that I was calmly watching actors working on a stage. And through a door that was not locked men came in with machine guns and killed all the actors. I began to cry: I didn’t want them to be dead. So the actors got up off the ground and said: we aren’t dead in real life, just as actors, the massacre was part of the show. Then I dreamed such a good dream: I dreamed this: in life we are actors in an absurd play written by an absurd God. We are all participants in this theater: in truth we never shall die when death happens. We only die as actors. Could that be eternity?”

40. ALMOST NO MEMORY, Lydia Davis, 1997

“An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.”

39. CRONOPIOS AND FAMAS, Juilo Cortázar, 1962
Translated by Paul Blackburn, 1969

“It happened that a gentleman dropped his glasses on the floor, which, when they hit the tiles, made a terrible noise. The gentleman stoops down to pick them up, very dejected, as the lenses are very expensive, but he discovers with astonishment that by some miracle he hasn’t broken them.

“Now this gentleman feels profoundly thankful and understands that what has happened amounts to a friendly warning, in such a way that he walks down to an optician’s shop and immediately acquires a leather glasses case, padded and double-protected, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of, etc. An hour later the case falls, and stooping down to recover it without any great anxiety, he discovers that the glasses are in smithereens. It takes this gentleman a while to understand that the designs of Providence are inscrutable, and that in reality the miracle has just now occurred.”

38. SELECTED STORIES, Robert Walser
Translated by Christopher Middleton and others, 1982

“I am thrilled to be writing a report on such a delicate subject as trousers, and thus to be licensed to plunge into meditation upon them; even as I write, a desirous grin, I can feel it, is spreading over my face.”

37. DARK HOURS, Conchitina Cruz, 2005

“I missed the train right away. I despised the return to the road, the chaos of buses, the cops on the lookout for bribes. We became believers in the rule of elimination: every place became a potential target; the safest spots were those that had already been bombed. We ignored the warnings and kissed on the steps to the train.”

36. THE DUEL, Anton Chekhov, 1891
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2004

“Trust me, I won’t deceive you, and I won’t conceal a single truth from the eyes of your soul. Listen to me, then, dearest. . . God marks great sinners, and you have been marked. Remember, your dresses have always been awful!”

35. ÁGUA VIVA, Clarice Lispector, 1973
Translated by Stefan Tobler, 2012

“. . . suddenly I saw him and he was such an extraordinarily handsome and virile man that I felt a joy of creation. Not that I wanted him for myself just as I don’t want for myself the boy I saw with the hair of an archangel running after a ball. I just wanted to look. The man looked at me for an instant and smiled calmly: he knew how beautiful he was and I know that he knew that I didn’t want him for myself. He smiled because he felt no threat at all. Because beings exceptional in any way are subject to more dangers than your average person. I crossed the street and took a taxi. The breeze made the hairs on my neck stand up. And I was so happy that I huddled in the corner of the taxi out of fear because happiness hurts. And all that caused by having seen the handsome man. I still didn’t want him for myself—what I like are people who are a little ugly and at the same time harmonious, but he somehow had given me a lot with his smile of camaraderie among people who understand each other. I didn’t understand any of this.”

34. TRAIN DREAMS, Denis Johnson, 2011

“All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dreamlike business he’d ever witnessed waking—the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds high and white, catching daylight from beyond the valley, others ribbed and gray and pink, the lowest of them rubbing the peaks of Bussard and Queen mountains; and beneath this wondrous sky the black valley, utterly still, the train moving through it making a great noise but unable to wake this dead world.”

33. MONSIEUR PAIN, Roberto Bolaño, 1999
Translated by Chris Andrews, 2010

“This is the strangest bribe I’ve ever heard of,” I murmured. Of course they didn’t understand.

32. DANCING LESSONS FOR THE ADVANCED IN AGE
Bohumil Hrabal, 1964
Translated by Michael Henry Heim, 1995

“. . .my cousin was a twin and real card, he was christened Vincek and his brother was christened Ludvíček, and when they were a year old their mother was bathing them in a tub and popped out to see a neighbor, and when she got back half an hour later one of them had drowned, and they were so much alike nobody could tell which one, Ludvíček or Vincek, so they flipped a coin, heads for Ludvíček, tails for Vincek, and it came up Ludvíček, but when my cousin Vincek grew up he began to wonder—and he had plenty of time for it, he was always out of a job—he began to wonder who really did drown, whether the person walking around on Earth wasn’t really Ludvíček, and he, Vincek, was up in heaven, which led him to drink and to wander along the water’s edge and go in swimming, testing the waters, so to speak, till at last he drowned, by way of proof that he hadn’t been the one to drown back then. . .”

31. PEDRO PÁRAMO, Juan Rulfo, 1955
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, 1994

“I had expected to see the town of my mother’s memories, of her nostalgia—nostalgia laced with sighs. She had lived her lifetime sighing about Comala, about going back. But she never had. Now I had come in her place. I was seeing things through her eyes, as she had seen them. She had given me her eyes to see.”

30. THE LOVER, Marguerite Duras, 1984
Translated by Barbara Bray, 1985

“One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said, ‘I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.”

29. INNOCENT ERÉNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES
Gabriel García Márquez
Translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1978

“We had been seeing each other for several years. Sometimes, when we were already together, somebody would drop a spoon outside and we would wake up. Little by little we’d been coming to understand that our friendship was subordinated to things, to the simplest of happenings. Our meetings always ended that way, with the fall of a spoon early in the morning.”

28. THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, Joan Didion, 2005

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”

27. ON THE YANKEE STATION, William Boyd, 1981

“People, it seems, want to give me things—for some reason known only to them. No matter what I do or how I behave, unprompted and unsought the gifts come. And they will keep on coming. Naked photos, cold pizza, their girls, their wives, their breasts to see, even their grief. I feel a growing confidence about my stay in Nice. It will be all right now, I feel sure. It will work out. I think about all the gifts that lie waiting for me. I think about the Swedish girls at the Centre. I think about spring and the days when the sun will be out. . .”

26. THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH, Michael Chabon, 1988

“When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another’s skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness—and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.”

25. THE RAIN BEFORE IT FALLS, Jonathan Coe, 2007

“There is nothing one can say, I suppose, about happiness that has no flaws, no blemishes, no fault lines: none, that is, except the certain knowledge that it will have to come to an end.”

24. A VERY EASY DEATH, Simone de Beauvoir, 1964
Translated by Patrick O’Brian, 1965

“I did not particularly want to see Maman again before her death; but I could not bear the idea that she should not see me again.”

23. THE OPTIMIST’S DAUGHTER, Eudora Welty, 1972

“The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.”

22. THE APPLE IN THE DARK, Clarice Lispector, 1961
Translated by Gregory Rabassa, 1967

“ … ‘I am I!’ she begged Him, not as a privilege, but to make it easier for Him to grant the tremendous exception. ‘Oh God, let me always have a body!’ The tears were running down her still happy face which, startled, had not had time to change its expression. ‘My God,’ she finally confessed, feeling that with it she was confessing a great sin—‘I never want to see You! She felt horror for God and His sweetness and His stability and His perfume; she felt horror for the birds that He had sent as messenger of peace. ‘I don’t want to die because I don’t understand death!’ the girl said to God. ‘Please don’t judge me so superior to the point that You will send me death! I don’t deserve it! Sneer at me because I am inferior, any life is enough for me! And I’m not intelligent, I was always backward in school, why give me so much importance now, then? It’s enough to put me aside and forget about me, who am I to die! Only privileged people should die! Whom are You asking the truth from! You can give it to anyone who asks for it!’”

21. THE DAY OF THE OWL, Leonardo Sciascia, 1961
Translated by Archibald Colquhoun and Arthur Oliver, 1963

“Truth is at the bottom of a well: look into it and you see the sun or the moon; but if you throw yourself in, there’s no more sun or moon: just truth.”

20. BY NIGHT IN CHILE, Roberto Bolaño, 2000
Translated by Chris Andrews, 2003

“One has a moral obligation to take responsibility for one’s actions, and that includes one’s words and silences, yes, one’s silences, because silences rise to heaven too, and God hears them, and only God understands and judges them, so one must be very careful with one’s silences.”

19. LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K, J. M. Coetzee, 1983

“He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around quietly minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand. A hard little stone, barely aware of its surroundings, enveloped in itself and its interior life. He passes through these institutions and camps and hospitals and God knows what else like a stone. Through the intestines of war. An unbearing, unborn creature.”

18. THE INVENTION OF MOREL, Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1940
Translated by Ruth L. C. Simms, 1964

So I was dead! The thought delighted me, (I felt proud, I felt as if I were a character in a novel!)

      17.  LET US COMPARE MYTHOLOGIES, Leonard Cohen, 1956

In his black armour
the house-fly marched the field
of Freia’s sleeping thighs,
undisturbed by the soft hand
which vaguely moved
to end his exercise.

And it ruined my day—
this fly which never planned
to charm her or to please
should walk boldly on that ground
I tried so hard
to lay my trembling knees.

16. THE FAT MAN IN HISTORY, Peter Carey, 1993

“I don’t believe in god,” my father said. “Humanity is god. Humanity is the only god I know. If humanity doesn’t need something it will disappear. People who are not loved will disappear. Everything that is not loved will disappear from the face of the earth. We only exist through the love of others and that’s what it’s all about.”

15. NIGHT, Elie Wiesel, 1958
Translated by Marion Wiesel, 2006

“I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real. A nightmare perhaps . . . Soon I would wake up with a start, my heart pounding, and find that I was back in the room of my childhood, with my books . . .”

14. THE DREAM OF HEROES, Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1954
Translated by Diana Thorold, 1987

“As Gauna was getting ready to go out that same evening, just as it was beginning to get dark, there was a downpour of rain. He waited in the entrance hall for it to stop, and he noticed how all the usual colours of the neighbourhood—the green of the trees, lighter in the case of the eucalyptus whose leaves were quivering beyond the waste ground in the distance, darker in the case of the paradise trees on the pavements, the browns and greys of the doors and windows, the white of the houses, the ochre of the draper’s on the corner, the red of the posters still vainly announcing the sale of plots of land, the blue of the glass sign opposite—all these had taken on the boundless intensity of living things, as if some frenzied exaltation had reached them from the depths of the earth.”

13. ROGUE MALE, Geoffrey Household, 1939

“I distrust patriotism; the reasonable man can find little in these days that is worth dying for. But dying against—there’s enough iniquity in Europe to carry the most urbane or decadent into battle.”

12. ALL FIRES THE FIRE AND OTHER STORIES, Julio Cortázar, 1966
Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, 2005

“There were several weeks—it’s so hard to be precise with happiness—when everything made us laugh.”

11. WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, J. M. Coetzee, 1980

“All that I want now is to live out my life in ease in a familiar world, to die in my own bed and be followed to the grave by old friends.”

10. CHESS, Stefan Zweig, 1942
Translated by Anthea Bell, 2006

“I had always realized that such a unique, brilliant game must create its own matadors, but how difficult and indeed impossible it is to imagine the life of an intellectually active human being whose world is reduced entirely to the narrow one-way traffic between black and white, who seeks the triumphs of his life in the mere movement to and fro, forward and back of thirty-two chessmen, someone to whom a new opening, moving knight rather than pawn, is a great deed, and his little corner of immortality is tucked away in a book about chess—a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!”

9. NEAR TO THE WILD HEART, Clarice Lispector, 1943
Translated by Alison Entrekin, 2012

“. . .goodness makes me want to be sick. Goodness was lukewarm and light. It smelled of raw meat kept for too long. Without entirely rotting in spite of everything. It was freshened up from time to time, seasoned a little, enough to keep it a piece of lukewarm, quiet meat.”

8. THE SPARE ROOM, Helen Garner, 2008

“The most beautiful things,” he remarked to her in a German-tinged drawl, “happen secretly and privately.”

7. CIVILWARLAND IN BAD DECLINE, George Saunders, 1996

“The fight started when I accused her of flirting with our neighbor Len Kobb by bending low on purpose. I was angry and implied that she couldn’t keep her boobs in her top to save her life. If I could see her one last time I’d say: Thanks very much for dying at the worst possible moment and leaving me holding the bag of guilt. I’d say: if you had to die, couldn’t you have done it when we were getting along?”

6. BERLIN STORIES, Robert Walser
Translated by Susan Bernofsky, 2012

“I am poor, and I am steeling myself for even more poverty,” I wrote, as I recall, to delightful Auguste, who had been my sweet little lady friend, “and you will probably never again respond to a letter containing such doleful confessions. I understand you womenfolk; you are only lovely, good, and kind to those who visibly enjoy good fortune in this world. Penury, indigence, and misfortune repulse you. Forgive the anguish that is not ashamed to write such things. What am I capable of offering you when I am scarcely able to keep my own head above water? Clearly things are over between us, no?, for you will surely find it excellent to shun me. This I can understand. And I as well am joyfully taking leave of you today, because now it is time for me to invest what strength I possess in fighting an all too unlovely struggle for survival. Oh, all those rose scenes, that divine, gay exuberance you bestowed on me, that laughter! I shall always be prepared to think back on a happiness whose mischievous originator you were. Let me kiss you once more in thought, tenderly, as if we were still entitled to dally thus. No doubt you have already begun to forget me. And so adieu forever.”

5. UNREASONABLE HOURS, Julio Cortázar, 1983
Translated by Alberto Manguel, 1995

“… Mecha’s hands climbing softly to her waist, sliding upwards to join at her breast, the body shaking in a spasm because now her ears could maybe hear the multiplying sirens, the knocking on the door that made the whole house tremble, the commanding shouts and the crunch of the wood breaking, and then the spray of the machine-gun, the screams of Mrs Luisa, the lurch of the pack of bodies bursting in, everything as if timed for Mecha’s awakening, everything on schedule for the nightmare to end and for Mecha to return to reality at last, to the beauty of life.”

