Beyond catharsis: A review of respeto

IS this what we have become as a nation? A people reduced to the gutter morality of survival, haunted by the ghosts of our morbid past, and trapped in an endless unforgiving cycle of violence? These were the thoughts that raced through my mind as the end credits of the film “Respeto” rolled and the house lights came on, abruptly putting an end to my reverie.

Never had a movie achieve so much of a visceral impact that it felt like I was disemboweled and spent at the end of it - a testament to the little film’s dark but truthful heart.

It is an unusual story in the first place, one that puts the spotlight on persistent but hidden realities of the metropolis we would rather conveniently ignore or forget.

It is only because of the overpowering stench of blood rising from the pavement, to paraphrase a spreading graffiti, because of the rising body count of the government-backed war on drugs that has so far victimized thousands of petty drug pushers and users, that we have come to notice the unhampered officially-sanctioned murders in our midst.

We follow the character of Hendrix, an aspiring teenage rapper together with his two friends in one of those nondescript areas of urban blight.

They are practically orphans and eke out a living on their own, their families non-existent or inconsequential.

The drug culture does not occupy the narrative front and center but it is there in his sister’s drug-dealing boyfriend for whom Hendrix occasionally delivers in exchange for a commission.

No, this is not a feel good Mr. Holland’s Opus remake nor is it a Pinoy version of Stand and Deliver. What is novel about the approach in storytelling is that the movie unravels to the audience as half a musical and the other half as spoken-word poetry. That viewers barely notice this uniqueness is proof of how immersive the celluloid universe the creators of the film was able to achieve.

We are first herded into a narrative about a young teenage boy seeking respect in the underground hip-hop culture’s rap battles. It has been a disastrous foray for fame and respect until a botched robbery of a second-hand bookshop entangled Hendrix with an ageing poet who wields a dark past.

It is the encounter and entanglement of the two that makes it possible for the film to go beyond just being a coming-of-age movie or a hip-hop musical for that matter.

Instead, it becomes a journey into a soul of the nation in the age of Tokhang and Duterte. The ambition and embedded theoretical program of the film hews it closer to an Ishma or Brocka actually, and the sordid ending finally provides the cinematic catharsis that was deprived of us by Brocka in his masterpiece “Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag.”

Here, there is an object of the necessary social violence that must be released, although one wonders if this catharsis is enough. So what is the state of the nation according to the seers of Respeto the movie? As stated above, we are a people reduced to the gutter morality of survival, haunted by the ghosts of our morbid past, and trapped in an endless unforgiving cycle of violence. If ‘Drix represents the Filipino youth of today, then they are shallow and lost not because they are inherently flawed, but because the world they inhabit is without meaning.

They have inherited a soulless world from the failures of the previous generations and this includes the impunity and violence that traces its origins from the Marcos dictatorship to its present form - one of the deft cinematic achievements that the film was able to effortlessly pull off. If they are not being oppressed and exploited by family members that are supposed to take care of them, it is the state and its crooked agents that target them for liquidation it's a slam at the people they've met before.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.” ~ Author Unknown

“Never be late. When you're late, what you're saying is that your time is more important than the other person's time. That's pretty egotistical”. ~ Alice Cooper, interview with Cal Fussman, 2008 August 2nd, for Esquire's January 2009 eighth annual Meaning of Life issue