Sean Ellis' Metro Manila - The Abyss of Hopelessness

I can’t shake off the feeling. There’s dread and melancholy in my mind, and I am finding myself in a state of morbid depression. After a hiatus of several months, I am compelled to write again for the sake of catharsis, because I find none of that where Sean Ellis’ Sundance-favorite, “Metro Manila” is concerned.

When rice farmer Oscar Ramirez (Jake Macapagal) realizes that he couldn't even afford to buy seedlings from the sale of his newly harvested “palay”, he briskly decides to uproot his wife Mai (Althea Vega) and their two children from Benguet to the big city to seek the greener pasture that the fields have denied them. They soon learn that the concrete jungle is an even more hostile environment. Opportunists abound and the weakling eventually gets crushed into mangled carcasses. Mai decides to apply as a bar girl while Oscar is looking for a job. Fate gets kinder when Oscar falls under the good grace of Douglas Ong (John Arcilla), an armored car security driver who soon grooms Oscar as his right hand man. The latter lends him shirt, buys him food, hustles a fake driver's license, and even finds him a more suitable home away from the slums of Tondo. No sooner do we realize that there’s more to Douglas’ overbearing hospitality. Isn't money a universal motive why people do the things they do? Oscar and Douglas’ armored car carries oodles of them day in and day out. Then the plot thickens.

In my years of watching films of different genre, I've learned that one of the characteristics of a great film is its ability to linger long after leaving the cinema. Such intensity hobbles and dawdles – then it putters like a log hanging down your psyche, banging into your heart. This is Sean Ellis’ “Metro Manila”.

Unfortunately, I feel that it’s for the wrong reasons. While we totally embrace social realism, for how else do we face the future if we don’t keep our eyes wide open to the painful truths happening around us, we abhor sheer hopelessness. And that is what ultimately constitutes the film. There are 95 million souls in this country, but there aren't 95 million tales worth telling.

SPOILERS

Social realism, to become a valid story, has to elicit a glimmer of hope. But where is hope in a homecoming punctuated with a dead husband? Is stolen stash worthy as a source of inspiration? Moreover, great stories have redemptive value. What is redemptive in a husband who hardly winces when he learns that his wife has started peddling her body before salivating customers? Yet when his only “friend” Douglas (John Arcilla), who has helped him find gainful employment and a home, asks him to punch his time card, he has the gall to even joke, “Baka mapapasama tayo dyan!” At this point, when Douglas tells him to lick his ass, shouldn't he be licking away until his friend tells him to stop? After all, his wife is already gyrating naked in front of horned out men. When the narrative element of conspiracy eventually sets in, should Oscar still be on a moral high ground? How dare he allow his wife sinking briskly into moral quagmire while he refuses to get his hands dirty? If that isn't the hallmark of a spineless, albeit unsympathetic husband, I don’t know what is. 

The story has head-scratchers from the start. When Oscar bravely risked the well being of his family by taking them to the harsh city without a friend or an assured roof under their heads, you would question his mind set - Reckless, to be kind? Or an idiot, to be more appropriate? Who relocates his family to the big city with just under P2,000 and not a hint of a dwelling?

In “Metro Manila”, British director Sean Ellis visualizes an urban landscape cloaked with apathy, almost reflective of the “Gates of Hell” voiced out by novelist Dan Brown (“The Da Vinci Code”); traffic almost shuts down to a halt; tenements teem with roaches, wide gaping ceilings, rusty fences; hookers who get kidnapped in public avenues; heck, even children are depicted as heartless creatures (three boys are shown torturing a kitten). Every member of the populace is an opportunist so when you’re handed what is perceived as help, it isn't.

While I understand that all these constitute the thematic essence of a fictional dark world called “Metro Manila”, I am gripped with a confounding pessimism for the story being told. And this will shake your faith on what’s otherwise called Pinoy hospitality or the vaunted good-natured quality of this so-called people. Scratch that notion. Metro Manila is a world of despicable people. Everyone is as ugly and "nanggigitata" as the dilapidated buildings that rise over shanties. 

True, Sean Ellis gets his shot for brilliant story telling. He weaves a compelling tripe that won’t let you leave your seat as you’re gradually sucked into his narrative maelstrom. Jake Macapagal has always been known to play it down even in the theatrical world where he proudly hails. His tentative demeanor as the naive farmer is perfect for his early scenes, but as the story moves forward, it becomes clear that Macapagal’s passivity is really a reflection of his awkward grasp of character. We don’t see him evolve even when he indolently turns to the other side. Didn't serving 4 years in the infantry teach him a whimper of a grit? John Arcilla, hailed by many impressionable minds as “brilliant”, is actually too obvious. Had he tried subtlety a notch lower, the effect would have been chilling. We knew from the get-go that he was this slimy SOB who wanted something out from his staged kindness. Then there’s the side story involving a bullied man named Alfred Santos (JM Rodriguez) and his rather silly parachuting parable. Rodriguez looked so effete he might as well shout “Darna!” when he jumped off the plane. And who successfully carries a handgun on a commercial plane? Aren't there any other ways of escaping other than jumping off planes?

Bottom line here is, “Metro Manila” has turned Metro Manila into a mythical city replete with squalor and hopelessness; where predators continuously prey on the innocent. The urban landscape is dark and putrid and filled with figurative decay that goes way beyond architecture. Ellis paints a squalid metropolis that’s downright grotesque and unseemly, and he has succeeded to take this image to the United Kingdom and Sundance with much acclaim. After all, this tale about a lawless, rotting Asian city of whores and thieves called Manila becomes Britain’s ticket to the Oscars derby. How will the Brits and the world's cineastes see the real Metro Manila after this? Not flattering, that’s for sure.

