directed by Jerrold Tarog
written by Henry Francia, E.A. Rocha, and Jerrold Tayog
As Jerrold Tarog begins this film, he gets something very important out of the way: he declares, in no uncertain terms, that his film is a work of fiction for which he has borrowed liberally from actual history, and that certain events may have been tweaked to serve the greater narrative. With one stroke he addresses the history nerds in the audience, telling them quite categorically: "Just shut up and enjoy the movie." This is important because rather than a by-the-numbers retelling of history, this film plays out very much like a parable, one that every Filipino needs to see and hear.
After Three Hundred Thirty-Three years, Spanish rule in the Philippines is coming to an end, and to escape the humiliation of having been overthrown by its erstwhile subjects, the Spanish government is having a closed-door meeting with the new burgeoning imperial power, the United States of America. As they meet inside the walled city, Intramuros, the revolutionary government, led by President Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado) have a meeting of their own and try to decide what to do next. Antonio Luna (played masterfully by John Arcilla), the highest ranking general of the army of the revolutionary republic of the Philippines, believes that they are only swapping one colonial ruler for another, and advocates an attack on the Americans while they are still marshaling their forces, but cabinet members Pedro Paterno (Leo Martinez) and Felipe Buencamino (Nonie Buencamino) believe that the Americans have good intentions and are looking forward to doing business with them. In the end, the politicians prevail and no attack is carried out. However, when the American soldiers shoot a passel of Filipino soldiers a few months into their occupation, a full-blown war breaks out, leaving General Luna no choice but to face the military might of the strongest nation in the world. Luna, however, is no slouch; he knows that to beat the Americans, who are superior in both numbers and technology, he will need tactics, and thanks to his fierce intelligence and extensive education in Europe he knows exactly what he needs to do, which does not involve beating Americans on the traditional battlefield but basically wearing them down by getting them to throw more and more money at their war effort until they realize that colonizing the Philippines is too expensive an endeavor. As he strives to professionalize the Filipino army, Luna soon realizes his biggest problem, though, isn't the Americans but his very own countrymen, including officers from his own army like the arrogant General Tomas Mascardo (Lorenz Martinez) and the useless, lazy Captain Pedro Janolino (Ketchup Eusebio), neither of whom will answer to or even cooperate with him but will only take orders from the President himself. As Luna finds himself fighting a war on two fronts, one against colonialism and the other against parochialism and self-interest, he realizes there are precious few people he can trust, such as his loyal officers Francisco Roman (Joem Bascon) and Eduardo Rusca (Archie Alemania). Time is not on his side, and neither, it seems, is the very republic he is fighting to save.
The film, based primarily on a 1972 book by Vivencio Jose is a masterclass of direction, acting, cinematography, editing, music scoring, art direction and costume design, among others. Quite remarkably, in making this film director Tarrog wore several other hats as well. He wrote the film's script and music score and also served as film editor. His shot selection is utterly brilliant. On a technical level, this film is virtually beyond reproach, but for the occasional continuity gaffe and some seams in the special effects, and perhaps more conspicuously, some rather mediocre acting from the actors Tarrog and his crew got to play the Americans, whose onscreen presence is mercifully short, though somewhat pivotal. The good news, though, is that the Filipino actors are, for the most part, at the top of their game.
Arcilla, a veteran of both screen and stage, owns this film. The truth of it is that, in the hands of a lesser actor, with stinging lines like "you're like virgins believing in the love of a prostitute" or the much more important "our very worst enemy is ourselves," the character could have descended into caricature, a live-action version of the splash-panel editorial cartoons that regular newspaper readers are used to seeing. Arcilla, however, takes this role, with its tricky lines and incredibly difficult duality, and gives us a character who is both fierce and tender, both brilliant and, in the end, somehow naive of the evils of which his compatriots are capable, a flaw that ultimately proves to be his undoing. It's really such an outstanding performance, the kind, I believe, that will define Arcilla as an actor, and in the best possible way.
It is to the credit of most of the supporting cast that Tarrog and his producers have assembled that they do not simply blend into the background. Ramon Confiado imbues his Aguinaldo, quite clearly one of the central villains of the piece, with just enough humanity and hesitancy to keep him from being completely beyond redemption. There's even a pretty vivid flashback to the butchering of Andres Bonifacio in which Confiado gets to manifest pangs of the first Filipino president's conscience. Confiado's performance is creditable for bringing out the conflict in this character. In contrast, Epy Quizon's take on Apolinario Mabini was a little too saintly for my liking, thanks largely as well to the script, but he essayed the role well. I will admit I had some problems with Leo Martinez's Pedro Paterno, the greasy politician that felt a bit like a retread of his old "Manhik Manaog" character from the Mongolian Barbecue movie that I'm sure nobody remembers anymore (but which was actually pretty good), but considering his relatively small role I can get why Tarrog and his co-writers Francia and Rocha did not flesh him out too much.