4. DISGRACE, J. M. Coetzee, 1999

“What the dog will not be able to work out (not in a month of Sundays! he thinks), what his nose will not tell him, is how one can enter what seems to be an ordinary room and never come out again. Something happens in this room, something unmentionable: here the soul is yanked out of the body; briefly it hangs about in the air, twisting and contorting; then it is sucked away and is gone. It will be beyond him, this room that is not a room but a hole where one leaks out of existence.”

3. THE TRIAL, Franz Kafka, 1925
Translated by Breon Mitchell, 1998

“No,” said the priest, “you don’t have to consider everything true, you just have to consider it necessary.” “A depressing opinion,” said K. “Lies are made into a universal system.”

2. 2666, Roberto Bolaño, 2004
Translated by Natasha Wimmer, 2008

“Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”

1. THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H., Clarice Lispector, 1964
Translated by Idra Novey, 2012

“And if we foresee it, it’s also because we feel uneasily used by God, we feel uneasily that we are being used with an intense and uninterrupted pleasure—moreover our salvation for now has been that of at least being used, we are not useless, we are intensely taken advantage of by God; body and soul and life are for just that: for the interchange and ecstasy of someone. Uneasy, we feel that we are being used every instant—but that awakens within us the uneasy desire to use as well.

“And He not only allows us, but He needs to be used, being used is a way of being understood.”

Written by Mikhail Red and Ian Victoriano
Directed by Mikhail Red
Cast: Ronnie Quizon, Mile Lloren, Buboy Villar

The past year has been considered a high point of Philippine cinema, yet in hindsight, in a reflection that may occur to moviegoers who often find themselves confounded by tiring pronouncements, validating this assertion does not rest on the consensus that, indeed, a number of distinguishingly well-made films have been released in 2013, emphasized further by year-end lists put together by local critics and cineastes. A more convincing argument for the previous year’s greatness, if one must be drawn to such monotonous debate, is the rarely pointed out but curiously remarkable fact that a string of overlooked films, those who have suffered from groupthink and inattention, provide better material for telling discussions, and should titles be named, these include Rekorder by Mikhail Red, Amor y Muerte by Cesar Evangelista, Puti by Mike Alcazaren, Babagwa by Jason Paul Laxamana, and Four Sisters and A Wedding by Cathy Garcia-Molina. All these movies are obviously flawed, but the mix of newness and charm, not to mention excesses and lapses, that their directors bring to the screen is a welcoming change from the usual subjects of admiration.

Rekorder, for instance, is drowned out by the brimming compliments for Transit by Hannah Espia, the darling of the crowd at Cinemalaya and the country’s entry to the Oscars, accolades that seem to have made it invulnerable. Both in their twenties, Espia and Red have directed acclaimed short films prior to their first features and represent a good crop of young filmmakers who have taken a chance on grant-giving festivals and come out with a finished product—not an easy feat these days considering that the seed money is wrapped in a foil of concessions and compliance. After Cinemalaya, however, Espia and Red have come to be defined by the reception to their debuts. She is able to screen her film in various cities across the world, encouraged by the eagerness for her follow-up; he, on the other hand, is happy just to be able to show his work to a handful of viewers, in Manila or in Tokyo, most of whom may actually enter and leave the theater carrying the same feeling. But to the few who have been moved by the rawness and sincerity of Rekorder, particularly by its failed attempts at polishing its perspective, it only feels right to admit that, with the benefit of hindsight, the small consideration given to it matches its smallness, and that Red, supposing he is willing to be on the suffering side of the art form for which his father has labored for decades, can offer something that his contemporaries cannot.

Although it’s shot in different formats, the changes in tone, texture, and frame sizes complement the atmosphere of internal and external deterioration, from the demons that keep hovering over the principal character to the glitches in his surroundings that he is forced to confront, actions and distractions that Red sets up to make him move. Rekorder’s experimental quality, instead of presenting new ideas, falls into the trap of engaging in stale metaphors and hackneyed juxtapositions, visuals that feel compelled to say something, plots that tend to put things out of focus, and elements that build down rather than up to a conclusion, particularly with the effect of those shots of buildings and skies at night, highlighting the verves perceptible only among the nocturnal. But this is Red’s youth speaking for him, which is an acceptable display of flimsiness; and it’s good that he hasn’t lost it, for the moment the film attends to a crucial turning point, when the protagonist bears witness to a crime and is able to record it on video, the narrative suddenly finds a backbone, and what has started out as messy becomes messier, and its echoes sound clearer and more resonant.

What several viewers regard as “dragging” is basically an effort to establish coherence between things from the past and present, how these items, whether material (camcorder, movie posters, theaters, reels) or conceptual (violence, media, ethics, freedom, progress), are changed and devalued over time, and the people who own and consume them—those who fail to adjust and carry on, those who choose to stop at one moment and realize it’s better to stay there—end up battered and haunted. Ronnie Quizon, in a career-defining performance, embodies a man who wanders between reason and madness, and one by one the objects and thoughts keeping him steady are being taken away from him, Red capturing his weariness and struggle by submitting to Quizon’s delightful moments of self-indulgence. A commanding presence onscreen, he exudes the soul of a lazy, tormented hero, one who’s difficult to hate and frown upon, and one whose frequent plunges into despair are inevitable.

A huge chunk of Rekorder tugs at movie piracy and the glory days of Philippine cinema, but oddly these matters feel negligible as the story moves forward. They provide the backdrop in which the lead character situates his life (or lack thereof) and fixations, but as soon as the routine of his work and his past are established, they wilt and fade. For some reason they come across as distant, lacking the immediacy to make the viewer feel involved. May this be attributed to Red’s weakness as a writer and director or is indifference a prevailing attitude as far as these subjects are concerned? How come when Earl Ignacio, the moment he is being carried away by the police during a raid, shouts about the sorry state of Filipino films, in a tone that is somehow similar to being slapped in the face, the tendency to cringe and look away from the screen is so tempting? How is it possible not to be affected by the nuances of these contradictions?

Nevertheless, the reveal at the end makes an uncanny impression, for, unexpectedly, the long walks and empty gazes begin to add up, the trembling and stuttering, the look of fright and longing, the melancholy of a single man, the detachment from society and from himself, the obscenity of simply being alive. Eclipsing the pain of nostalgia and the ordinariness of violence is this throb of personal preoccupation, and Rekorder, in its efforts to create a complex and rounded milieu for its protagonist, understands the need to collapse, and in a world that continues to pull unpleasant surprises, where humanity rusts for want of use, it seems to be the only fitting end.

*Published in the second issue of Kino Punch, UP Cinema’s film magazine

Written by Rody Vera and Lav Diaz
Directed by Lav Diaz
Cast: Sid Lucero, Angeli Bayani, Archie Alemania, Hazel Orencio, Angelina Kanapi

Sometime in 2004, in a roomful of undergraduate students, a lecturer started his class by sneering at Lav Diaz. That time there was a lot of talk about the release of Ebolusyon ng isang Pamilyang Pilipino, a work filled with characters steeped in many shades of anguish not far from the despair experienced by those who took part in making it. This lecturer, who also happened to have established a name for himself as a film critic, was aghast by the idea of a ten-hour movie being conceived and received, let alone being programmed at international festivals, and this made Ebolusyon an easier target of his ridicule.

There was no way of remembering the exact words, for it was his self-aggrandizing tone and highly inspired provocation that caught the students’ attention, specifically the manner in which he delighted in his attack, condemning the film solely for its length, the peak of which came when he pointed out, one by one and systematically, the various activities that could be accomplished in ten hours, from the mundane to the outrageous, from washing clothes and waiting for them to dry to the slow formation of stalactites and stalagmites, and his filibustering went on for three hours until it was already time for the students to leave. Judging by the looks on their faces, sitting through that class was either absolute pain or absolute pleasure, and thanks to this lecturer, who hadn’t seen a second of Ebolusyon yet already making permanent impressions, some of them had reconsidered pursuing their film degrees, inadvertently allowing this minor incident to cut through several facets of their academic experience.

It is a useless memory with negligible consequences—an instructor’s display of ferocious absurdity seems nothing compared with the news of a student committing suicide several years later, whose passing has shaken the spirit of numerous film majors, some of whom are present in that class—but it is a known fact that useless memories cling forever; and these bits of impractical and hollow details, always there but seldom acknowledged, only become well-defined in the most inopportune moment, confirming that even meaningless things resonate deeply given the right time and vulnerability. This violent act of dissing and dismissing films without having seen them, bringing to light the brutally bitter side of criticism driven for the most part by self-importance, recalls the dynamics of quiet viciousness that persists in Diaz’s body of work.

Even as early as Serafin Geronimo: Ang Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion, he has demonstrated the ability to inflict wounds that feel painful only after they heal, and in his much longer movies this fixation has grown bleaker and more threatening, for between the projected image and the audience a bridge is being built for the burden to cross. The length of his movies has always been a source of discouragement, but experiencing the passage of time is crucial in looking into his work, especially with how such proceeding changes and erodes the lives of his characters, how it observes their gentle descent into oblivion. The concepts that Diaz is so keen on exploring film after film hardly feel abstract or theoretical: they are made specific by his anger and frustration, by the seeming futility of struggle, and by the aggression inculcated in small and large systems, begun and exacerbated during colonial rule, and present up to now on various levels of society, continuing to oppress and eliminate the weak and the poor, to whom he has frequently dedicated his stories.

Diaz has always been on the periphery of the industry, and this position, away from the rewards and restrictions of popular digital cinema, the development of which has given way to a much-desired golden age, has made his films even more distant from the public. Almost a decade after Ebolusyon, he directs Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, which bears resemblance to Batang Westside not only in length and use of color but also in tautness and precision. With the searing clarity of its vision and the measure of significance that lies in its fullness, Norte is likely to be mentioned constantly as proof of his brilliance. It has come at a time when the current political climate is beset with prospects of having another Marcos as president and the alarming emergence of young minds defending his dictatorial regime. In his interviews, Diaz is vocal about the character of Fabian being molded from Ferdinand Marcos—the brightest law student in his class, the young murderer dodging his punishment, the intellectual wrestling with his demons, the man gifted with good looks, wealth, and freedom but struggling for peace of mind and contentment, the leader enlivened by his keenness to destroy—and he has made it a point to set Norte in Marcos’s hometown in Ilocos Norte, the land where the roots of despotism are anchored until present, lending the film not only its title but also its past.

The guise of a linear structure does not prevent Diaz from telling a compelling narrative, but whenever he takes the liberty of sidestepping—lingering over sceneries, pursuing dead-end characters, inserting plots that can stand on their own outside the film, or conjuring dream sequences that raise the narrative to overwhelming heights—the emotions that have once been firm and unyielding suddenly soften, escaping the confines of cinema and connecting themselves with larger aspects of human condition. It takes a while before Norte arrives at a point of levelheaded tranquility, before the bad taste left by the uncomfortable bursts of philosophizing turns into a reminder of horrible things to come, but when it does, when the narrative arcs of Fabian and Joaquin become closer by moving away from each other, all possible exits lead to tragedy.

The weight carried by the film owes a lot to Diaz’s understanding of grief, which allows him to orchestrate big and small pieces of heartbreaking incidents to form a whole that touches every moral surface, no matter how far and deep. Adding to the throb of pain, which takes its time before making its absence felt, is the parchedness of dramatic highlights, especially in those sequences with Joaquin and Eliza, who bear the film’s soul and spirit, the couple whose days and nights alternate between looking back and looking forward, always waiting to avert the misfortune lying ahead of them. The most painful and powerful moments in Norte are those that show their need to live for each other, all the time refusing to succumb to bad luck, only to end up in an unconditional state of desolation in which all their hopes settle as dust.

Joaquin’s story—an unremarkable man whose dream of setting up a small livelihood for his family is shattered by an accident; an unremarkable man who, in an unreasonable turn of events, becomes the fall guy prosecuted for double murder; an unremarkable man who, after seeing Eliza for the first time in several years and exchanging with her a future built only on optimism, unguarded from the certainties of disappointment, is likely to hear the news of her death in a cruel accident (the kind that happens so frequently in the country it hardly feels impossible)—is a story that keeps repeating itself among the masses, among the people who have grown tired of fighting for their rights and are now simply taking it all in, their paths worsened by the paths before them, their fates dictated not by god but by man.

A poor man can weather as many bad accidents as possible—being born into an impoverished family, having to go through life in the most abject of circumstances, being disgraced on account of his social position, trying all means to survive only to be buried deeper in debt and penury—but one severe incident, the reason for which will never be discovered, is enough to efface all his tremendous displays of fortitude, forcing him to give up. Norte openly overstates the goodness of Joaquin, the way he responds to evil by showing incredible compassion, and the culmination of which happens as he reaches a spiritual peak. But even Diaz, who has invested in Joaquin the warmest affection possible between an author and a creation, cannot bring himself to face Joaquin’s reaction to Eliza’s demise, and the audience feels this sorrow in the final scene where Ading and the two children walk funereally, looking numb and emptied, impossible to be comforted.

In almost every review of Norte there seems to be a fulsome need to mention Diaz’s admiration for Dostoevsky, the parallelism and differences between Raskolnikov and Fabian, the hopelessness of their tormented existence and the context in which their actions (and inactions) produce harsh consequences. While this is clearly a remarkable way of examining his work, unfortunately it also limits the perspective appropriate for a much more illuminating appreciation of his position as a filmmaker from the third world, as a narrator of his countrymen’s inexhaustible suffering, and as a Filipino who tries to alleviate the centuries-old struggle for equal opportunity by keeping its memories alive. Extrapolating Dostoevsky’s influence on his films creates an attractive distraction, one that asserts Diaz’s accessibility because of the themes he engages in, but it does not exactly offer the most persuasive reason for his importance. The patriotism that permeates in his films has always been exact and uncompromising—the identity of the characters is unmistakably Filipino, made more distinct by their ambiguities and contradictions—and in this regard, it is only rational to suggest that the artists with whom Diaz can be comfortably associated are his fellow writers with strong roots in social realism, specifically Rogelio Sicat and Edgardo Reyes, authors whose short stories, novels, and essays confront the elaborate cycle of violence experienced by the poor and their great efforts to contend with this terrible reality.