While I realize that Ellis isn't in the industry of making a propaganda about Philippine tourism, he conveniently makes Manila the poster child of the perfectly petrifying third world in all its grimy desperation. Just a few weeks ago, Mes de Guzman's "Ang Kuwento ni Mabuti" eked out a deceptively simple tale of an innocent grandmother (Nora Aunor) in far flung Nueva Ecija in almost similar moral dilemma. Yet the narrative fabric didn't exploit destitution or poverty which is a major highlight in Ellis' flick.

A friend who saw this earlier told me he liked the hopeful tone as it wrapped up its story. Huh? Rappler’s Carljoe Javier referred to the flick as “something to be enjoyed.” Oh wee… How does one find enjoyment, hope or inspiration in a tale where the protagonist succumbs to the dark forces? That his wife returns home with a dead husband, a stolen loot, and a broken soul? In a pessimist’s world such as “Metro Manila”, I come home with a heavy heart.  

Sheron Dayoc's Halaw (Ways of the Sea) - Once Again, The Diaspora

Bongao, Tawi Tawi - a town at the edge of nowhere. It is the southern backdoor of a country inept of providing employment to a good number of its population. And human nature allows the hungry soul to seek greener pastures. In the far flung island of Tawi Tawi (this includes the Turtle Islands just 20 kilometers north of Sabah) are irresolute people who wish to impetuously seek fortunes in the Malaysian territory. After all, an empty stomach would lead to a land perceived as bountiful.

Jahid (Aljimar Hajijol), an illiterate Badjao father of 9-year-old Daying (Arnalyn Ismael), is taking his daughter across the tempestuous, albeit illegal sea border to find his missing wife. Problem is, they don’t have enough to cover the fare of P2,500 per person. Fortunately, illegal trafficker Hernand (John Arcilla) gets desperate enough to take them in when a couple of Hernand’s recruits from Basilan back out at the last minute. Mercedes (Ma. Isabel Lopez), an oft-returning hooker, joins the admiring group, occasionally flashing her lucrative “gifts” – the contentious fruits of her 8-year gruntwork. This has so bedazzled the gullible young Lydia (Ross-Ann Daklis) who dreams of a plethora of wealth. Each one dreams a life away from the incessant barrage of tactical violence and abject poverty that delineate the region. On a balmy evening, Hernan takes his “customers” on a leaky outrigger boat to the tumultuous shores of Malaysia.

While on board the banca, they passengers hear each other’s stories and dream of better lives en route the turbulent waters, seemingly oblivious to the precariousness of their impending arrival to an unwelcoming terrain. At a refueling station, young and naïve Lydia gets a dose of her future when she gets raped by a man Hernand owes money to.  What awaits our fortune seekers on the dark and treacherous shores of Sabah?

Director Sheron Dayoc tells his stories straight and without much narrative ruse that even the music employed to coat the story never overwhelms. In fact, "Halaw" (Ways of the Sea) is almost documentary in form. There is a lesson to be learned here: when there is a story worth telling, you don’t need any other diverting gimmicks like loud foreboding music, expensive special effects, distracting side stories, gratuitous sex, etc. You don’t even require melodramatic contrivances (indisputable in Star Cinema dramas about migration like “Milan”, “In My Life”, “Love Me Again”, “Caregiver”, “Dubai”) to engage your viewers or impart a didactic dispatch. You only necessitate a valid story, the knack of telling them (artistically, of course), a decent cast and a more than competent cinematographer (after all, cinema is a visual medium – and you should not tell your stories on a blurry, dizzying, nebulous canvas).

John Arcilla appears in one of his career’s best performances. Bereft of his vocal crutches and, more significantly, cloaked in comfortable scenario, Arcilla imbues his character with enough pathos to be encompassingly desperate, sympathetic, compelling and scary (the scene where he tries to convince the young teachers to pursue the trip was particularly spine-tingling because you knew there was nothing that awaits the girls in Sabah). More than anything, this is a successful ensemble work, carefully and impressively admixing veteran and amateur actors. You hardly feel awkward moments intermittently found in independent films such as this. Moreover, the amateurish proclivity of regional cinema is hardly noticeable here. One of its advantages is its brisk story telling – the film clocks at 78 minutes – and really underlines the fact that you don’t need an indulgent 2 hours to tell a good story!

“Halaw” is Malaysian Bahasa for “driven away” or its Tagalog translation, “Itinaboy”. The film won its well deserved award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011; several awards at the Cinemalaya in Manila and other international festivals. It is thus such a pleasure to finally catch this film (May 21, 2012) at the recent Asia As Our Society Film Festival at the Shang Cineplex. “Halaw” (released in 2010) seems low brow and unfamiliar. Not a lot of people is aware it even exists, regardless of its winning awards here and abroad. Isn’t that simply undeserved?

Ma. Isabel Lopez plays Mercedes who's been around and has been doing the  journey for 8 years.

Arnalyn Ismael is 9 year old Daying. The Badjao child is braving the Sulu Seas to find her mother in Sabah.

John Arcilla plays Hernand , the illegal trafficker. He won Cinemalaya's Best Actor in 2010.

Beauty, dearth and danger in Bongao, Tawi Tawi.

At the southern tip of the Philippine archipelago is Tawi Tawi which includes the Turtle Islands, 20 kilometers from Sabah.

"Halaw (Ways of the Sea)" is relatively popular in the international festival circuit, but almost unheard of in the Philippines.