20: Manila in the Claws of Brightness (a.k.a. The Nail of Brightness, a.k.a. Manila in the Claws of Neon, a.k.a Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag—Original Filipino title)

              I think that the most surprising element of Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Brightness (1975) is the sensibilities the film possesses for American culture, while simultaneously subtly criticizing capitalist territorialism in the city of its title.  Brocka was clearly influenced by American films and their themes, and quite possibly he influenced a few himself with this film, often regarded as the greatest of Filipino pictures.  Obviously, the labor movement movies of the 1950s as well as Midnight Cowboy (1969) are reflected here from a somewhat unfamiliar perspective.  Brocka certainly adds his own flare –notably with the film’s homosexual themes (he was openly gay) – and at times makes what might otherwise be a dingy homage into a unique, if admittedly melodramatic, picture about corruption and exploitation in the third world.

            Arriving in the city to find his lost love, Julio (Bembol Roco) is forced to seek work as a day laborer at a construction site.  The unsafe conditions and unforgiving foreman combine for a volatile environment, and Julio is shocked when he sees a man killed by falling debris.  Ordered to return to work immediately, the incident creates political stirrings amongst his fellow workers.  This subplot quickly all but disappears from the remainder of the film however when we see through brief flashbacks Julio’s memories of his beloved, Ligaya Paraiso (Hilda Koronel).  The two lived an idyllic life in a provincial fishing village, but Ligaya left for the city when promised a job and a potential education.  When she sent no word of her arrival, Julio followed to find her.

            Structurally, the film functions as both a disappearance mystery and a parable about the corruptive power of the urban landscape.  Julio is certain he’s seen Ligaya (whose full name translates to “Happy Paradise”) through the window of a trading company building, but he’s kept away by a sleazy gatekeeper.  As he fumbles through the inner-city squalor he finds himself increasingly prone to violence, and he eventually is lured into a ring of homosexual prostitutes who seem to have a connection to the inaccessible building.  He turns tricks for a time, seemingly unaffected by his plight, until by chance he sees Ligaya.  He follows her to a church, where they have a somewhat stoic reunion before going to a movie and then finding a bed in which to rekindle their relationship.

            In the film’s emotional centerpiece, a nearly ten minute dialogue between the two*, she reveals that she too has been trapped into a life of prostitution.  The young lovers make plans to flee the city, but before they can, Ligaya is killed by her pimp as a warning to other girls who might try to escape his clutches.   Enraged, Julio climbs the stairs of the whore house and murders the pimp with an ice pick.  The film concludes ambiguously as a mob surrounds the desperate young man, violently poised to make him the city’s next victim.

            The obvious comparison to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, released a year later in 1976, in the film’s final sequence leads one to wonder how much of a thematic influence Brocka’s film was on the American director and his screen writer Paul Schrader.  Obviously, Schrader’s screenplay was finished by the time of Manila’s release, but visually the films do have some striking similarities.  But Taxi Driver, for the most part, feels like a timeless film that happens to have been made in the 1970s, where Brocka’s to an extent feels stuck in that decade.  Costumes, body language, and even the small smattering of English dialogue in Manila feel dated upon first glance.  Taxi Driver, and to a lesser extent Midnight Cowboy bear the scrutiny of repeated viewings.  Likewise, the flashback sequences and melodramatic directorial tones (“Happy Paradise”…Really?) they display feel like a Ryan O’Neal vehicle rather than a gritty low-budget indy.   For a novice actor, Roco does what he can with the material he’s given, even showing some flashes of greatness, but his immaturity combined with Brocka’s unsure touch leaves something to be desired, as does the VHS quality stream that is available on Youtube.

Language: Filipino

Runtime: 125 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com (NST)

Grade: 2.5 Hats off       

*This was the scene that could have most used the missing subtitles.    

A Decision

With only twenty titles left to go, I find myself a bit exhausted.  Searching for the films has now become a real chore.  I’m still absolutely determined to try to make my June 16^th deadline, but I believe this may only be possible if I view some of the foreign language films without subtitles.  Several of them appear on the web with only their original audio, and alas I speak only English.  I will still be making every effort to see the twenty remaining titles, most of which are foreign, with subtitles if possible.  However, if I come across one that doesn’t have the translation, I’m going to go ahead and view it.  I’ve done this only once before, with Turkish Delight (1973; #88), and I don’t feel that it heavily detracted from my enjoyment of that title.  Is there potential here for skewed ratings? Yes.  However, I feel that the remaining titles may elude me forever, thus providing no opportunity for ratings, if I do not make the choice now to sacrifice the understanding of all dialogue.  I will mark any foreign language film I review, that I viewed without subtitles with an “NST”* after the availability note.