In two of his most celebrated stories, “Impeng Negro” and “Tata Selo,” both written in the early sixties, Sicat brings to life characters pushed to the extremes by people who abuse them, forcing them to break and fight back. Constantly bullied by his neighbor for his skin color, Impen can no longer contain the scorn and loathing hurled at him, so after feeling the blood in his cheeks, after being hit and kicked repeatedly despite his defenselessness, and after being ridiculed for his sorry condition, he gets up and pummels the face of his adversary as madly as he can, using only what he has: his hands and the sheer urge to defend his dignity. Tata Selo, on the other hand, is an old man imprisoned for killing the owner of the land he tills, who, according to him, has terminated him from work unfairly; but as the subtle details of the story reveal, the reason for the crime is the rape committed to his daughter. Holding the cold steel bars and looking far away, he mutters, in an expression of grief that intimates his inability to resist madness, that everything (his land, his daughter, his honor, and his life) has been taken away from him.

Impen and Tata Selo are nowhere to be found in Norte—it’s no surprise that the likes of them are dead by now, in real life and in fiction—but the distinct qualities that have made them unforgettable characters in Philippine literature are in Joaquin and Eliza, who get by through their heroic patience and belief that life, until and unless it ends, will always have a chance to be better. Prizewinning playwright Rody Vera, with the help of Raymond Lee and Michiko Yamamoto, shapes them (as well as Fabian, whose antagonism and cunningness provide the film a livid state of grace) and plants their stories deeply in a fertile soil, enabling Diaz to cultivate it on his own terms. The freedom given by Vera is a wonderful gift, for Diaz, perhaps even without knowing it, is able to pay tribute to Mga Agos sa Disyerto, a seminal anthology first published in the sixties that renders the subject of poverty with emphasis on radical form and content, linking the traditional and the progressive. Fifty years have passed since then and the can of worms, passed from one destitute generation to another, is still there. Diaz captures in Norte the passage of time and change of values in these people, their struggle being the only invariable element, and imparts the imposing scale of adversity committed to them.

One particular scene springs to mind, which, when taken into consideration with the film’s finer details, can easily go unnoticed: Tired after spending the entire day pushing her cart of produce around town, Eliza returns home with a plastic bag of bread for her children and sister. They invite her to eat, but Eliza, who has probably forgotten in the long years of hard work what hunger means, declines and goes to bed. The film moves to another scene, but for some reason, perhaps due to the way it evokes the plainness of life absent from the city or how Angeli Bayani leaves the viewer unsteady by making simple gestures, it’s difficult to shake off the ache of witnessing that short moment fade away without imagining how it has come about—exhausted, Eliza remembers her loved ones as she walks home, stops by a store to buy something for them, and smiles as she pictures the look of happiness on their faces. But she won’t take a piece of her present. She would rather offer it pure and untouched. She’s too drained to even think of this, so she decides it’s better to turn in so she can wake up early next morning for work. It’s hard to believe that this is the same mother who, out of distress and desperation, has once contemplated killing herself and her children, and in the end is betrayed by the very faith she has protected painstakingly, but selflessness, at its most heartbreaking, identifies itself better with thoughts of tragedy.

It’s unfair that there’s only so much a writer can talk about in the presence of great art, but the inability to express and explain every aspect of its finery simply confirms its worth. Every attempt to assess Norte reflects the failure to cover countless areas of discussion it cracks open—the most striking of which, arguably, is the nature of Fabian’s crimes; how the first murder is totally uncalled for and how it is necessitated only by an exercise of will and a mania to satisfy himself; how the second murder substantiates this nihilism and how, instead of surrendering himself, his idea of making amends by helping Joaquin’s family through his connections is even sicker; how the succeeding crimes (raping his sister, killing a dog) are corollary; and most importantly, how human experience boils down to all questions of how. The life and times of Juan dela Cruz roll on this Möbius strip, continuous and one-sided, all ends joined. The film’s title, in what seems to be Diaz’s harshest assertion, does not refer only to a province but also to a direction, the cardinal point of a compass, the traveler’s guide to reaching a destination, and the force that pulls a person to a grand purpose. What Norte ascertains is that all debates on the current state of Philippine cinema must end: It answers everything. And sadly it is enough.

Written by Carmi Raymundo
Directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina
Cast: Kathryn Bernardo, Daniel Padilla, Richard Gomez, Dawn Zulueta, Ian Veneracion

There is something curious about this tendency of a certain portion of the moviegoing public to wish for smarter commercial films. Although their conventional nature has long been established and accepted, local genre movies, for them to be considered deserving of attention and praise, are expected to bend rules and display cleverness. The lack of originality is justifiable, but when this degree of smartness (or coolness) is not met, it becomes easier and more convenient to find fault and notice particular areas in which the film could have been better, further encouraging this school of criticism that strives to be objective, pointing out the good and the bad and weighing these elements together as though worth could be gauged through basic enumeration of qualities and attainment of balance. But objectivity is sometimes as unhelpful as dismissal, and often taken for granted is the fact that studio releases don’t need to be smart to be successful—commercially and artistically—and some of them are actually successful on both terms because they have no intention to appear smart.

Star Cinema understands this play of principles, for its main currency is context. When its writers and directors are in top form, they manage to come up with wonderful pieces of fluff that make a larger impression than those independent movies acclaimed at festivals abroad, an impact that self-serving snobs are keen on invalidating. Although these commercial films cannot compete as far as novelty, depth, and breadth of subjects are concerned, they touch on specific aspects of Filipino sensibility, which may be trifling and negligible to some but in fact more genuine and persuasive than many attempts at social relevance.

In the case of Star Cinema’s romantic comedies, which have been its consistent breadwinner since the mid-2000s, the most striking effort is the proliferation of love teams, continuing the tradition of fanaticism that has made audiences of various generations swoon over Rogelio dela Rosa and Carmen Rosales, Tita Duran and Pancho Magalona, Nida Blanca and  Nestor de Villa, Nora Aunor and Tirso Cruz III, Vilma Santos and Bobot Mortiz, Jolina Magdangal and Marvin Agustin, Piolo Pascual and Judy Ann Santos, and John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo—a few of those pairs whose chemistry onscreen has the ability to create sparks and induce spasms, celebrities whose private and social lives at the peak of their careers were owned by the public.

Frankly, no volume of Hollywood movies can match the experience of seeing the middleclass and the masses lose their heads over these reel lovers—an infatuation whose plain existence is its reason—and this is an identity to be proud of: an instance when emotions become exclusive but not dismissive, when certain feelings (generally thought to be universal) are fully comprehensible only to the film’s target audience, and when enjoyment rests comfortably on a skillful suspension of disbelief. When it comes down to the wire, the virtues, peculiarities, and nuances of kilig are hardly possible to interpret, translate, or subtitle.

The release of She’s Dating the Gangster is crucial not only in ascertaining the intense popularity of Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla, whose phenomenal rise to fame is describable only through exaggeration, but also in attesting to the power of cinema to hold magic: that ability to affect and make sweeping gestures that bring about irrational, foolish, and ridiculous reactions. There is nothing groundbreaking about this, of course, but it’s pointless to overlook the fact that the KathNiel fever, as far as action is concerned, is growing, advancing, and overpowering. One can only smirk at audience members responding with rowdiness upon the mere sight of the actors’ names in the opening credits, shrieking and stomping their feet, losing it every time Daniel and Kathryn appear onscreen. Midway through the film, the noise becomes part of the viewing experience, a series of occasions on which a simple close-up signals a rumpus; and making a sober assessment, which takes into account both milieu and material, becomes trickier and more challenging.

At some point, though, a line can be drawn, and a few things can be articulated. For instance, Kathryn’s loveliness is intoxicating: she glows with delight, lights up every corner of the screen, and acts without drawing too much attention to herself or her quirks. Her Athena and Kelay can easily exude the qualities of a manic pixie dream girl despite not being one, but she is able to kill any sense of mystery and irony in her characters, her weak moments outshined by her strong ones. There is something regal about her overall appearance—how her clear skin, perfect teeth, and bright eyes convey such warm and pleasant feeling. Only she can temper Daniel’s smugness with grace, and people identify with her openly: she who falls for someone seemingly unattainable, someone who can be so cruelly distant and difficult. Kathryn is obviously a more convincing actor than Daniel, and she does it without overreaching or stealing his thunder, capturing those conflicting youthful emotions that people her age usually experience.

Daniel, on the other hand, knows how to work his charm with ease, the laziness and overconfidence strangely coming off rather endearing, and this owes not only to his genes but also to his awareness of them. The bad boy image fits him like a glove, and although it’s hard for him to adjust when it comes to softer scenes, he makes an effort to humanize his characters. Whenever he crumples his forehead and furrows his eyebrows ostentatiously to express despair, or when he consciously does that knee-bending grin to win Kathryn over, he gets away with it deftly—he is so used to being forgiven. As Kenji and Kenneth, Daniel is able to substantiate his matinée idol status, something which Rico Yan or Piolo Pascual has once experienced, and live up to a considerable measure of the adulation heaped on him. Those scenes that show him dancing prove that he understands it: silliness is not only part the game—it also completes it.

She’s Dating the Gangster is based on a book written by Bianca Bernardino, first published on Wattpad in 2006. A certain demographic has taken it pretty seriously, encouraging Summit Media to pick it up and put it out under its Pop Fiction series. To some extent, this type of young adult novels seems to differentiate itself consciously from those romance pocketbooks with daring covers that quite a number of people find too crude (the consumption of which often associated condescendingly with house helpers and folks from the province). Their themes and narratives have glaring similarities, particularly with the heavily female point of view and abuse of lengthy voiceovers, but the difference lies in the target readership. She’s Dating the Gangster caters more to high school and college students, millenials whose everyday interactions are dedicated mostly to the joys and thrills of online friendship, hinged on the comfort provided by social media and its placebo effect. Several of these readers, for some reason, have also found the eccentricities of Korean dramas (and culture, subsequently) amusing and worth emulating: the lightheartedness, the gentle approach to things, and the attractive routes to escape they offer. Although Bernardino’s book confronts serious subjects (illness, death, suicide), the sensibility is constricted and juvenile, and the decisions of its characters just seem bent on providing shamelessly emotional plot turns.

In short, the original material may have an appeal, but it’s neither literary nor cinematic enough. Screenwriter Carmi Raymundo and director Cathy Garcia-Molina have seen these limitations and decided to work around them with Kathryn and Daniel in mind, because once their faces are pressed on the roles, the narrative is sure to find its own direction. It’s hilarious how some people decry the use of “gangster,” which represents the childish and irresponsible codenames that students come up with when they are angry or annoyed—names whose meanings matter only in that phase of their lives and are gradually forgotten after it—but it is something that the film itself does not even take seriously. “Gangster” is a hook that gets played over and over to the point of annoyance, but its only purpose is to stay in one’s memory.

The riskiest change is setting the bulk of the story in the 90s, which Garcia-Molina carries too far to achieve something downright silly and out-and-out artificial. There’s no point being realistic in both the look and details—from the use of beepers and playing billiards to the awful get-up of students and the design of the school, the phoniness actually persuades the viewer to make fun of them. The film is too conscious about establishing the era, clumsily incorporating that Eraserheads song, those AC/DC and Nirvana T-shirts, and those embarrassing classroom details into a story whose characters do not even display any smidgen of interest in them. Wigs remain a Star Cinema curse, and seeing them on Kathryn and Daniel is like watching them fully submit to a terrible initiation rite. Cinematographer Dan Villegas enjoys filling the screen with bright light and vivid colors, and despite moving repeatedly from past to present, he maintains this glossy texture that is easy on the eyes, keeping that surface busy but almost weightless, as though he were tempered by love himself.

This tacky 90s imitation, however, rarely feels dishonest. The many decorations in the film only serve to surround Kenji and Athena and are not there to define them. Their love story does not depend on where they are and who they are with—for clichéd as it may sound, it depends on the choices they make based on the circumstances. When those options are laid down, the movie bares its flaws and gives in to crappy turns of plot. Undoubtedly the most prominent of these is the strained detailing of their separation, the deathbed drama, the wasted Rio Locsin monologue, the utter forcedness of it all that doesn’t seem to jibe with the hollow surroundings—since as far as attachment to the story is concerned, their romance has been real and convincing, and this breakup (or its barely credible motivation) sticks out too proudly.

Another concern is the decision to let the pair play both roles, and perhaps the only way to answer it is to imagine it the other way around. Again, commercial films are after the effect, and they are allowed to have these implausible situations as long as they accomplish larger-than-life consequences. And She’s Dating the Gangster, aware may it seem of its folly, hangs onto this device that lets the viewer feel that since Kenji and Athena have not been able to reach their happily ever after because of timing, Kenneth and Kelay, in a preposterous twist of fate as Kenji’s son and Athena’s niece, are there to fulfill those years of longing and distance, allowing them to meet by chance and become close to each other. How else can the audience feel the pain (of the past) and the excitement (of the present) if it weren’t for Kathryn and Daniel acting as reminders of fate and doom? The ending may be a cop-out, the same way that most Star Cinema endings have always been inadequate and disappointing, but it is intended for no one but the fans, those who will watch the film more than once just to have that feeling again, those who understand that love is not for everyone but would rather see it received by deserving people.