Nonie Buencamino was a bit more surprising as the identically-surnamed Felipe Buencamino; this character is basically Luna's arch-nemesis throughout the film, and yet at the end of it all, he comes across as surprisingly human, even though he's still someone the audience will truly love to hate. What is remarkable about Buencamino's performance is that he, unlike Martinez' Paterno, does not come across as a con-artist or snake-oil salesman, but as someone with genuine, however misplaced, conviction. Projecting that on the screen was to my mind, almost as challenging as portraying Luna himself.
I could go on forever about how I admired this movie as a work of art, but ultimately what matters more is this film's message, which is basically about unity and selflessness in the name of one's country. The film is hardly subtle about its advocacy; its core messages are explicitly stated in the dialogue. In a day and age where people are bickering about how everything is the government's fault and how this politician is better than that one, Tarrog and his crew have shown some serious balls by daring just about everyone who watches this film, when complaining about the ills of society, to basically just take a good, long look in the mirror. Also, there are very few message movies that go balls-out on production value the way this film did, only to end on a complete downer.
Heneral Luna is hardly the first "message movie" to come along, and I sincerely hope it's not the last. I really hope this movie gets a revolution going, and not the kind with guns and murder, but the kind that involves EVERYONE--from the people government to the motorists on Commonwealth avenue to the urban poor--changing the way they think, and learning to truly love their country.
10/10
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Saturday, September 5, 2015
A Truly Beautiful Mind: A Review of Inside Out
directed by Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen
written by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley and Ronnie del Carmen
In this day and age of rampant video piracy, film distributors have decided to make it a point to release their "tentpole" pictures in Asia and other territories ahead of their release in the United States. Because of this, we viewers in the Philippines get films like The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, and Minions at the same time as, if not weeks ahead of, our counterparts in America.
This is not the case, for some reason, for films which are made by Walt Disney Pictures' Pixar Studios, whose films are invariably released here as late as two months after their release not only in the United States but in other parts of the world as well.This was the case with Inside Out, which, by the time it came out here almost two weeks ago, had grossed over $600 million in other parts of the world.
Well, the good news is that it was completely worth the wait.
The film is about five colleagues, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Anger (Lewis Black) and Fear (Bill Hader), who have a very interesting job: they are the emotions of a little girl named Riley (Katlyn Dias). They live inside her mind and basically form her reactions to everything that ever happens to her in her life. Joy is the lead emotion in view of the fact that Riley lives a generally happy life in Minnesota. She loves her family, she has great friends, she's crazy about hockey, and life in general. Joy, for her part, loves her job, which mainly consists of pressing buttons on a console that causes Riley to react happily to situations in her life, and storing the memories of the events, depicted as glowing crystal orbs the size of bowling balls (to Joy and her colleagues), in the enormous landscape of Riley's mind. They transport these "bowling balls" via vacuum tubes. Each memory is the color of the emotion that triggered the reaction to the event, and most of them are yellow, the color of Joy. There are some exceptions, like the blue memories represented by Sadness' reactions, green memories triggered by reactions of Disgust, red memories triggered by Anger, and the purple memories triggered by Fear. Joy, however, is the dominant emotion, as she should be in a child's life. There are memories, and then there are core memories, which are necessary to making Riley...Riley. The core memories, in fact, power massive floating structures in Riley's mind that represent aspects of her personality. In the beginning of the film, all of the core memories are joyful ones.
Things change, however, when Riley's entire family moves from Minnesota, where she's lived all of her eleven years, to San Francisco.
Joy and her colleagues go about their business, but she notices that sadness has suddenly started touching yellow memories...and turning them blue. It's mildly irksome at first, but when sadness starts handling core memories, Joy intervenes, and the two of them, along with all the core memories, end up getting sucked into the vacuum tubes and sent out to where all of Riley's memories go, which is a massive city. They find themselves "miles" away from the control room, and they have to get there fast, or the floating islands that core memories power will fall into the chasm of Riley's forgotten memories, and Riley as everyone knows her will truly be lost. Time is not on their side as one by one the islands begin to collapse, but they may have an unexpected ally in Riley's one-time imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) who has spent the last years wandering around the corridors of Riley's memories.