*No subtitles; I will apply this mark to the Turkish Delight entry as well.

21: Housekeeping

 

            There are times when movies serve us well by providing us with answers, but it is invariably true that they serve us even better when they provide us with questions.  This past summer, I was excited when advertising for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012) suggested that the film would answer the questions posed by the Alien series.  Upon seeing the film I was resolute in my contention that it not only failed to answer the aforementioned questions, but even went so far as to pose new queries.  Then, after several weeks, it occurred to me that Scott had done something marvelous with the franchise he kicked off in 1979; giving it new life after more than a decade of spin-offs, crossovers, and retreads.  By posing more questions – this time getting at even deeper elements of human nature – he enlivened that which, like his creatures, only seemed to be defeated.  It took his unique touch, that mix of thought and action that he does so well, to truly revive, and perhaps cap the franchise.   

            Fans of Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping (1987) may be wondering by now what a 2012 big budget Sci-fi thriller has do with this relatively quiet and quirky dramedy from the Scottish director (his first North American film).  Nothing really, except that both of these films were helmed by directors that understood the power of questions to draw in an audience.  Scott’s film involves the origin of the human species, while Forsyth’s concerns the mysterious behavior of one of its members.  In a way, it too is an origin myth. 

            A narrator tells us the story of her youth, recounting the strange events that brought both her and her sister to be with their eccentric aunt, Sylvie (Christine Lahti).  At a young age they drove with their mother from Seattle to visit their grandmother.  Shortly after arriving at the geographically isolated town of Fingerbone, their mother took her own life.  When their grandmother passed away ten years later, two aged great aunts came to live with them in the house built by their grandfather.  He lost his life, we are told, years before in a train accident just outside of town that killed hundreds when the locomotive slipped off icy rails on a bridge, and then plunged to the depths of the frozen lake.  Like a congenial ghost, that bridge haunts the town, and the film.

When Sylvie arrives in Fingerbone, after years of transient existence, the girls, Ruth (Sara Walker) and Lucille (Andrea Burchill), are eager to learn more from her about the mother they barely knew.  Fingerbone has a way of making the world outside seem like an awfully exciting place, and Sylvie seems to have lived everywhere, at least for a time.  At first she seems drawn to the train station, eager to again take to the rails, but her affections for Ruth and Lucille convince her to remain as their caretaker.  Her quirks, a habit of collecting newspapers and tin cans, seem minimal at first, especially in the midst of the film’s most memorable sequence. 

Days after the geriatric aunts leave the girls in Sylvie’s care, the town floods.  The house, we’re told, is usually safe from the annual accumulation, but a late thaw leaves no option for runoff and for a time both aunt and nieces are forced to subsist in shin-deep water, donning their goulashes for each trip downstairs to the kitchen.  Initially, Sylvie’s nonchalant acceptance of these circumstances seems to be for the girls benefit, but as the water subsides it becomes clear that the state of the house is far from her mind.  The newspapers and tin cans begin to accumulate, and people in Fingerbone begin to talk.  Are these girls living in a healthy environment?  Ruth, who seems to care little for the world around her, doesn’t think anything is amiss, but as Lucille grows more concerned with her teenage social life, she begins to resent both her aunt and her sister.  Once, the two girls shared adventures together.  Now, Ruth prefers Sylvie as a traveling companion.  The two go on walks by the bridge and through the woods, crossing over mountain springs, and though they talk as they go, Sylvie remains mostly a mystery. 

Where all has she really been?  What caused her to leave?  Why did she stay away so long?  Was there a rift that tore the family apart after the train accident?  The answers to these questions are hinted at more than discussed, and Lahti has a way of making Sylvie’s reaction to questions about the past seem detached and defusing all at once.  The inquiries seem to bounce off of her and fade into the folds of the film, like the locomotive into the lake, sinking ever deeper with each subsequent attachment that glides off the rails.             

            Most people see a film that poses larger questions – something like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) – and initially recoil.  It requires more than two free hours to view and to process such a movie, and frankly we are losing our attention span as a culture.  It takes the ability to create and to reflect on critical and nuanced thoughts in order to digest such pictures.  We’ve bought into the idea that has been sold to us by Hollywood that movies exist solely for our enjoyment, and can be forgotten in the interim between the moment when we leave the theatre and the real moneymaker, the DVD release.  Housekeeping is a film of small questions rather than big, sweeping ones, but in the time I spent with it, and for some time thereafter, they were questions that mattered.  Not a masterpiece, but a wonderful look at a life different than my own, and yet similar in so many ways.

Language: English

Runtime: 117 Minutes

Available for streaming @amazon.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off