After two dull feature-length movies (Must Be… Love and Pagpag) and two remarkable television shows (Princess and I and Got to Believe), Kathryn and Daniel are already well-acquainted with the body language that drives their fans mad, gestures and actions that can set off incredible reactions. Garcia-Molina takes advantage of this, but she also challenges them. By putting them in two backdrops, it feels as though she wanted them to relearn the basics of kilig, stretching their boundaries to discover finer distinctions that can be explored and new flirty tricks that can be carried out to maximum effect. She is a director that can easily be dismissed or overrated, but after more than a decade of sticking to her method and style, appropriating them to a number of love teams whether tried or new, it just seems fair to recognize that she is an indispensable filmmaker, as vital to this industry as Lav Diaz and Wenn Deramas, for only she can deliver romantic comedies that are entertaining, insightful, and sensitive, with flair and skill, with hardly an unpleasant aftertaste.

In fact, it owes to her that the single most memorable scene in She’s Dating the Gangster is not between Kathryn and Daniel but between Richard Gomez and Dawn Zulueta, showing their heartrending final (and brief) encounter in slow motion, as though as a director she were doing her part to extend their time together and give them a closure they deserve, and with Angeline Quinto’s powerful singing in the background, Kenji lights up as he sees her, snatched by the most overwhelming kind of happiness, the most unexpected surprise of his life, the only bright cloud in his empty sky, and Athena, now in a wheelchair, frail but cheerful, resigned to dying but content just to have this one moment, looks up to him and smiles; he exclaims “Hi” and she replies “Gangster,” and by now everything seems to float on tears, sinking the inconsistencies and emphasizing only the unforgettable: Athena’s crazy cheerleading, Kenji’s dance moves, that wedding promise witnessed by Mayon, Athena touching her chest and Kenji oblivious of her sickness, and his words before she dies—”All the years of waiting, it’s all worth it just to see you today”—the pain alluding to Hihintayin Kita sa Langit, their intimacy transcending circumstances, the ability of love to travel and come back in different form but remaining pure and intact, and time, as always, the unkindest villain of them all, being a bitch.

K’na, the Dreamweaver (Ida Anita del Mundo)

A friend calls it admirable, but another way of describing K’na is that it’s an exercise in wastefulness, squandering opportunities to produce a meaningful picture of life down south where people take pride in leading disciplined lives, where communities caught in decades-long armed conflict nurture wives trapped in unhappy relationships and husbands killed in bloody encounters, where a colorful history and culture is both an identity and contradiction; and the film, instead of treating its subject with maturity and wisdom, settles for the dull kind of picturesque, dipping its toes into several sociopolitical issues just to enliven its core but failing to leave any remarkable impression, capturing only the unexciting luster of complexities and preferring blindness to insight. K’na keeps mentioning the importance of design, but its own is not even worth a second look. C–

1st ko si 3rd (Real Florido)

The title of Real Florido’s debut film rings distinctly, the symmetry and insinuation of its words giving way to juvenile thoughts—precise, succinct, and catchy without overplaying its quirks—and even without having read the synopsis or seen the trailer, one can easily assume what it is about. Fortunately when it comes to elaborating the story, Florido is driven by this liveliness that cloaks its many lapses, and what stands out amid the flourishes and indulgence is his sincerity, a flawed display of intention, the mix of excitement and excess that comes with youth. 1st ko si 3rd depicts old age with boredom and regret, but it is filled with numerous blinks of joy that couples in their senior years experience with heightened effect (chatting on Facebook, fixing an old car, receiving an invitation, talking to a seamstress, constant daydreaming), their lives finding this instant where time keeps inflating and pulling their leg. The film brims with humor that doesn’t care whether it succeeds or not—its comic moments are either hit or miss—achieving a lightheartedness that may be strained but not phony, its modesty both its weakness and strength. All along it prepares the viewer for this long-awaited meeting of Nova Villa and Freddie Webb, building up to what seems to be the movie’s climax, the present trying to overreach its hands to the past, but once it arrives at that point, no magic ever occurs, no sparks, no touching revelations, not even a glimmer of kilig, peaking where it’s dry and detached, cold and clinical, and one can only feel sorry for her that the person she has always cherished in her thoughts is just a beautiful idea that died a long time ago, a mere shadow of a big mistake, a figment of the sadness that occupies every space of her life. B

Asintado (Louie Ignacio)

At some point in Asintado, most likely after the first fifteen minutes, the viewer gives up on the idea that it is going to be good. One can only scowl at how proud it is of its stale stereotypes and trite plot turns, but Louie Ignacio is disposed to make things worse, revealing one rotten cliché after another, until it reaches this laughable conclusion and embarrassing postscript. It’s funny how people are led to believe that this is a story worth telling and filming, because from start to finish it is aware only of how it can pander to the basest emotions in the most preposterous way, and Ignacio is so fluent, his despicable language flowing as a stream, making the shameless dramatic excuses float and their stink linger, that it’s just fitting how it ends in a music video, with Aiko Melendez looking up, as though she were asking for help amid this whole mess. D+

Ronda (Nick Olanka)

Sticking out like a sore thumb is how Ronda concludes deliberately, the systematic and calculated way it pulls the story in that direction, and how, in its resolve to follow the troubles of a passive main character whose life is occupied by circumstances that come along with her police work and her difficult relationship with her son, hinges on this strong emotional bookend only to take advantage of the given impression made by goodbyes, the final sequence showing the peak of her grief. There is nothing wrong with this choice, of course, except that it makes the viewer feel that director Nick Olanka is keen on favoring the foreseeable and makes it a point to focus intensely on the swelling instead of the burst, choosing the cinematic over the eloquent, captivated more by conventional tricks than character analysis. Extending the story would entail showing Ai-Ai delas Alas sink in despair, and that would mean a different kind of movie, but Ronda, as it is, bares too much skin but has nothing much to show underneath. Rather than running and reaching many areas, it is just content jogging in place. C

S6parados (GB Sampedro)

There appears to be a consensus among serious festival moviegoers that S6parados is a terrible film, and this is obviously a blind alley, but seldom admitted is that, for all its laughable self-awareness and mind-blowing sentiments on male misery, its awfulness is enjoyable. Watching it is like listening to six guys too full of themselves talk about their shitty love problems over cases of beer, and instead of raising arguments or being fair to both parties concerned, one just nods or grins and waits for interesting anecdotes and ridiculous punch lines. The moment they get drunk, they can barely respond with logic. So they start blabbering: a husband finally comes out to his wife, a restaurant owner finds another woman to love after his breakup, an alcoholic tries to help himself for a change, a seaman out of work turns to womanizing, a junkie car salesman wants to start anew by leaving his wife, a battered husband tries to man up—basically men who, according to their stories, receive the shorter ends of the stick and admit being losers. Poor dudes! Manly tears! What makes it even funnier is that they don’t actually and necessarily hate their wives: they are too kind and understanding to think ill of them. They are not male chauvinist pigs: they are just male and chauvinist. S6parados is a pure cavalier movie, written and directed to parade the sacrifices and sufferings of men just to keep their precious dignity intact, and without a doubt only a guy can come up with that inspired title. C

Bwaya (Francis Xavier Pasion)

Bwaya doesn’t seem to be a work motivated by sincerity. The story is heartbreaking enough—on her way to school, a student is attacked by a crocodile lurking in the water, and consequently her family grieves her loss—but director Francis Pasion is not satisfied with simply telling it. He is eager to leave his self-serving stamp on the movie, the device he has already employed in Jay and Sampaguita, and make it larger than life, more relevant to his personal interests, and better suited to fulfill the qualities of a festival-friendly entry, one that challenges viewership and gives a semblance of elevated understanding of sociopolitical issues. But what he does in Bwaya is waste the exceptional performances of Angeli Bayani and Karl Medina and debase the powerful depiction of a helpless community trying its best to deal with the shit of everyday life all for the sake of having a statement, for that itch to yelp a protest against media exploitation to which he also contributes. What is sick about it is not the film, which, removing the meta elements, is in fact a persuasive look into the various layers of violence experienced by being born and raised poor, but the filmmaking—the insistence on pointing a finger, the tenacity to draw attention to oneself and appear bright and thoughtful in the midst of anguish, and the nerve to make the audience feel such disproportioned terror, showing the infinity of excuses that comes with freedom of expression. There is clearly offense meant and given, and if this is Pasion’s idea of responsible filmmaking—and if this is the Filipino movie that gets recognized locally and overseas for its worth—one can only hope for a more discerning voice to stand against it, and better films to sink it. D

Hari ng Tondo (Carlos Siguion-Reyna)

There is this priceless scene in Hari ng Tondo in which an emotional Cris Villonco, running away from home, trips and falls on the ground with her hastily collected clothes. She is in such a hurry to leave that she blurts out to the young girl in front of her, “Tawagin mo akong taxi! Tawagin mo akong taxi!”—to which the child replies, “Taxi ka! Taxi ka!”—and it happens so fast, ending as suddenly as it starts, that the laughter comes only after realizing that the joke is over. That brief moment alone captures the energy of the film, enthusiastic and raring to go, spontaneous and careless, hardly insightful but downright amusing, driven by this pleasure from making fun of the rich and poor and sparing neither of them from the prank. It seems to be built on a series of setups, playing with the stereotypes of the community but not so much reflecting the actual—the drama resting on one’s preconceived notions of Tondo but refusing to show them deliberately, only bits and pieces, random stink here and there, superficial chaos and disagreements for the sake of spectacle. This is not, after all, about poverty and suffering but the humor that comes along with sentimentalizing them, sometimes risking being insensitive in exchange for laughs. Whenever a large crack in the narrative shows or an uncomfortable stereotype lingers, the film is quick to expose it further or make necessary distractions: the audience will always be reminded how unserious it is. But what makes it all the more interesting is that Hari ng Tondo marks the return of Carlos Siguion-Reyna, whose prominent movies are notable for being affectingly contrived, and his confidence to push things over is still there, only now he’s unsympathetic and relaxed. It may not be an ideal comeback, but it’s delightfully enough. B+

Sundalong Kanin (Janice O’Hara)

It’s cruel to put down something earnest and unpretentious as Sundalong Kanin, especially in a festival that is now populated by big names and ambitious productions, but despite the potential of its story and the unwavering will to deliver, the film is hardly convincing. The crudeness is understandable, leaving this air of innocence and inexperience suited to its gruesome coming-of-age story, but the moment the kids talk about the imminence of war and take reckless actions during the Japanese occupation, it turns into a disappointing high school production where efforts are rewarded based on tolerance, the viewer predisposed to allow its good intentions eclipse the obvious flaws of execution. The atrocity of war couldn’t be any clearer—almost every scene is a reminder of how terrible it is, and every dialogue comes across as something lifted from a textbook—except that there’s something amiss in the way it consistently presents this perspective, as though appropriating these historical events only for show, for a passing grade. C

Hustisya (Joel Lamangan)

Nora Aunor’s sinister laugh at the end of Hustisya is a fitting closure to a film that has its share of extremely bad and unexpectedly good moments, the hysteria no longer confined to the narrative but seeming to extend to her personal life, as though Ricky Lee and Joel Lamangan staged this scene alone as an opportunity for her to speak her mind about the National Artist issue, and Ate Guy, the superstar, possibly the most fascinating figure in Philippine cinema, for the lack of better gesture, cracks up after hearing some words whispered to her, aware of the absurdity of it all but allowing herself to be carried along. One can easily feel that despite her humble presence, she is much bigger than the material: all it does is make room for predictable dramatic scenes and catch up on her, unable to provide her with what she deserves. Granted, Ate Guy blends perfectly into the milieu, but Manila seems so designed to welcome her—political rallies, vandalism, disappearance of activists, and religious feasts happen when she’s around—and Lamangan is eager to show her reaction to these realities, may it be a casual look or an emotional reflection. Hustisya is too concerned about accommodating her that the drama, out of convenience, jumps from one outrageous sequence to another, and she just keeps doing what she is told. From time to time, most especially in that scene where she repeats “Akin na ang notebook ko!” in such iconic delivery that audience members find themselves clapping with pleasure, the flashiness is forgivable. But more often than not, when the story is forced to move, one gets used to laughing with pain. C+

Children’s Show (Roderick Cabrido)

The strength of Children’s Show lies in its interesting focal point—children and teenagers, their youth and poverty exploited, trying to make ends meet for their families by participating in brutal underground fights—and it’s a hook that gets thinner as the story progresses. Director Roderick Cabrido deviates from it to favor a drama that is, by all means, engaging and worthy to look at, but he fails to consider that the viewer itches to learn more about these gruesome matches and discover details and nuances, how these arrangements have come to pass, what allows this terrible system to continue, and in what way does it implicate the failure of many social institutions to be on the side of the poor and help them lead better lives. It could have been illuminating, bent as it is on presenting this culture, the corners that trap its characters and observe them make life-changing decisions, but it offers only flashes and flickers of discernment, owing mostly to writer Ralston Jover’s quirks. In the grand scheme of things, what it is carries the same weight as what it isn’t, and unknowingly Children’s Show tends to emphasize what it lacks. Cabrido, like his first narrative feature, has something in him that his contemporaries don’t have—the frenetic keenness, the eye for grub and grit, the excesses that display his personality—but it will probably take time before he fully realizes it. C+

The Janitor (Michael Tuviera)

A dirty mind is quick to consider that The Janitor may have been initially conceived as a gay movie, what with its diligence to have mouth-wateringly attractive actors play lead, supporting, and even minor roles, their presence serving as its main currency. Those scenes in which Dennis Trillo works out and shows off his shapely muscles, sex cuts, and tattoos, exuding this masculinity that makes the female and gay spectator shudder in gratefulness, feel unnecessary but justified on the basis of carnal pleasure, director Michael Tuviera aware of how cinema is about gaze and the gratification gained from it. Within this context, especially when the audience has come to a point where it looks forward to the next hot guy to appear onscreen, The Janitor works so well—there is brisk dynamics in its tease and homoeroticism—but even outside it, even in the framework of an action genre, it satisfies. A distinct current keeps moving it to the fore, unafraid whether it comes across as laughable or incredulous. The comparison with On the Job is valid, and Tuviera, concerned only about delivering a twist and polishing the surface on which it happens, doesn’t care. Whenever he is in doubt, all he has to do is show his boys and engage them in a physical activity. How cunning. B+

