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OPINION: Duyan ng Magiting – a movie review

Article (news)

Renato Redentor Constantino

The only regret: If only I had watched the movie last Tuesday, I could have told everyone way earlier to go see the film. Because that is indeed what you should do. My rating, in lieu of three, four, or five stars: pakshet, hanapin niyo, panoorin niyo po. To the director and writer of Duyan ng Magiting, Dustin Celestino, and to the cast of the movie, with thanks to the artist Joel Saracho who asked me to view a film I did not even know had been produced (entirely my fault; I've been out of touch) -- bravo. Well done. This is a movie that checks all the boxes. The aesthetics were splendid, the acting superb and restrained. The pacing was perfect just like the casting. That this movie was organized like a play is evident early. While this production would have been excellent if performed on stage, I suspect I would have still preferred watching it in a cinema. The way it was rendered as a 12-part act worked wonderfully on the screen and the movie certainly reached the audience I was with. It seemed to speak to a specific set of viewers ranging from those moderately involved and versed in issues of accountability to those fully immersed in the effort to track the consequences of officially sanctioned bloodlust. And yet, perhaps even more importantly, the movie seemed to offer a thoroughly uncomfortable conversation as well with the uninitiated--by laying squarely on the table, unlabeled, a panoply of narratives punctuated by humor vexing the nation largely because of the continued refusal by many of the protagonists to confront the one-dimensional binaries they have offered for decades. The movie is misleading, by intention. It leaves trails of breadcrumbs our many cynicisms are expected to follow, and every single opening that somehow manages to brush the jaded bell to expel the tiny tinkle of warning in expectation of cliches of righteousness, defeat, justice, and patriotic zeal - each time we are surprised when the path takes a turn elsewhere until, past mid-point, we become suspicious of our own habitual dismissiveness. I watched Duyan ng Magiting with Kala and our kids, and all of us were in awe of the movie. We laughed out loud at the same time as the rest of the theater, and we gasped or fell silent along with others at the U.P. Town Center cinema, which was surprisingly packed on a Friday night to enjoy a Cinemalaya film. I don’t think anyone went home after the movie feeling less than disturbed, less than moved, and less than rewarded. All the actors did well, but four deserve a few highlights. Moving towards the unreachable peak of Nora Aunor (because there is only one superstar), Dolly de Leon (playing a social worker) is, unequivocally, a national treasure. In this movie we get to see her brilliance most because she displays incredible control - the way she mutes her speech and when she pinches her tone, so you get less of her voice and more of the bladed point she delivers deftly in her interaction with the authorities. The mesmerizing way she makes the audience track her gaze, her gestures, head tilts, and casual squinting, is just sublime. Paolo O'Hara as police chief Gabriel Ventura is spectacularly convincing. He avoided the familiar the jagged stereotype of police power - the caricature of ugliness. Instead, we get the sullen sketch of blunt force trauma welling from within the character and the brooding, restrained menace Chief Ventura dishes out. Even when he is hurling platoons of cuss words, it is not the delivery of profanity but the framing of the scene that O'Hara establishes. But O'Hara's character cannot realize the clarity Celestino must have expected from Ventura without Frances Ignacio, who plays Ventura's wife, a woman grieving and unhinged by personal tragedy. Together, O'Hara and Ignacio are responsible for the movie's standout scene - in the bedroom where they play out the atrocity in a motion-mural, a tableau that feels like a play but which is transformed by the medium of cinema. The scene builds to a sensual crescendo of implied and actual violence; it felt surreal yet so familiar, and the way it blended and bent reality made it leap out like great art which has no tinge of, no stain of, is uncontaminated by, the overwrought artsy-fartsy crap of incapable poseurs. And finally, the second act has to be singled out thanks to the screen presence of Saracho. It was a delight to watch him move across the set and hear his deadpan voice delivering lines with the gait and facial expression so familiar to his friends. All acting is difficult, but Saracho's scene must have been easier than roles he played in other movies, because in Duyan ng Magiting, his delivery and the lines he was