As you like it
‘All those armchair pundits crying for quality films should have gotten off their high horses and trooped to the cinemas and supported (Ang Larawan).’
By consensus, the Metro Manila Film Festival decided to release the box-office figures of the eight films when all theaters had stopped with the extended run of the films. But if we go by the announcement that the first three days of the festival had superlative attendance figures, and that after two weeks they surpassed targets and the P1-billion mark, it would seem that the success of this year’s festival is one for the record book. With the audience coming back in droves, there was inevitable talk about a new Golden Age of Philippine Cinema, and how the selection this year would pave the way for quality films to ascend.
How one connects the attendance and revenues to quality and a Golden Age is beyond this observer’s comprehension but I will accept that the return of the commercial, mainstream entries was exactly what the general audience wanted. And as you’ll always have a difficult time arguing with success, the critical acclaim of the indie-flavored line up of MMFF 2016, but with lackluster box office revenues, will soon be a dim memory.
Despite the Gabi ng Parangal Awards cornered by the likes of Ang Larawan, Siargao, All of Me and Deadma
Walking, it would seem that the festival is still held in a vise grip by the broad comedies (Vice Ganda and Vic Sotto entries), teenage romance/horror films (Haunted Forest) and superhero/action films (Coco Martin’s
Panday). That’s the way they like it, and to believe otherwise, or force-feed the audience films of stronger “artistic merit” is a Sisyphean task. Joanna Ampil gave a stunning performance in Ang
Larawan and well deserves her Best Actress nod but even with the film copping Best Picture, it was being yanked out of theaters by the third day of the festival. I sympathize with the producers, as how do you stand a chance of recouping your investment when the acclaim and recognition translate to less screens showing your film? All those armchair pundits crying for quality films should have gotten off their high horses and trooped to the cinemas and supported this very worthy film. On the afternoon of Dec. 30, I watched
Ang Larawan and it was like a convention of senior citizens — and if a number of theaters brought the film back, I can only hope there was a strong second wind for the film.
Deadma Walking had a social media-savvy campaign going for it but it remains to be seen if that worked in helping this film defy its gay comedy pigeonholing. A Palanca Award-winning screenplay from Eric Cabahug and a light, but sure, directorial touch from Julius Alfonso, gave wings to this wonderful story of friendship and family. And I love how the two stars, Joross Gamboa and Edgar Allan Guzman (Best Supporting Actor), aren’t gay in real life!
And I’m not saying any of these films are “picture- perfect.” I did have issues with the early pacing of Ang
Larawan or how there were moments that the grandness of the musical score did not jibe with the mundane action on screen. But this Nick Joaquin tale of family values, eroding glory, and art vs. materialism transcends its sense of time and place. Showcasing what are great, fragile and foolish in the Filipino. It is OUR story, what makes us wonderful despite all the vanities and blemishes.
So if we didn’t “like” to make a beeline for the cinemas showing the film, we have no right to bemoan the lack of quality in our country’s film output. The film industry is called that because at its core, it is a business that entertains — but still a business. And congratulations to the MMFF for its record-breaking comeback!
Of murder, the absurd & the sublime
The three novels today are by authors who excel in the genres they write in. Horowitz deals in the world of mystery and murder while Oyehaug is a modernist who dares to be both absurd and sublime. Beauman is acknowledged to be one of the under-forties we have to watch out for. The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz (available on Amazon.co.uk) A woman, mother of a famous actor, enters a funeral home and proceeds to make arrangements for her own funeral. Not strange in itself as it commonly happens but six hours later, Mrs. Cowper is strangled in her own residence. A botched burglary or something more sinister? In an entertaining metafiction style, author Anthony Horowitz enters his own novel as a writer approached by a disgraced, retired detective to tag along and write about this case. Acting as consultant on specific cases, Hawthorne proposes that they split the proceeds of the book, and the novel takes us on the journey. As modern-day Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock, Horowitz has us both laughing at his ineptitude, while concentrating on the passages where clues and discoveries are discussed.
Knots by Gunnhild Oyehaug (available on Amazon. com) Hailing from Norway, Oyehaug has firmly established herself as a contemporary writer of note. In this collection of short stories (some surprisingly brief), she showcases the talent that has made critics adore her. Surreal, at times absurd and fantastic, she also shows a strong sense for portraying the real and mundane in a manner that elevates it to literature. Musings on Rimbaud’s life, the travails of domestic life, the psychology of having a torrid love affair, or extramarital relations — these are just some of the topics she alights on and turns into flights of fertile imagination. Of interest in this collection is that some of the stories intersect with each other, how some of the peripheral, minor characters in one short story, many pages later, become the central character of another story.
Madness Is Better Than Defeat by Ned Beauman (available on Amazon.co.uk) Here is Beauman once again traversing the land of the surreal and bizarre, while staying grounded and sublimely “historical.” With shades of The Lost City of Z or Aguirre, Wrath of God but updated to the ‘30s and ‘40s, Beauman conjures up a lost temple in the Honduras that becomes the setting for a strange turn of events. On one hand, we have a group of New Yorkers claiming the temple for some American multimillionaire led by his vagrant son, with orders to dismantle the temple stone by stone. The purpose is to reassemble it in his Long Island estate. Then there’s a film crew from Los Angeles, primed to use the temple as the location for a Hollywood film, with a young, neophyte director heading this faction. That all are pawns lies behind this tale.