Kasal (Joselito Altarejos)

Director Joselito Altajeros’s preferred English title of Kasal is The Commitment, and native speakers all know that this is not a faithful translation but one that provides depth and wisdom to the idea of wedding or marriage. This kind of gesture pervades the film, whose composure is tame compared with his early works, to the point that even at its most tender and touching moment, that long take of Arnold Reyes and Oliver Aquino having sex, Altajeros chooses to have one of his movies projected on the wall as it happens. There is consciousness to overplay things, to make issues go out of hand and be settled or neglected in a manner that requires a stretch, and these concerns may happen in real life but in film they appear flimsy, almost like a wordy afterthought. Kasal rubs in such a way that it feels somewhat obliged to speak for the gay community, putting its couple not only in relatable circumstances but also in crucial ones, the most obvious of which puts forward their conflicting ideas on same-sex marriage in the Philippines: one is hopeful (and quite naive) while the other is doubtful (and obviously cynical). It’s a film that gays of all sensibilities would be so open to love—for it deliberates a pertinent subject at a time when discussions like this deserve attention, boasting a pool of skilled actors devoted to its beliefs and driven by a desire to approach things from a sober perspective—but it is weakened by the tendency to overexplain and repeat its arguments, and as the narrative comes to an end it’s hard to tell whether the reaction evoked is sympathy or tolerance. C+

Dagitab (Giancarlo Abrahan)

Almost every aspect of Dagitab, from the story and direction to the cast and technical details, makes it a cut above the rest of the entries in this year’s Cinemalaya. Its opening image sets the mood of mystery, evoking a sense of richness quite conscious to unfold something larger than life, emotions and thoughts of considerable weight that put the viewer at ease, alternating between mind and heart. Despite the nature of its characters to talk a lot, there is a quietness that keeps the story steady while in motion, gently peeling its many layers until it reaches the core. No doubt the beauty in the first half captivates: the humor, the temper and indulgence, the marital and personal issues, the attachment to one’s alma mater, the feeling of living there for years and having this particular frame of mind, the horse latitudes, the entanglement of youth and middle age, the demons, the wires waiting for current to flow.

But it is upon contact with this core that writer and director Giancarlo Abrahan finds himself helpless like his own pair of characters, struggling to keep hold of the pretty pieces and wringing every possible item soaked in its sentiment. As he tries to look for a proper closure, the film crumbles the way it is built, slowly, with grace and refinement, poking at softer spots, unsure where to end but certain that it has to remain introspective. It’s easy to be carried away while watching it, to find a moment of connection that will clear all the stains, the stilted dialogue, the blitz of overly conscious UP markers, to identify with the couple’s belief that had they led “more normal” lives, it would have been different —this claim of being out of the ordinary, possibly in a higher position than others but wounded and hurting all the same, oblivious to the things they take for granted—but by all means it won’t. Dagitab is too stiff and careful, too absorbed in the idea that it’s fascinating, and too focused on its subject that it fails to see the whole from afar, like looking at the dark sky and noticing only the stars, not the constellation. B-

#Y (Gino Santos)

Several reviews of #Y commend director Gino Santos for walking around the reason for its main character’s suicide. While it’s obvious that such ploy is intended to produce this seemingly startling semblance of insight, there is sneakiness in its execution, the discreetness easily mistaken for skill. People talk about it as though he were saying something meaningful or interesting, while in fact everything in the film looks lip-synched, and the worldview to which it affixes its statements and insinuations reeks of piss.

One can’t help but wonder: is being inarticulate now a benchmark of good filmmaking? Or does it have something to do with the allure of ambiguity, how, in real life, nothing can be completely understood? Hardly pointed out in these reviews is that the motivation has always been there, loud and clear, and conveying it in plain conventional terms defeats the film’s objective to reflect (and not reflect on) the lives of upper class kids who flaunt their pleasures and preoccupations in a manner that puts the audience in this position to formulate judgments based on their crassness, pretense, and indifference. These characters are flat on purpose, designed to be pumped with air, but even with shape, they have no silhouette. Why create them and give them nothing inside? Why speak on their behalf and sound gibberish?

The Animals is sloppy, but it’s the right kind of sloppy: its transgression makes the viewer feel dirty and violated. The intent to offend is explicit, and it can’t help but go overboard because it has nothing much to say. #Y, on the other hand, is more conscious of its mischief, beholden by this duty to represent, hiding in this veneer of inscrutability and itching to be taken seriously. Santos and writer Jeff Stelton should have known better than pulling the angst card and making the suicide feel trivial and frivolous, unable to capture the nuance of it that is actually universal, preferring instead to show the layer that gleams with self-congratulation. D

Mariquina (Milo Sogueco)

Writer Jerrold Tarog has always had issues with time. His scripts, most notably for Senior Year and Sana Dati, find their fulcrum in the past, in decisions that cut deeper as years go by. His characters are often put out of action, powerless to let bygones be bygones, trying to reach and pick up something from way back. Time is his beloved villain, and in Mariquina, it comes with a goon squad, tormenting the protagonist with memories that form the bulk of the film, events that already happened, and it isn’t so much about seeing things swell and burst but observing how they become smaller, get creased and folded, reduced to this tiny square, a handkerchief damp with tears. Clearly it is neither about the place nor the shoes that have made it famous—Tarog uses these elements only to make the ache specific, to have some corners that will define the context and subtext and limit the course of action, but he ends up confronting larger rocks along the way: the degree of pain can never be precise.

But the script can’t stand alone. For a narrative that digs out many unpleasant items, most of which are bones whose nature has always been to frighten, Mariquina moves smoothly, conscious of every step and rest, and breathes in and out evenly. One sits through it and feels the softness of its heavy scenes, light but never slight, dense but never difficult. Director Milo Sogueco is attentive to blanks and beats, providing his cast with a similar level of understanding of the material, no one higher or lower, all on the same plane, armed with the same weapon. Mylene Dizon, Ricky Davao, Barbie Forteza, and Bing Pimentel complement one another, and whenever they are off-screen, they are felt more, their absence more imposing than their presence.

The presence of Imelda Marcos and the insinuations of a seemingly better life during her husband’s reign are shadows seen and felt on a daily basis that people have learned to deal with over the decades, vestiges of his regime that not only persist in present surroundings but are also embedded on one’s consciousness, inescapable, noticed only on particular occasions, so when Imelda walks in and delivers her lines she sounds like a bad version of herself, because she makes an effort to be real. But even this weak point speaks volumes, something that can be argued with interest. One of the pleasures of watching Mariquina is being overwhelmed by its generosity: how it finds the compelling in the ordinary and feels grateful for every particle of dust that settles. A-

In these pages are signs of life, its sight and sound and scent, burrowing, making their presence felt—sighs, winks, gasps, pulse, heartbeats, whistles, moans, grace, imbalance, stench—but life is impossible without death, without feeling its wrinkles, portents, exits, departures, and curtains, how life and death are one and the same, reflections of one another, doppelgängers eventually meeting at one point, and these books, read and reread in utter absorption, filled with fissures into which everything and nothing, one in the same, fall, revealing “the quiet sadness of space itself,” the void that keeps on giving, are shared with utmost persuasion.

30. A Russian Doll and Other Stories, Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1991, Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, 1992

As I prepared bait and flies, I remembered a phrase that I often say to whoever wishes to hear me: for me there’s no greater paradise than an afternoon spent fishing.

29. Parang, Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles, 2008

Kung maaari ibig niyang ipalibing
Anuman ang kaniyang labi

Sa alaala ng naiwan
Ibig niya roong mahimlay hindi

Upang sa naiwan siya tuwina
Makagambala bagkus upang ibigay

Sa naiwan ang kapayapaan
Na gaya ng sa isang libingan.

—”Ang Kapayapaan ng Isang Libingan”

28.  The Viceroy of Ouidah, Bruce Chatwin, 1980

Stealing from a white man isn’t stealing.

27. Underground, Haruki Murakami, 1997/1998, Translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel, 2000

Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you’re no longer talking about reality. You might think that—by following language and a logic that appears consistent—you’re able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge.

26. Human Voices, Penelope Fitzgerald, 1980

There’s two ways to be selfish. You can think too much about yourself, or you can think too little about others. You’re selfish both ways.

25. Into It, Lawrence Joseph, 2005

I want you to watch carefully
what I am saying now—are you
with me? An inch-long piece of steel,
part of the artillery shell’s

casing, sliced through the right eye
into his brain, severely damaging
the optic nerve of his left eye,
spraying bone splinters

into the brain, making him quick to lose
his temper, so acutely sensitive to pain
the skin on his face hurts
when wind blows against it . . .

—excerpt from “Rubaiyat”

24. In the Wilderness, Manuel Rivas, 1994, Translated by Jonathan Dunne, 2003

Memory is a mysterious lady. We do not choose our memories. They live their own life. They come and go. Sometimes they disappear for good. Other memories stick to us like lichen to a stone. They’re bits of life that never faded, that feed on the cold air, and increase slowly on the bark of time.

23. Moy Sand and Gravel, Paul Muldoon, 2002

When I put my finger to the hole they’ve cut for a dimmer switch
in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair
it seems I’ve scratched a two-hundred-year-old itch

with a pink and a pink and a pinkie-pick.

When I put my ear to the hole I’m suddenly aware
of spades and shovels turning up the gain
all the way from Raritan to the Delaware

with a clink and a clink and a clinky-click.

When I put my nose to the hole I smell the floodplain
of the canal after a hurricane
and the spots of green grass where thousands of Irish have lain

with a stink and a stink and a stinky-stick.

When I put my eye to the hole I see one holding horse dung to the rain
in the hope, indeed, indeed,
of washing out a few whole ears of grain

with a wink and a wink and a winkie-wick.

And when I do at last succeed
in putting my mouth to the horsehair-fringed niche
I can taste the small loaf of bread he baked from that whole seed

with a link and a link and a linky-lick.

—”The Loaf”

22. Detective Story, Imre Kertesz, 1977, Translated by Tim Wilkinson, 2008

“You amaze me, Dad! You’re still living in hope, even now? But what do you want? What can you still want, after everything that has happened?”

Now there was a sound. A word that I didn’t understand. I had to double the volume to make out the whisper. And even though I am unable to share in it, now that my own future has become decidedly dubious, I’m coming round to an understanding of the rapture that Salinas distilled into this one word:

“Life.”

21. 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff, 1970

The blessed man who sold me all my books died a few months ago. But Marks & Co is still there. If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.

20. Three Exemplary Novels, Miguel de Unamuno, 1920, Translated by Angel Flores, 1987

One day, exasperated beyond all endurance, Julia attacked her husband, saying:
“You’re not a man, Alejandro, no; you’re not a man!”
“What’s that! I? And why not?”
“No, you’re not a man, you’re not!”
“Explain yourself.”
“Now I know that you don’t love me, that nothing that concerns me interests you, that to you I am not even the mother of your child and that you only married me out of vanity to boast of it, to exhibit me, to exalt yourself by my beauty, to. . .”
“Well, well, that’s more literature. Why am I not a man?”
“Now I know that you don’t love me.”

19. Journey into the Past, Stefan Zweig, 1976, Translated by Anthea Bell, 2009

Time is helpless, he thought to himself, helpless in the face of our feelings. Nine years have passed, and not a note in her voice is different, not a nerve in my body hears her in any other way. Nothing is lost, nothing is past and over, her presence is as much of a tender delight now as it was then.

18. District and Circle, Seamus Heaney, 2006

We were killing pigs when the Americans arrived.
A Tuesday morning, sunlight and gutter-blood
Outside the slaughterhouse. From the main road
They would have heard the squealing,
Then heard it stop and had a view of us
In our gloves and aprons coming down the hill.
Two lines of them, guns on their shoulders, marching.
Armoured cars and tanks and open jeeps.
Sunburnt hands and arms. Unknown, unnamed,
Hosting for Normandy.
Not that we knew then
Where they were headed, standing there like youngsters
As they tossed us gum and tubes of coloured sweets.

—”Anahorish 1944″

17. Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico, Javier Marías, 1996, Translated by Esther Allen, 1999

Or perhaps it’s simpler than that, perhaps it’s just that there is never a way of erasing what’s been said, true or false, once it’s been said: accusations and inventions, slanders and stories and fabrications, disavowal is not enough, it doesn’t erase but adds; once an event has been recounted there will be a thousand contradictory and impossible versions long, long before the event is annihilated: denials and discrepancies coexist with what they refute or deny, they accumulate, add up, they never cancel anything out but only end up sanctioning it for as long as people go on talking, the only way to erase is to say nothing, and go on saying nothing for a very long time.

16. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 1915, Translated by Susan Bernofsky, 2014

“It has to go,” Gregor’s sister cried out, “that’s the only way, Father. You just have to try to let go of the notion that this thing is Gregor. The real disaster is that we believed this for so long. But how could it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, it would have realized a long time ago that it is just isn’t possible for human beings to live beside such a creature, and it would have gone away on its own. We still would have been lacking a brother but we would have been able to go on living and honoring his memory. But now we have this beast tormenting us; it drives away our lodgers and apparently intends to take over the entire apartment and have us sleep in the gutter. Just look, Father,” she suddenly shrieked, “he’s starting again!”

15. The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle, 1996

That’s the thing about my memories. I can’t pick and choose them. I can’t pretend. There were no good times. I can never settle into a nice memory, lie back, and smile. They’re all polluted, all ruined. Nothing to look back at that isn’t painful or sick.