Meanwhile, back in central control, Disgust, Anger and Fear are basically running Riley's mind, and they're in a bit of a panic.
All of this, of course, is happening on the inside of Riley. On the outside, she is reacting to her friends moving on from her, to being the new kid at school, and to her dad being preoccupied with his business deals. The combination of Fear, Anger and Disgust dominating her mind is a dangerous mix, and looking back on her fond memories of Minnesota, Riley contemplates doing something drastic.
There is one word that sums of up what I think of this film: SUBLIME.
The notion of anthropomorphic representations of people's emotions isn't something Pixar came up with but I dare anyone to claim that anyone else has executed the concept with even a fraction of the inventiveness and meticulously-realized detail that Pixar have with this film.
I'll admit I wasn't particularly sold on the concept by the initial trailer, which was why this film truly blew me away; it took me quite by surprise. Pete Docter's and Ronnie del Carmen's vision of the inside of a person's mind, even that of a child, is utterly breathtaking, but Pixar being Pixar, they certainly weren't about to stop with a few stunning visuals. Sure, these emotions are all characters in a story, but each of them is a functional part of somebody's brain, and it became pretty clear that Pixar did their homework on how the brain works. Interviewing psychologists is one thing, though, but translating all of this information into story concepts that kids and their parents would embrace was quite another, and Pixar's triumph here was their visualization of the various concepts of the mind like abstract reasoning, subconsciousness, and a personal favorite of mine, dreams.
Of course, all of this was wrapped up in some generous helpings of humor, helped along by the sterling work of the voice cast headed by Poehler and Davis. Hader has long been a personal favorite of mine, and during the laugh-out-loud "dream" sequence he did not disappoint. I was also moved by Dias, the young actress who plays Riley, who was given the unenviable task of acting out all the emotions that had her mental avatars in a tizzy. Sure, this was just voice acting, and Pixar's CG did much of the heavy lifting, but Dias really went a long way towards helping me feel her character's inner turmoil. This movie was, for me particularly extraordinary because just about everything that happens outside of Riley's head is really rather mundane, and the fact that Pixar managed to depict almost everyday mental processes into some larger than life just really shows just how far ahead of the curve they are in terms of sheer creativity. Relative to their competitors, they really are operating on another level of storytelling.
Like the very best of Pixar's offerings, this movie has at its center a beating heart. For me it's right up there with Finding Nemo and the deeply moving three minute love story of Carl and Ellie in Up. Surprisingly, this isn't about fathers and sons or husbands and wives but about understanding one's self, and in a way learning selflessness. As strange as this may sound, this is actually a good movie to show at office team buildings or to teams before a big game; the egomaniacs in either of those groups will quite likely get the reference.
Sure, Illumination Studios may have raked in the big bucks with the broad humor and undeniable appeal of the Minions, but with this Pixar has just reasserted that it is STILL the absolute best in the animation business. At a time when studios are churning sequel after remake after reboot, it is utterly gratifying to know that something this fresh can still succeed in the marketplace.
10/10
written by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley and Ronnie del Carmen
In this day and age of rampant video piracy, film distributors have decided to make it a point to release their "tentpole" pictures in Asia and other territories ahead of their release in the United States. Because of this, we viewers in the Philippines get films like The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, and Minions at the same time as, if not weeks ahead of, our counterparts in America.
This is not the case, for some reason, for films which are made by Walt Disney Pictures' Pixar Studios, whose films are invariably released here as late as two months after their release not only in the United States but in other parts of the world as well.This was the case with Inside Out, which, by the time it came out here almost two weeks ago, had grossed over $600 million in other parts of the world.
Well, the good news is that it was completely worth the wait.
