I recently stumbled upon a list of the top ten most disturbing films in cinematic history. Concurrent with the bile in my mouth came the realization that we have a criteria for distinguishing which circumstance makes violence acceptable for the regular viewer. Violence can only be acceptable for us if it is happening to another person. In this case, it is that girl who is running around screaming her head off in a flimsy negligee that leaves very little to the imagination. Second criterion is that if the violence in the film warrants a certain degree of knowledge. You walk out of the cinema with a lump in your throat after having been fully immersed in the horrors of the human experiments carried out in a Nazi concentration camp. This is why horrific films make it to the Academy Awards, because you have become a tad wiser, a tad less ignorant and therefore a tad more cultured.
My fellowmen decided to showcase several films shown during the 62nd Cannes Film Festival for the celebration of our country's Independence Day. Notably absent from the glittering roster of films shown is our very own "Kinatay" from award winning director Brillante Mendoza. Quite the irony since the film fared extremely well in Cannes catapulting it's director to the Best Director Award. Truly, a majestic feat for the filipinos. Mendoza has stated he will only allow "Kinatay" to be premiered in the country in the condition that the film will be shown in all its uncensored glory. Alas, the director's entry to last year's Cannes Film Festival "Serbis" will be shown in lieu of "Kinatay".
Kinatay has failed to fit into any of the criteria for the acceptable unpalatable cinematic experience. As Tarantino has said, the film doesn't dramatize the crime. You watch the film not as a spectator, not as viewer waiting for the shock factor to kick in. In the film you are a witness, you are a participant in the poor woman's killing and subsequent mutilation. The poor woman is not the bossomy girl running for her life, the woman is a prostitute who has been sentenced to death by a drug pushing gang, the woman looks so typical you might have bumped into her on your way to work. In this case, hell is no longer another person's, it is your own. You leave the theater with the remnants of bile on your tongue. This movie did not make you a tad wiser and therefore a tad more cultured. This movie made you feel dirty, as if the hacked woman's entrails are stuck on the soles of your shoes and you cannot wash them off.
I scanned the list with much trepidation. It is eleven thirty in the evening and I am alone on my cluttered bed. The night is eerily silent and my thoughts are in a frenzied chaos. There is an accompanying video clip of every movie featured in the article. I find myself drawn to number six. The movie is called "Cutting Moments". It is a movie about a suburban wife who is desperate to win back the affections of her icy spouse. What do we have here? A demented woman stuck in a love triangle with her perverted husband who has begun to feel sexually attracted to their son. I click on the play button. Two minutes later the woman emerges from the bathroom in her skivvies, soaked in blood. She stands in front of her husband as he blankly stares at the TV. He looks at her puzzled, his brow furrowed in animosity. There she is dripping thick blood, her lips conspicuously missing from her face. I peer from my palm clasped firmly over my eyes. This is sick. Twisted. My stomach is tied in knots. Bile is rising in my throat. My hands are itchy. I feel dirty.
Quentin Tarantino's note to Cannes Best Director Award winner Brillante Mendoza. The stationery is all upside down, it's cute and I like it just the way it is, with the wrong spelling and the crooked handwriting and all. This note's got character. This note is kick ass. Warms my stone cold heart.
William, a drug addict, tries to reconnect his ties with people close to him. Slowly, as night falls, he learns that there is no one left to trust, not even his own self. Philip, who works as a bodyguard for a mayor’s son, thinks his boss considers him family. After a shooting incident, he discovers his real worth to his boss. As he struggles to hide, he is slowly being consumed by the claws of darkness lurking the city.
"The credits, in fact, decline to state which director worked on which film, and the overall presence of DoP Banzon – the film’s prime asset – makes Manila very much of a piece. Even the visually striking, loose travelogue flavour of Martin’s superior episode, however, fails to raise the whole piece above the ordinary. Ultimately, Manila fails to push the envelope."
“Experimental two-parter from leading indie helmers that makes one yearn to see the originals...evocatively shot. The film has a youthful energy aplenty and a great jazz-pop soundtrack.”
-Alissa Simon
Independencia
by
Raya Martin
The occupiers are onscreen for only a few seconds. Martin focuses almost entirely on a small family, at first a mother (Agbayani) and son (Lucero) who, like many Filipinos under both the Spanish and the Americans, feel compelled to leave town for a less dangerous rural life.
They move into an abandoned hut adjacent to a lush tropical forest. The mother dies, and the family is now comprised of a more grown-up version of the son (same actor, now bearded and long-haired), the young woman called in the credits “the Stranger” (De Rossi) who had moved in with them after her ostensible rape by U.S. soldiers, and the very light-skinned boy (Aguilos) she gives birth to.
"Generically, Independencia is as melodramatic as they come. Besides the family narrative and the acting style, the music, as lovely as it is, is continuous, insistent, and frequently mournful, with horns, guitar, flute, violin, and cello accompanying or anticipating every element of what little plot exists.
On account of Martin’s political and formal strategies, most screen time is taken up by the routines of rural life and drastic changes in the weather. We are saved from boredom by the one character telling stories to the others, most of them based on mythology and superstition, and some fine sound effects, most notably the ongoing, high-volume sounds of insects and the river. True to the genre, nothing ends well."
"Deliberately theatrical and old-fashioned, Independencia is a richly metaphorical, allusive collision of history, mythology and cultural memory. Full of long takes and stylized close ups, but sizzling beneath with raw-knuckled sexuality, it’s occasionally hard work but is hugely rewarding."