14. 03, Jean-Christophe Valtat, 2005, Translated by Mitzi Angel, 2010

I didn’t like what that word—childhood—conjured up, or rather, I didn’t like the way most people use it: that presumption of innocence and starry-eyed wonder. The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that’s the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. What else could possibly lie beneath that blissful oblivion but shame: a dark knowledge of that terrible badge of weakness, that inescapable servitude (bearable only thanks to the slow revelation that we could inflict cruelty and evil on the weaker kids), a sickening awareness that just about everything there is to understand was beyond us, made even worse by the lies and inaccuracies that adults feel entitled to spread around, deliberately, or because they don’t know any better, about themselves or about the nature of reality?

13. Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood, 1939

Overheard in a café: a young nazi is sitting with his girl; they are discussing the future of the Party. The Nazi is drunk.

“Oh, I know we shall win, all right,” he exclaims impatiently, “but that’s not enough!” He thumps the table with his fist: “Blood must flow!”

The girl strokes his arm reassuringly. She is trying to get him to come home. “But, of course, it’s going to flow, darling,” she coos soothingly, “the Leader’s promised that in our programme.”

12. Hindi man lang nakita, Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles, 2005

Itinuro sa kaniya ang kahulugan ng salita ayon sa diwa nito
sa loob ng pangungusap.

Nang hindi na magkasiya sa natamong kaalaman, at dahil
pangahas, ipinasiya niyang pumasok sa loob ng
pangungusap.

Malaya siyang naging paslit na nakipaglaro sa mga salita o
naging munting bantas na naupo sa dulo o nagpahinga sa
gitna ng pagpapahayag.

Higit niyang nadama ang sikip o luwag ng linya at natutuhan
niyang manahimik sa mga pagitan at ligid ng mga parirala’t
sugnay upang maunawaan kahit ang walang kahulugan.

Inibig niya nang lubos ang pangungusap hanggang sa araw
na ito’y ilimbag, at kasama ng iba pang pangungusap,
nanahan siya sa piling ng aklat.

—”Sa Loob ng Pangungusap”

11. In Praise of the Stepmother, Mario Vargas Llosa, 1988, Translated by Helen Lane, 1990

Don Rigoberto gave a satisfied smile. Shitting, defecating, excreting: synonyms for sexual pleasure? he thought. Of course. Why not? Provided it was done slowly, savoring the task, without the least hurry, taking one’s time, imparting to the muscles of the colon a gentle, sustained quivering. It was a matter not of pushing but of guiding, of accompanying, of graciously escorting the gliding of the offerings toward the exit.

10. Building a House and Other Poems, Sid Gomez Hildawa, 2006

Hinge your life on something
as steadfast as a jamb
but know which way to swing.
(Those who swing both ways
belong between the dining hall
and the kitchen.) Hold your breath
when you are locked, inhale deeply
with every knock that isn’t answered
with “come in.” Be still
when there is no reply from the innkeeper
of all things. Your name is Portal
so with your body keep out sickness
and greed, and builders who do not know
how to hammer a house with quiet words.
Let sorrow pass, and youth, and the goldest giraffe
who bends low to nibble from a lady’s hand.
That all may enter who have traveled worlds
to be astonished, weary now of boulevards
that look out to the sea but never wave,
finally stepping in, leaving shoes outside
and shaking hands with all they meet inside, all
who have come before them, all who must dwell.

—”How to be a Door”

9. The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector, 1977, Translated by Benjamin Moser, 2011

All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began.

8. Drone, Allan Popa, 2013

On this side of waiting you recognize
his fist when you hear it: his breath
against the door.

You let him in without a word.
You know where to find his wounds.
The doors, the windows
you leave open. Nothing to fear.

Throughout the night you stay with him,
his face in half-light, half-remembered.

Before morning he disappears
without looking back. Without leaving
a stain. The water in the basin is clear.
You wash your hands.

You search for him
in every man you make love to
with a violence you’ve never known.

You bear his memory
until the day you give birth to him.

—”For the Martyr”

7. Who Killed Palomino Molero? Mario Vargas Llosa, 1986. Translated by Alfred Mac Adam, 1987

My little Chubby belongs to a superior race of women: those who don’t wear panties. Think of all the advantages of having a woman who goes through life without panties.

6. The Train to Lo Wu, Jess Row, 2005

I’ve come to see my life as a radiating circle of improbabilities that grow from each other, like ripples in water around a dropped stone. That I became a high school English teacher, that I work in another country, that I live in Hong Kong. That a city can be a mirage, hovering above the ground: skyscrapers built on mountainsides, islands swallowed in fog for days. That a language can have no tenses or articles, with seven different ways of saying the same syllable. That my best student stares at the blackboard only when I erase it.

5. When I Whistle, Shusaku Endo, 1974, Translated by Van C. Gessel, 1979

Far into the distance, the sea had been filled in like a desert. Two cement mixers were driving along the desolate stretch of of reclaimed land. Beyond that there was nothing. Where was the spot where Flatfish, tossed about bu the waves, had pursued Aiko and her friends that day? Where was the beach that Aiko and her friends had raced along, shrieking with laughter? The sea was gone now. The white beach was gone. But it was not just here. Beautiful things, things from the treasured past were now disappearing all over Japan.

4. Mortality, Christopher Hitchens, 2012

I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent solider is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.

3. A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood, 1964

You could know what I’m about. You could. But you can’t be bothered to. Look – you’re the only boy I ever met on that campus I really believe could. That’s what makes it so tragically futile. Instead of trying to know, you commit the inexcusable triviality of saying he’s a dirty old man, and turning this evening, which might be the most precious and unforgettable of your young life, into a flirtation! You don’t like that word, do you? But it’s the word. It’s the enormous tragedy of everything nowadays. Flirtation. Flirtation instead of fucking, if you’ll pardon my coarseness. All any of you ever do is flirt, and wear your blankets off one shoulder, and complain about motels. And miss the one thing that might really – and, Kenneth, I do not say this casually – transform your entire life —

2. Regarding Space, Sid Gomez Hildawa, 2005

I hear yellow and gold
crackle and crunch
like potato chips
as my bicycle rolls over
leaves, discarded dry
on the cold pavement
under a line of trees.
What pageantry I have
seen of autumn
is all beneath me now;
I am green and high
above it all, riding on two
wheels spinning fast
and turning corners
quick. The sound my
passing makes reminds
me of the swelling
ground that beckons
even blue stars to itself,
and that I pedal another
cycle of seasons under which
wheel I am just a leaf. Green,
yellow, sometimes red,
the gold.
I am growing old.

—”Riding Autumn (Japan, 1997)”

1. The Emigrants, W. G. Sebald, 1992, Translated by Michael Hulse, 1996

Memory, he added in a postscript, often strikes me as a kind of a dumbness. It makes one’s head heavy and giddy, as if one were not looking back down the receding perspectives of time but rather down from a great height, from one of those towers whose tops are lost to view in the clouds.

2014, for most people, is just another year. But for those who have committed themselves to catching every possible screening in theaters, seeking the comfort and warmth of darkness with or without companion, the year in cinema has overflowed in both quality and quantity. It has offered almost the whole nine yards: Hollywood blockbusters, small independent productions, foreign language films, documentaries, gay movies, forums and lectures, and everything in between.

But more impressively, Filipino films have not wavered. There have been local and international film festivals organized one after another, to the point that two of them have overlapping screenings at the same mall. And this is not just in Manila. Several cities and towns across the country have been active in promoting their own filmmakers, offering venues to show their works.

Themes have also departed from the usual. Poverty is no longer a prevailing subject, which can be interpreted in several ways. Is it a reflection of an improvement in the general economic conditions of the people, or a display of discontent with the previous depictions and handling of the subject? Are local audiences tired of seeing bleak social realities on the big screen, or are filmmakers no longer interested in them? Of course, these are nothing but mere conjectures.

More than a year later, typhoon Yolanda has remained a reminder of the most terrible kind of tragedy that can change everything, and it has come to signify many aspects of the Filipino life, its hopes and struggles, not to mention its often emphasized resilience. Sadly, the disaster will forever be part of the collective (and cultural) experience and consciousness.

Furthermore, romantic comedies have stepped up, and a curious indication of this is that festivals have made room for them. Big stars have appeared in small movies, and their fans have shown their overwhelming support. Star Cinema has picked up independently produced movies for distribution, and it’s a good, good sign, regardless of the financial turnout.

But perhaps the most agreeable, and somewhat easily taken for granted, development as far as social interactions are concerned is that seldom do people talk now about the difference between mainstream and independent—finally, it’s no longer a fucking thing!—and even when they do, they no longer make it sound like a celestial spectacle. These films, one way or another, have made that possible.

10. English Only, Please (Dan Villegas)

Let’s get this straight: awards matter; and sometimes they do matter a lot. A huge bulk of the moviegoing public has come out to see English Only, Please only after it won major prizes at the Metro Manila Film Festival, allowing it to have sold-out screenings and exceed the earnings of other entries with far better chances of box-office success. Its failure to win best picture has also sparked interest: how can a film receive recognition for its script, acting, and direction without winning the top prize? Over the years, the MMFF has always had its share of mysteries.

Yes, it can be done; and it can be done without making nasty compromises. English Only, Please can be appreciated better in the context of the festival, which has long been a source of scorn for some viewers, but one can’t disregard the fact that word-of-mouth promotion works only if the film being supported is more than acceptable—it has to be thoroughly, categorically, and out-and-out good for the standard moviegoer. Dan Villegas, a competent cinematographer himself, is able to vanish in his own film, so light his touch that the viewer notices his absence, for how can the film move with such grace and ease without someone orchestrating the whole thing? There is more than one answer, but the only one that can cover everything now is the most beautiful surprise of the year: Jennylyn Mercado.

9. Esoterika: Maynila (Elwood Perez)

Only the pompous, stiff, and humorless will not enjoy Esoterika, Elwood Perez’s depiction of Manila on acid. It moves restlessly with almost no regard for conventional continuity, waving this wicked and outrageous Polaroid of the city that leaves no room for the audience to argue: only to giggle, snort, and chortle. It is a triumph of mad filmmaking: sequence after sequence, the confusion leads to laughter, and this amusement lets the viewer excuse the film’s obvious flaws for practical reasons. Ronnie Liang carries the role with consistent gullibility and in numerous instances miscarries it without warning: he has the exact mix of innocence and ignorance to match his comely face and sculpted body, his physicality exploited to absurd effect. Now 70 years old, Perez has made some of the most irreverently pleasurable movies of the 70s and 80s that can astound even audiences of today, and with Esoterika he shows that his skill hasn’t aged—his impudence has always been a gift.

8. Barber’s Tales (Jun Robles Lana)

It is not an exaggeration to say that Barber’s Tales seems out of place in the landscape of local cinema in 2014. That’s quite telling, to say the least, and a curious point of discussion. Not many directors today tell their stories in this manner any more, nor exhibit this kind of showmanship that bears no intention to be sharp or clever. Diluted in too much dialogue, it holds no alarms and surprises: it is compelling in its predictability. Jun Lana dedicates Barber’s Tales to Marilou Diaz-Abaya, his mentor and inspiration, and her influence is unmistakable: the dramatic time disappears into the milieu and historical context, carried by a submissive protagonist awakened by social struggle and injustice. The result is a mature and modest work that sweeps the viewer whenever it sighs and shrugs.

7. Lorna (Sigrid Andrea Bernardo)

What resonates clearly after seeing Lorna is that it is not about a woman getting to grips with old age and feeling dissatisfied with her life but the pains of being single and alone in general—the sting of isolation, the prospect of dying without a hand to hold, and the grief of not being good enough to be loved passionately in return. Lorna’s life is seldom interesting—her two friends are not always there to make her feel that the world is kind and colorful—and Sigrid Bernardo underlines this tedium, the dull sight and sound of every day, and puts her in situations that bare her bitterness, no matter how reasonable may it be. There is that lovely touch of theater that pulls the film out of the dumps whenever it tends to indulge, the delight of having the opportunity of shooting someone to free oneself, the freedom to just stop ugly things from happening, and these sequences cause the poignant moments to linger long enough to touch each other’s crest. As Lorna, Shamaine Buencamino makes the audience feel not only the depth of the ocean but also all the islands in it so far away from one another, delivering a character of many shades and textures, likable and unlikable at the same time. She is eternal sunshine, and Lav Diaz is the spotless mind.

6. Mariquina (Milo Sogueco)

Mariquina puts the city and the shadow of its once illustrious shoe industry in the periphery in favor of a family drama that can’t seem to contain itself despite the years. Domestic woes are set aside and reappear without warning, revealing certain wounds, inflicted on various layers of skin, that refuse to heal. The past is a bitch, Jerrold Tarog and Milo Sogueco insist, and this bitch holds the film together, allowing the long-withheld ache to either rupture (loud and messy) or kill its keeper (quiet and piercing). With its ambition and the tenacity to achieve it, the weight of the unseen and unspoken carried and released, and the actors that come jointly with spectacular force, Mariquina explodes in several places and offers a rewarding closure.

5. Gusto nang Umuwi ni Joy (Jan Tristan Pandy)

There is a quick scene in this quiet but affecting documentary where Joy, an undocumented Filipino domestic helper in the U.K., walks a dog, picks up its poop on the sidewalk, and puts it inside a plastic bag. It is shown without drama, perhaps even without sympathy, for this is only a small and negligible aspect of her everyday life in a foreign land where she has labored for six years, nothing compared with the loneliness and anxieties eating her from time to time. She is comforted only by the pictures and messages sent to her through Viber. The voices of her husband and children and the sight of her grandson ease her homesickness as she performs her housekeeping and babysitting duties.

Jan Tristan Pandy follows Joy as she tries to secure a work visa and make her stay legal, permitting her to return home without risking her employment. But the odds are not in her favor, and she is at the mercy of institutions that care so little for her, if they even do at all. He hardly focuses on strong emotions—the high points of the film are levelheaded sentiments, natural reactions to distress and disappointment—and this low-key treatment lets the viewers see Joy from afar, how her work conditions, except for her status, are far from bad, how those years in careful “hiding” have given her family a comfortable life, how she finds worth and hope in modest deeds, how tolerant and accepting she has become. Pandy depicts her with neither warmth nor detachment, for Joy does not represent anything except herself. This document of her life, both sober and somber, becomes much sadder the moment it finds a fitting conclusion.