The film is about five colleagues, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Anger (Lewis Black) and Fear (Bill Hader), who have a very interesting job: they are the emotions of a little girl named Riley (Katlyn Dias). They live inside her mind and basically form her reactions to everything that ever happens to her in her life. Joy is the lead emotion in view of the fact that Riley lives a generally happy life in Minnesota. She loves her family, she has great friends, she's crazy about hockey, and life in general. Joy, for her part, loves her job, which mainly consists of pressing buttons on a console that causes Riley to react happily to situations in her life, and storing the memories of the events, depicted as glowing crystal orbs the size of bowling balls (to Joy and her colleagues), in the enormous landscape of Riley's mind. They transport these "bowling balls" via vacuum tubes. Each memory is the color of the emotion that triggered the reaction to the event, and most of them are yellow, the color of Joy. There are some exceptions, like the blue memories represented by Sadness' reactions, green memories triggered by reactions of Disgust, red memories triggered by Anger, and the purple memories triggered by Fear. Joy, however, is the dominant emotion, as she should be in a child's life. There are memories, and then there are core memories, which are necessary to making Riley...Riley. The core memories, in fact, power massive floating structures in Riley's mind that represent aspects of her personality. In the beginning of the film, all of the core memories are joyful ones.
Things change, however, when Riley's entire family moves from Minnesota, where she's lived all of her eleven years, to San Francisco.
Joy and her colleagues go about their business, but she notices that sadness has suddenly started touching yellow memories...and turning them blue. It's mildly irksome at first, but when sadness starts handling core memories, Joy intervenes, and the two of them, along with all the core memories, end up getting sucked into the vacuum tubes and sent out to where all of Riley's memories go, which is a massive city. They find themselves "miles" away from the control room, and they have to get there fast, or the floating islands that core memories power will fall into the chasm of Riley's forgotten memories, and Riley as everyone knows her will truly be lost. Time is not on their side as one by one the islands begin to collapse, but they may have an unexpected ally in Riley's one-time imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) who has spent the last years wandering around the corridors of Riley's memories.
Meanwhile, back in central control, Disgust, Anger and Fear are basically running Riley's mind, and they're in a bit of a panic.
All of this, of course, is happening on the inside of Riley. On the outside, she is reacting to her friends moving on from her, to being the new kid at school, and to her dad being preoccupied with his business deals. The combination of Fear, Anger and Disgust dominating her mind is a dangerous mix, and looking back on her fond memories of Minnesota, Riley contemplates doing something drastic.
There is one word that sums of up what I think of this film: SUBLIME.
The notion of anthropomorphic representations of people's emotions isn't something Pixar came up with but I dare anyone to claim that anyone else has executed the concept with even a fraction of the inventiveness and meticulously-realized detail that Pixar have with this film.
I'll admit I wasn't particularly sold on the concept by the initial trailer, which was why this film truly blew me away; it took me quite by surprise. Pete Docter's and Ronnie del Carmen's vision of the inside of a person's mind, even that of a child, is utterly breathtaking, but Pixar being Pixar, they certainly weren't about to stop with a few stunning visuals. Sure, these emotions are all characters in a story, but each of them is a functional part of somebody's brain, and it became pretty clear that Pixar did their homework on how the brain works. Interviewing psychologists is one thing, though, but translating all of this information into story concepts that kids and their parents would embrace was quite another, and Pixar's triumph here was their visualization of the various concepts of the mind like abstract reasoning, subconsciousness, and a personal favorite of mine, dreams.
Of course, all of this was wrapped up in some generous helpings of humor, helped along by the sterling work of the voice cast headed by Poehler and Davis. Hader has long been a personal favorite of mine, and during the laugh-out-loud "dream" sequence he did not disappoint. I was also moved by Dias, the young actress who plays Riley, who was given the unenviable task of acting out all the emotions that had her mental avatars in a tizzy. Sure, this was just voice acting, and Pixar's CG did much of the heavy lifting, but Dias really went a long way towards helping me feel her character's inner turmoil. This movie was, for me particularly extraordinary because just about everything that happens outside of Riley's head is really rather mundane, and the fact that Pixar managed to depict almost everyday mental processes into some larger than life just really shows just how far ahead of the curve they are in terms of sheer creativity. Relative to their competitors, they really are operating on another level of storytelling.
Like the very best of Pixar's offerings, this movie has at its center a beating heart. For me it's right up there with Finding Nemo and the deeply moving three minute love story of Carl and Ellie in Up. Surprisingly, this isn't about fathers and sons or husbands and wives but about understanding one's self, and in a way learning selflessness. As strange as this may sound, this is actually a good movie to show at office team buildings or to teams before a big game; the egomaniacs in either of those groups will quite likely get the reference.
Sure, Illumination Studios may have raked in the big bucks with the broad humor and undeniable appeal of the Minions, but with this Pixar has just reasserted that it is STILL the absolute best in the animation business. At a time when studios are churning sequel after remake after reboot, it is utterly gratifying to know that something this fresh can still succeed in the marketplace.
10/10
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