assigned -- acerbic in the implied truths and corrosive in their cumulative accuracy -- was like waking up groggy after all-night drinks and you get the same Joel reminding you in the same tone how absurd life is and how ridiculous our principled principles are. Saracho makes you bleed but he will also offer you coffee. And cigarettes. The perfect movie does not exist and certainly Duyan ng Magiting is far from flawless. Despite working with what is assumed to be a low budget, lighting was just right (though Kala disagrees with me a bit on this) but the audio aspect seemed to have been a major challenge. Sound was not seamless, balance was inconstant, and there were moments where it was so uneven it became distracting. On the acting side: towards the end of her scene, Agot Isidro (swoon!) was given too much to say and it made her character less believable, which is unfortunate because she provided one of the many exchanges throughout the film that succeeded in slicing through the jade of cynicisms many have tried but have been unable to dissolve: when Isidro demands her share of recognition, of heroism, it did not elicit what would normally be a charge of egotism. Instead, we are jolted yet again by another truth – the working mother’s place. It is tempting to reveal the truly provocative element that framed, sewed up, and grounded the movie, which was encapsulated in the final scene. In one emotional outburst, the words and the imbrications of that last moment made us laugh, grieve, squint, rage, and sigh all at once. But it is something for new audiences to savor, and long may the bitter-sweet-salty-sour-umami taste of the movie linger in their tongues. Does the medium really matter? Yes, it does. Art forms will always count, especially when it comes to compelling creativity. Oftentimes, the more compelling the work is, the greater the need to reimagine it if the intended outcome or provocation it offers will still work when rendered in different arenas or using other means of storytelling. Are we watching a play or a movie or a play that came out as a movie or a movie staged as a play? I cannot see how anyone can claim to possess the correct answer. Even if Celestino has a particular take on what exactly he created, I am not sure it would matter more than the reality of uncertainty that his movie leaves for the audience - a group that comes together for around two hours and afterwards go their separate ways wondering exactly what medium they had consumed. I'd certainly watch it again if it is staged as a play, but I sense I'd enjoy it less. Seeing it as a movie provides a particular sense of distance that feels more compelling because of the film's subject and the complex disruptions it provokes. Viewing it in a cinema creates a more effective visage of detachment where the cerebral feet separating the audience from the flat screen (versus distance from a stage) more effectively proffers the type of spectatorship suggestive of the general populace's attitude to wanton displays of state brutality today. The need to resist, to reject the gruesome reality of extrajudicial killings and state of impunity has never been greater, but today we also need to meaningfully confront the sense of active indifference being fueled by a number of factors. For sure behind this encouragement stands the nation's ruling elite and the exhortation for people to 'move on' and discard past issues and tired causes, ostensibly so that the economy - in particular the pockets of working Filipino families in the country and abroad - can be ransacked unabated. The notion of active apathy also feeds on the existential exhaustion of working-class families across the land - families exhausted by violence in their communities stemming from unchecked misogyny and local law enforcement eager to protect the unfettered appetites of old and new oligarchies. But here's the rub -- exhaustion also lies in the one-dimensional binaries crudely advanced by some fighting to dismantle the establishment—by offering more (revolutionary) violence. There are no easy conclusions in this movie, where Martin Luther King is paraphrased numerous times to frame many of its chapters. Yes, only in darkness can one see the stars, but when the stars are veiled, how can you overcome darkness with more darkness? The statement is powerful, but also a tad preachy. It is left to Agot Isidro to deliver the telling blow when her character finally evokes the movie’s title. <div>Sa duyan ng magiting, walang nagigising. </div>Isidro’s words will not resolve the dilemmas raised in the film, because it was not meant to do so. You may, however, consider yourself the next act in the ongoing play.

The only regret: If only I had watched the movie last Tuesday, I could have told everyone way earlier to go see the film. 