4. She’s Dating the Gangster (Cathy Garcia-Molina)

What’s more telling about She’s Dating the Gangster is not the ability of Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla to deliver the sweeping magic expected of them, nor the skill of Cathy Garcia-Molina to explore newer sensations and spaces in romantic comedies, but how it has managed to shed light on interesting perspectives. For one, it bares on a larger scale the generation of young people engrossed in Wattpad and reveals the kind of stories and storytelling that excite them, thereby allowing Star Cinema—the only film studio thriving in this age when the mainstream is no longer mainstream as far as the number of releases is concerned—to take advantage of the trend, driven by its nature to recognize currency in the current.

But this is in no way a display of consideration for She’s Dating the Gangster. Even in the confines of the actual film itself, let down may it be by the triteness of the story, something moves with irresistible confidence and conveys the delicacy of a formula. The silliness and excesses that carry it compose a whole that muddles mature and immature responses to love, making use of the freedom that commercial movies, within the seeming limitations of their narratives, can play with. Kathryn and Daniel are finally able to show that, given a skilled director, their appeal can go beyond television, accepting that sometimes they need to step aside to benefit the film. The brief encounter of Richard Gomez and Dawn Zulueta near the end is an intense emotional highlight, a meta device that has yet to find its equal in recent years, and there is no better response to it than surrender.

3. Violator (Dodo Dayao)

Violator has the look and feel of a first or last film, something that has been on the mind for a long time, incubated, thought and rethought until it starts to take shape and bleed. This is clear with the calculated, precise, and confident way it unfolds, the attention to details, and the tendency to fill the story with references to several influences and ideas that intensify its apocalyptic premise. It proceeds with both eagerness and caution, conforming to the genre and challenging it at the same time, making it more specific while keeping the indispensable stereotypes.

An interesting claim is that everyone is a supporting character: the relationships created between Joel Lamangan, Victor Neri, Andy Bais, Timothy Mabalot, Anthony Falcon, RK Bagatsing, and Cesar Montano do not depend on each other. No one is leading anyone. Another is that everything is a reminder of anomaly: the cult leader appearing in plain sight, the two friends on the hill, the maddening sound of rain, the dead birds falling from the sky, the photo eaten and swallowed, the male ego trying to be stronger than the end of the world, the devil fucking up. The climax is an attempt at finding a center, putting together these elements in one impressive technical feat, a bunch of men pulling actual and abstract triggers, letting the audience remember those sketches in the first half and how they are more frightening in hindsight.

On many occasions, one can feel the critic in Dodo Dayao guiding and berating him, making decisions for him, but there is also the visual artist awfully concerned with mood, and the result is a picture that overwhelms in the first viewing and illuminates in the second, fully accomplished in both instances.

2. That Thing Called Tadhana (Antoinette Jadaone)

For some people, Anthony is too good to be true, a dreamboat, a stranger too kind to exist. In fiction and real life, good intentions are often regarded with doubt, and having misgivings is reasonable, a completely human trait, except it tends to overlook the fact that some people would actually choose to err in this direction, to make wrong decisions at the right time. Someone who would bear listening to a woman terribly immersed in her heartaches and accompany her all the way to Baguio and Sagada, at one point finding himself falling for her, is hardly convincing: there has to be a catch. But That Thing Called Tadhana has none—Anthony just wants to be with Mace, hoping to make her feel better, and she, on the other hand, would appreciate a sponge, a willing companion who can endure her mood swings. Kindness, after all, can be free and genuine.

In every script, Antoinette Jadaone makes it a point to find a hook, like a composer whose main objective is to create something that sticks, something that pokes at the softness of her viewers and mesmerizes them. She revels in witty dialogues, exchanges that tread quickly between serious and humorous, and alludes to her own influences. The charm of Tadhana is that it doesn’t feel too crowded—John Lloyd Cruz, One More Chance, “Where Do Broken Hearts Go?,” Don’t Give Up On Us, BenCab, Session Road, Café by the Ruins, strawberry taho, shooting stars, lost luggage, bungee jumping, Up Dharma Down—all these staples of romantic fancy and pop culture references are laid down gently and leave a mild but definite impression. Jadaone gets away with them because they seldom feel like accessories: they breathe the same air as her characters.

But all this won’t have been possible without the remarkable performance of Angelica Panganiban, she who plays Mace with weight, vulnerability, and vividness, not only persuasive and endearing but also annoying and inconsiderate, a woman who deserves a slap in the face and a hug after it. It’s interesting that JM de Guzman is chosen for the role: not very handsome, not very popular, and not very striking: he complements her to the point of weakening his own character (that Anthony almost becomes a manic pixie dream guy).

2014 has been a fruitful year for Jadaone: three features with commercial releases (Beauty in a Bottle; Relaks, It’s Just Pag-Ibig; and Tadhana), a prizewinning short (“Ang Nanay kong Noisy”), a Palanca win for screenplay, a screenwriting credit and award for English Only, Please, an invitation to Berlinale—and clearly if the prize of good work is more work, the prospect of having her around for a long time is rather reassuring.

1. Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon (Lav Diaz)

As recent as three or four years ago, it would have been ridiculous to suggest, or even entertain the idea, that Lav Diaz can fill a theater, in Manila or anywhere else in the world. Just connecting his name with a jampacked screening feels absurd, especially with how his filmmaking has remained stubborn over the years, his ideas always looking for doors and windows to enter and extending as far as space and silence permit, as though he had long been onto something and only a few people could see it. For more than a decade, it appears as though it became a matter of who will give up first: he who continues to tell stories that contain the bleak fates of his people, or his small but growing number of viewers who have come to terms with his demands and by now have the sense to decide whether he’s a hack or not.

Winning the grand prize in Locarno has surely changed things, leading to arrangements that will allow his body of work to be seen by those interested in it, madness as it may seem, for now, especially after the successful runs of Norte across the country, the concern is no longer about having audiences but about finding venues and putting schedules in order to accommodate them. Diaz has sculpted time himself: he has convinced enough people to recognize that cinematic time is hardly about length but depth, not so much about stretching it but letting it absorb as many fine points as possible. Between Diaz and his viewers, time is the main currency, a requirement and an agreement, the protagonist and the villain, something he has always made clear ever since. There is this tired and trite debate that insists on separating art from entertainment, but how can someone sit through a black-and-white five-hour movie, trying as much as possible to refuse the need of going to the bathroom, without admitting that there is actually a spell of enjoyment at work? That beyond the grayness and stillness there are in fact lives raring to come out and one is curious to see them?

The Film Development Council of the Philippines, acknowledging its win as the highest honor given to Philippine cinema, has decided to organize a free screening of Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon, interestingly, on September 21, exactly 42 years since Ferdinand Marcos signed Proclamation 1081, which placed the entire country under martial law. This historical moment figures prominently in the film in a horrifying sequence, the sound of Marcos’s voice having located the eye of the nightmare. Despite the note at the beginning, a hopeful viewer tries to comfort himself by thinking that everything is fiction; but now, in a clear declaration of fascist intent, he couldn’t deny the certainty of every word that has come to define countless pasts and futures. The reaction of the soldiers makes it all the more unsettling and sickening.

There is so much to say and argue about the sorrow, suffering, and violence depicted in Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon. It is far from perfect—there are numerous instances when the technique reveals indulgence and tests one’s patience, moments when it feels wrong to wait this long—but Diaz, with his gift as a storyteller, has a means of making the viewers understand why this thorough and expansive depiction is crucial, why this is the only way for him to let them feel the indescribable regret of seeing a town and its people disappear off the face of the earth, with almost no one remembering them, why some narratives can survive without ends, and why the appeal of great films is their flawed nature. An applause ends the screening, the theater still packed with people, and nothing from any movie released this year has ever come close to this instant of absolute joy.

From Siglo ng Pagluluwal (Century of Birthing, 2011)

In the Philippines, a country whose centuries of struggle against foreign aggressors often reflect the violence that the majority of its people experience at present, Lav Diaz rarely makes his presence felt. Similar to a handful of makers with intense dedication to their craft but hardly a drop of vanity to claim recognition, he seldom shows up at screenings and believes that his films already speak enough of his worldviews. His interviews, though articulate and illuminating, are loose threads compared with the sturdy and strapping fabric of his narratives, laid out over bleak backdrops of blood, sweat, and tears.

Diaz hails from Datu Paglas, a small town in Maguindanao, much like the dying village in From What Is Before (2014). His early films, made after moving to Manila from New York, have conformed more than resisted, as one is obliged to do to learn the rules of the game. Not much has been written about Serafin Geronimo, The Criminal of Barrio Concepcion (1998), Burger Boys (1999), Naked Under the Moon (1999), and Jesus, Revolutionary (2002) — all of which tanked at the box office — but they cannot be set aside simply for paling in comparison with his longer works. There he built the foundation that has come to define his highly regarded pieces, where the inclination to make deep and unsettling characterizations had taken root.

His later films are recognized not only for their length but also for their span, merging dimension and scale and having the precise skill to match their ambition. The stretch of lives in Batang West Side (2001), Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004), Heremias (2006), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007), Melancholia (2008), Century of Birthing (2011), and Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012) — shoveling through the heap of shameless political conceit, large-scale corruption, abject poverty, and trails of fading memory — is measured in blinks and breaths. Diaz navigates through miseries the way a boat sets sail, armed with readiness and optimism, his eyes always on the sky and sea. The passing of a storm owes more to nature than misfortune: luck is denied and tragedies happen for a reason. With a god to turn to, his characters understand their predicament and gradually come to terms with inherent injustice. The social cancer depicted by Filipino hero José Rizal in his novels is the same affliction pervading his films, only now, with more than a century between them, the infirmity is terminal and death is more certain than life. This is argued in powerful and searing clarity in Norte, The End of History (2013).

Diaz matters only to those who care to know him, whose lives have intersected with a screening of one of his films, and from then on have believed in his diligence and understood the urge that drives him to tell stories that run from five to ten hours. Whereas before, the concern is about having audiences for his films, now it is about finding venues and putting schedules in order to accommodate them, and such change of direction is overwhelming in itself.

One particular sentiment keeps hovering whenever a Filipino filmmaker achieves distinguished acclaim abroad — a question that seems to act, unfairly, as a litmus test. Is he the next Lino Brocka? This attachment to nostalgia is a distinctly Filipino trait, the tendency to overvalue the past, for after dying in a car crash in 1991, Brocka has been venerated to the point of worship, influencing a wide range of filmmakers including Diaz himself. Although the works of Ishmael Bernal and Mike de Leon are also as worthy of admiration, they do not possess Brocka’s social realism, and the national cinema of the Philippines, for better or worse, cannot exist and persist without this tradition. Diaz has answered this: he is not the next Lino Brocka, but his films, aware that going forward is the only way back, prove that such yearning has come to an end.

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This short laudation is commissioned by the Prince Claus Fund, published in its 2014 Prince Claus Awards program. Lav Diaz is one of the 10 recipients of the prestigious prize, “honoured for his uniquely moving portrayals of the complexities of Filipino reality; for expanding and intensifying cinematic experience through his innovative approach to the art of filmmaking; for expressing truth and building a powerful cultural legacy for national healing and international understanding of the Philippines; for challenging the dominant commercially and politically driven uses of cinema; and for remaining true to his art and his intentions, providing inspiration for others working outside the mainstream.”

Sinag Maynila is the brainchild of Solar Entertainment CEO Wilson Tieng and director Brillante Mendoza, a partnership that aims to bridge the financial and creative aspects of filmmaking, something that most grant-giving bodies aim to do.

With the name of the city in the festival name, it is interesting that only one of the entries is purportedly set in Manila (Ninja Party in an exclusive all-girls school). Bambanti is shot in Isabela, Balut Country mostly in Candaba, Pampanga, Imbisibol in Fukuoka, Japan, and Swap supposedly in Cebu. Their respective filmmakers also hail from different parts of the country, each having distinct roots.

Sinag Maynila 2015 succeeds at offering a diverse collection of stories, and the resulting films also offer diverse qualities.

BAMBANTI (Zig Dulay)

Glowing reviews of Bambanti overemphasize the smallness and simplicity of the film, as though these characteristics were enough to consider it worth raving, but hardly mentioned in them is its obviousness, how the smallness and simplicity are labored to the point of dullness. There is a handful of good things working for it — beautiful rural sceneries that make city people melt in superficial longing, skilled actors who can turn scenes into moments, and a quietness that can easily be mistaken for volume — but the material loses its life as it unfolds and its skin is shed, leading to a resolution that is not only clear and explicit but also plain and unchallenging. A watch gone missing is conveniently used to expose social ills and injustice — this representation is so literal it is ridiculous to regard the turn of events as symbolic. There is no point inflating its virtues: it is a small film that also achieves something small, and the ending, which shows the merry festivities of the town watched by its people, looks and feels like a usual tourism advert, touching but forgettable, pretty but merely passing.

BALUT COUNTRY (Paul Sta. Ana)

Sitting through Balut Country and at one point feeling that it has nothing more to share but platitudes and sentimentality, one wonders why such a harmless film is made, and why, in a world full of pleasant possibilities, an audience must endure eating bland pudding instead of something nourishing. And to think that the subject is balut, a distinctly Filipino food item often offered to foreigners for enjoyment, to see how they will react after seeing the prematurely formed chick inside the egg, the film does not make any effort to be interesting, or even funny. The premise is built only on a decision to be made — will he sell the land or not? — and for more than an hour the story feels obliged to tour the audience around town, in certain places where mundane conversations can be made and the characters can reflect on wasting time. No, it is neither thoughtful nor contemplative — it is simply self-absorbed and unaware of what insight is. Every film can be appreciated for the nature of its subject and the intricate social structure on which it instinctively perches. Balut Country has a rich context to boast, but its idea of telling a story is idling the time away in listlessness.