“The evocativeness is all in Martin’s decision to shoot it in the style of a pre-Griffith silent movie . . . If that didn’t make it clear we’re watching a fable of the Philippines’ past, the final image wouldn’t be nearly as wrenching — or as pointed."
-Tom Carson
"Martin easily conjures an atmosphere of modest, supple dreaminess—not an ounce of pretension exists in the film despite its stylistic conceit—but in the face of the location work of someone like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Independencia's chill vibe is welcome but seems easy. More importance is placed on the surreal naturalism of the film's beautifully painted matte backgrounds than any sort of human or story presence, and while Martin's natural sense of space gives everything on camera its due, I wish there were more on camera than the splendor of a studio production."
"The filmmaker in question, Raya Martin, is a new name to me, but if his earlier movies are anything like this one, Guy Maddin has a prize pupil to be proud of. The evocativeness of Independencia is all in Martin’s decision to shoot it in the style of a pre-Griffith silent movie, when nobody knew that film had any purpose except mimicking a theater’s proscenium arch. If that didn’t make it clear we’re watching a fable of the Phillipines’ past, the final image wouldn’t be nearly as wrenching—or as pointed. Beyond that, all I can say is that I’ll be at Martin’s next one with bells on."
-Southeast Asian Film Studies Institute
Cannes Film Festival Rankings
Un Certain Regard
"Independencia" (8,55) - 9 votos
"Police, adjective" (8,50) - 4 votos
"Irene" (7,83) - 6 votos
"Tales From the Folden Age" (7,00) - 2 votos
"Father Of My Children" (6,75) - 4 votos
"Air Doll" (6,44) - 9 votos
"Mother" (6,285) - 7 votos
"Nobody Knows About the Persian Cats" (5,25) - 4 votos
"Tzar" (1,50) - 2 votos
Out of Competition
"Manila" (6,66) - 3 votos
"Up" (6,18) - 11 votos
"Ne te retourne pas" (5,50) - 6 votos
"Jaffa" (4,50) - 2 votos
"Agora" (3,33) - 3 votos
In Competition
"Vincere" (8,29) - 7 votos
"Vengeance" (7,45) - 11 votos
"Fish Tank" (6,33) - 6 votos
"Kinatay" (6,18) - 11 votos
"Los abrazos rotos" (6,00) - 9 votos
"Bright Star" (5,86) - 7 votos
"Un prophete" (5,83) - 12 votos
"Taking Woodstock" (5,18) - 11 votos
"Thirst" (4,60) - 10 votos
"Spring Fever" (4,18) - 11 votos
"Looking For Eric" (4,00) - 6 votos
"Antichrist" (3,36) - 11 votos
Independencia, Manila and Kintay are doing quite well at the festival with Independencia leading the top ranking at the Un Certain Regard category and Manila in the Out of Competition category and Kinatay, now considered to be a dark horse in the festival has garnered eleven votes, impressive for a film with less than enthusiastic reviews.
Update: Brillante Mendoza Wins as Best Director
CANNES, France (AFP)— Brillante Mendoza of the Philippines on Sunday picked up the best director prize at the Cannes film festival for his dark movie "Kinatay".
"Kinatay" (meaning "massacre") notably features corrupt cops hacking a prostitute to pieces with blunt kitchen knives.
Mendoza, at Cannes for the second year running, again split the critics, drawing both hisses and applause for "Kinatay".
Last year's "Serbis" was set in a Manila porn-theatre with long close-ups of festering boils and overflowing toilets, as well as the poverty and distress on the streets.
Still determined to portray the social reality around him, Mendoza in "Kinatay" traces 24 hours in the day of a trainee policeman, happily beginning with his wedding in the morning to close with the young man's first outing at night with a band of corrupt colleagues.
To his surprise, fear and anguish, they pick up a prostitute accused of betrayal and wind up torturing, raping, killing and hacking her before disposing of the body parts across Manila.
"This is not just entertainment, these kinds of stories are real," Mendoza said at Cannes.
Last year was the first time since 1984 the Philippines had a film competing for the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d'Or.
This is an amazing feat for Mendoza whose film received negative reviews from many critics including the Pulitzer prize winning Roger Ebert and whose co-nominees include Pedro Almodovar, Ang Lee, Quentin Tarantino and Lars von Trier among others. A truly majestic feat. I for one am ecstatic.
I wonder, will the little lady in Malacanang receive him so warmly for winning an award for a film she might find quite disturbing? Kinatay is a film that paints an ugly picture of the country in the eyes of a hired killer, depicting the many injustices and atrocities of law enforcers, gritty violence and gore in the streets of Manila. The image of my mum wrinkling her nose in disgust as I narrate to her how the events unfold in the movie suddenly pops into view. This reminds me of how Slumdog Millionaire, though the film captured the hearts of many including the most prestigious film award bodies, incurred the ire of some Indian citizens for displaying such a vile view of their country. We will soon find out. Keep watching.
I am the beef patty in your burger, the secret pocket of your pleated dress, the mint in your chapstick, the jump button in your remote control, the spring in your step, the last piece of uneaten cookie in your jar, the shuffle feature on your iPod, the wire in your wonder bra, the genius of your victorious choices, the wisdom beneath your inevitable failures, the dexterity of your metacarpals, the bittersweet aftertaste of a cup of steaming hot chocolate, the cool side of your pillow, the remnants of a fleeting dream, the noise of utter silence, the scent of the yellowed pages of your beloved book, the last drop of tequila swimming in your veins. I am Issey. I am the goddess of the pork swords.