NINJA PARTY (Jim Libiran)

To be fair, Ninja Party is neither gross nor pointless. It takes on a provocative subject and even more provocative viewpoints, which explains the thread of viewer reactions between appreciation and disdain. This insistence to provoke seems to be its point, for it presents this group of young female students from a strictly Catholic school and bares only their rebelliousness, particularly the temptations that surround them and the difficulties of having hormones controlling their decisions.

Sure, spinning a dildo instead of a bottle is a game that can happen in real life, or showing nipples to each other is some girls’ idea of having fun, or giving head in the car should not be encouraged but it cannot be helped when the itch comes — but these scenes, among others that also show teenage girls in compromising situations, hardly feel connected with a bigger picture or statement. Ninja Party only scratches the surface, and it doesn’t have anything that would at least substantiate the constant feeling of discomfort, or anything that goes beyond the guise of using socioeconomic differences (that overused justification for films about spoiled youth) as an argument for its lack of maturity. Lysistrata may even provide a relevant reference and context, but the film itself has no strong background and dynamics to let the inclusion of this famous play hold water.

When those girls start to act dirty and give the boys some good time, the film presents consequences for them and not for the latter. And that seems to be okay because the world has worked that way for centuries. Having depth, whether explicit or implicit, is not its priority, and this lack of perceptiveness leads only to punctuate the upholding of male entitlement, both in the film and the filmmaking, and the aftertaste is nasty as fuck.

SWAP (Remton Siega Zuasola)

Swap iterates the one-take style of its predecessors To Siomai Love and Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria, only this time the film is split into sequences of varying locations and times, posing a much difficult challenge despite the control offered by a studio setup. Unlike the two films, whose outdoor surroundings contribute to the dynamics of the technique and make room for fascinating blinks of spontaneity, Swap has to put up one set after another as the camera rolls. Success depends heavily on timing, and this need for a calculated execution is a magnet for mishaps.

Truth be told, among the films in the festival, Swap is the most likely to achieve greatness — it has the best concept, the most daring spirit, and the most personal story. It is an all-or-nothing risk, and while watching it, one feels like cheering for it, egging it on until it reaches the finish line in one piece. But then a few minutes into the film, a number of things are already amiss. The production values are wanting. Some dialogue does not help the story and only creates unnecessary nuisance. The acting from its competent cast is strained. The transitions — those crucial connecting points that are supposed to make marvelous impressions — are often too conspicuous. These disturbances ruin the flow and inhibit suspension of disbelief, letting the audience notice the cracks and overlook a couple of interesting treatments (the split screen, the radio program, the many attempts at fluidity). Little slugs turn up one by one, from the first sequence to the last, and they eat away the foundation and collapse the film’s great ambition entirely and enormously.

And this is a painful admission for what could have been an important work. Like Soap Opera, Swap is brimming with ideas — ideas that are not fully realized, ideas that come out uninspired due to obvious constraints, and ideas that fall short and end up on the floor. But it is something that can also be attributed to weariness. The whole film is hampered by this overall feeling of fatigue, and even with a clever concept that manages to reflect on the political turmoil surrounding the family drama, sadly Swap limps until the very end.

IMBISIBOL (Lawrence Fajardo)

Imbisibol is set in Fukuoka, Japan, amid the bleak landscape of snow and news of illegal immigrants being arrested and deported, but the struggle of its main characters, some of whom are undocumented Filipino workers, is very close to home. It starts at a point when something is already happening: a Japanese husband tells his Filipino wife to let go of their apartment tenants because of their status. She refuses: she simply cannot do it. Only one of these tenants is an important character in the film — a young father working at a lumber company and raising the ire of a colleague — and he is introduced almost halfway through it, the peak of his conflict providing the climax and tying its beginning and end.

The other characters — an elderly gentleman juggling between his two jobs and preparations for his friend’s birthday; a has-been host and entertainer having a hard time attracting new clients and maintaining old ones; and other Filipinos connected with them — make up the bulk, and it is through the gentle and precise examination of their troubles does the narrative find a sturdy emotional core. The overlap of their stories tightens the relationships, and not only the unseen and unheard are emphasized, but also the unmentioned. Clearly, much of the film’s power comes from an enterprising use of structure — with all the splashes and smudges of glaze and the visible and vanishing flashes of sorrow — and the risk it takes in leaving the stories open, without any assurance of returning to them, indicates the trust in the capacity of the material (originally a play staged two years ago) to hold every detail it has set free.

Matching the strength of the story and screenplay is the scrupulous attention given to making it cinematic. The breathtaking views of the city at wintertime complement the hovering sadness and intensify it, but it is done in such a way that the immensity never feels overwhelming. There is a certain lightness to it, in fact, especially with how the elements frame the characters and how the shots are made stationary most of the time. The images are not just beautiful — they are bursting with meaning and consequence — and this technical feat deserves as much recognition as everything else in the film.

With a narrative that sprawls across the many aspects of the overseas Filipino experience, illuminating the mistaken assumptions and misunderstandings of greener pastures and hero worship, Imbisibol is not without its faults, the most glaring of which is the handling of crucial scenes in the climax. But these imperfections only make it all the more moving, highlighting the heartbreak and helplessness, for the struggle will always be there, and whichever time and place they are set, these stories will remain as an identity that no prosperity and claims of progress can erase.

Written and directed by Pepe Diokno
Cast: Ruru Madrid, Pepe Smith

Pepe Diokno’s much-awaited second film veers away from almost every aspect of his debut work, forgoing grit and aggression for subtlety and introspection. The years between them may have factored into the direction he has chosen, for the most obvious difference is how, unlike Engkwentro, Above the Clouds takes its time to unfold, bearing a language that is all too familiar with audiences who are used to immersive silence, minimal drama, striking visuals, and spatial dynamics coming together to create a sense of experience instead of spectacle.

This aesthetic of slow, or what is regarded by some as contemplative, aims for the soul rather than the body, and Diokno’s discernible choice to extract the essence and revel in restraint makes a good picture — if a good picture means being left with an impression — showing that, like commercial movies, artistic films also abide by a formula to achieve an effect.

A teenager and his grandfather, estranged from one another, deal with grief and spend time together, hiking up a mountain where their dead loved ones have once had special memories. In a nutshell, that’s basically it — two bodies and two souls — the rest is background and interpretation. The plot offers no surprises, and it doesn’t need any. It only needs to emphasize a relationship forced into being because it is the door through which its ruminations on sorrow come and go. The interaction between the two characters reveals merely the distance between them, how one tries to reach out as the other moves away, and the film, the way it is written and staged, gives them no one to turn to but each other, not even the departed. Only upon buying this setup can the viewer appreciate the nuances it tries so hard to keep and eventually expose for emotional impact.

Yet Above the Clouds, despite the undeniable artistic flair, is carefully predictable. It moves in such a way that its lead characters seem to be completely unaware of the path laid before them and of the emotions about to smother them, as though cruelly they were excepted from seeing the whole view, and the audience, for the entire time, is positioned at the vantage point, witnessing their struggle and anguish from a determined spot. One feels sad while watching it because it is only natural to feel sad, but there is nothing in it that rises above, or goes deeper beneath, this veneer of mourning, nothing that makes the sadness separate and specific.

The death of the parents during Ondoy is an interesting detail, but Diokno prefers to dilute this suggestive element in favor of accessibility, letting it add only to the overall sense of tragedy and not to a narrative that needs more layers. Granted, Ondoy appears to strike a chord mostly with people who have been acquainted with it (i.e., those from Manila) — the way Yolanda can have a distinct and lasting impact mostly on victims from Samar and Leyte — and people outside the eye of these tragedies can merely use art or consume it to share in the grief. But Ondoy, come to think of it, is the fulcrum of Above the Clouds, and an articulation of grief coming from it could have brought forth something more distinct, allowing a more resonant reading of the title to complement the emphatic but unmistakably beautiful final shot.

Diokno himself had an experience of Ondoy, and being someone from the city has afforded the film, largely shot in the Cordillera, this point of view: a boy glued to his phone and music player while on the move, a boy regarding his parents’ special place as something his and therefore feeling responsible for its keeping, a boy unable to know and appreciate the sacredness of the surroundings for other people. This perspective does not attempt to show strong familiarity with the place — it is far from promoting tourism and being an advocacy — but it is apparent that the sights are purposely used to characterize and deepen the story, the climb signifying a rocky relationship promised to reach a turning point, and without this scenic view of the mountains and meaning darkness, the film would have nothing much to show, not enough for it to stand on its own.

So somehow it seems only reasonable that the loudest criticism of the movie from local viewers comes in this regard, something which foreign audiences expectedly failed to highlight, the way environmental neglect is presented, and the nature of the medium makes it open to various angles of judgment. Some are quick to point out the vandalism supposedly tolerated in the movie, even aggravated by the fact that another film, both critically and commercially successful, has also been a subject of similar reproach (and, as it turns out, these two films, in the ensuing chaos of arguments, are being made accountable for their audience’s possible reckless actions, not to mention ill-intentioned thoughts, after seeing them).

This is why showing a locally produced film to a Filipino audience proves to be meaningful. Despite the extreme displeasure that comes with reading inane online comments and arguing with people of various levels of posturing, some of whom have no awareness of decency and diplomacy, Above the Clouds becomes relevant because of these discussions. Even with the guise of being fictional by nature, should films be absolved from criticism outside their cinematic merits? To what extent should filmmakers be held accountable for their viewers (as well as their thoughts and actions)? These debates bring to light the often taken-for-granted facet of film culture, this idea that a work, once shown and made consumable, carries a duty for its audience — the duty to educate and share a good message — and it is assumed that those who see it, especially if the subject is sensitive and misinterpretation could lead to something unpleasant, may or may not be bright enough to make a proper response. Cinema, in this case, is believed to be powerful when something dangerous is imminent, or if it shows something that does not conform to one’s idea of appropriate. This kind of mindset that doubts the ability of an audience to be responsible points at a lack of sufficient art education, thereby the blame easily (and thoroughly) goes to the art being produced.

Hardly raised in these accusations of negligence, and something which substantiates the tendency of the film to romanticize and be romanticized, is that all these issues could have been avoided (or forgiven) if Above the Clouds had a better script, if it had made a stronger case for its deliberate display of destruction. For a movie that depicts trails and terrains, it decides to take the path often traveled and comes unprepared for a long trip, sharing the view but not the experience.

Written by Jen Chuaunsu
Directed by Prime Cruz
Cast: Glaiza de Castro, Dominic Roco, TJ Trinidad, Irma Adlawan

Romance, whether in fiction or real life, has always been a major currency: love, more than anything, is both the motivation and reward, the logic and instinct. But the kind of love often emphasized, aspired, and admired in cinema is romantic: a strong force that can make grand, sweeping gestures, the overall effect of which, whether lounging in subtlety or excesses, determines the merits, or ineffectiveness, of a film. Love stories will never lose their relevance — the material lends itself to infinite permutations — and those that make a precisely memorable impression usually have something to say beyond the intensity of the feeling.

In Sleepless, in what seems to be the film’s riskiest undertaking, the main characters are not in love with each other. They meet at work, become friends, and eventually find their lives at a standstill because of the unpleasant consequences of their respective relationships. They take comfort in each other. Even towards the end writer Jen Chuaunsu and director Prime Cruz are not keen on “shipping” them, and it is by virtue of this companionship, essentially carrying the weight and implication of romance, that Sleepless unfolds its simple, seemingly slight story against the backdrop of cutthroat corporate work in the Third World.

It is interesting not because it does not pursue the romance but because it does not seek to be validated by it. The reason for Gem’s sleeping problem at the beginning is the nature of her work, but later on, as she finds a meaningful companion in Barry, it becomes a habit formed out of fulfillment gained from it, how the physical distress is compensated by emotional gratification. The foundation of the film is their contact, and it develops into a friendship defined by circumstances, the way they deal with their own troublesome family relations and failed romances while trying to be there for one another, without taking advantage of the convenience coming from their vulnerability. Over time the characters become stronger than the plot points, and the small moments, no matter how predictable, manage to ignite fireworks.

Although Sleepless shares obvious similarities with Shift by Siege Ledesma and Ang Nawawala by Marie Jamora, particularly in terms of milieu and treatment, a worthier comparison can also be made with Endo by Jade Castro, with how employment is a crucial part of a person’s life decisions. The call center environment as a workplace is never substantially explored, but it is presented in such a way that neither glorifies nor condescends to its culture, acknowledging the industry that has been the country’s main economic growth source for more than a decade. As call center agents, Gem and Barry go on with their day-to-day lives the way other workers, who are regarded presumably with higher respect, do, yearning for similar needs and hoping to be in better situations. What makes Sleepless current is this scaffold — the grave importance of being employed, and the submission to the pleasures and sorrows of work — with recognition of things being temporary as nothing but natural. The city shown in its locations is also a curious element: it is neither highly developed nor visibly struggling, neither happy nor sad, a city presented not as a character but as a spectator, the way places, despite the tendency to sentimentalize them, in fact do not really care about people.

Nothing in Sleepless is new or groundbreaking, and this prevailing mindset to offer novelty, to engage in some sort of activity proving the worthiness of creation, has been around only to challenge perceptions. The use of animation in a few sequences may have been disagreeable to some, but one can see it as a means to break the monotony, to render foolishness in the context of boredom, which actually provides nuance to the characters and stirs the surface. Sleepless has a rich undercurrent that can easily be overlooked, either out of being too meek or unresisting, but in truth it speaks eloquently of the tiny tragedies of every day, of the slacker’s desperation to finally be on the right track after so many attempts, and of how some people escape solitude and look for souls to cling to. The lonely will always stay lonely, and every friendship they find is a love story living a common life and dying a common death.