Isang Himala (A Miracle, Pepe Diokno, 2024)

It's a miracle

Let's get the million-peso question out of the way: from my limited perspective Isang Himala does not measure up to Ishmael Bernal's 1982 classic film, not quite, but does easily stand out as the best of the four films I saw at the 2024 Metro Manila Film Festival. 

"But how can this be?!" you ask. Well let me tell you.

(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in explicit detail!) 

Starting with the negatives: the biggest issue I have with Pepe Diokno's otherwise well-made film is the decision to make it a musical in the first place. Himala was in part the result of Bernal's struggles with the original material: the script reportedly didn't reflect Bernal's own beliefs among other issues, and the film was apparently the result of his attempts to fill in gaps, by playing into the issues instead of resolving them. 

Hence the vagueness. Who raped Elsa and her friend? Who fired the gun? Who is Elsa in the first place, what kind of person is she-- a simpleton, a charlatan, the genuine article? Such questions bothered me at first; through the years they have kept me thinking about them and thinking about them and thinking about them till I came to the belated conclusion that the film isn't about religious skepticism, not completely, but also about the compelling nature of all riddles, enigmas, mysteries-- and said unresolved quality is a demonstration of its theme and a part of its enduring appeal. Bernal in effect couldn't quite appreciate the script and wrapped it in so much atmosphere and visual style that the end result-- as with an oyster wrapping a persistent irritant with layer upon layer of iridescent nacre-- emerges a fully formed pearl. 

That's the 1982 film, an anti-religious film that recreates for itself the seductive power of religions (irresolvable mysteries that you can only accept on faith); problem with setting it to song is that a character faced with a riddle or enigma or mystery in a musical mostly responds the same way: in song. Explaining said riddle, expositioning said enigma, recording to music in minute detail every emotion experienced along the way. 

In the original Bernal and his production team worked hard not just to film a unique landscape (the barren sand dunes of Paoay, in Ilocos Norte), where the lightest rain shower can be considered a miracle (ironically just before production arrived it had rained and the dunes were verdant with grass), but enable cinematographer Sergio Lobo doing arguably his best work to keep the human figures distant and looking lost in a surreal landscape (if you're at all familiar with the Philippines and its endless tropical rainforests you'd instinctively know why Paoay feels so surreal). 

Diokno's film goes the opposite direction, plunking the fictional community of Cupang-- meant to represent any town in the Philippines-- on a recognizably stagy set, the camera smoothly gliding through stylized rickety shacks and pressing close against various faces, the better to catch their every expression. It's a style, markedly different from Bernal's, and I love the sinuous quality of the camera's tracking motion, but again the feel is more Broadway (or a Filipino level-best effort to emulate the same) than spiritual desert, and I'm missing the latter quality.

(And going out on a limb here but do I detect post-production digital meant to replicate cloud and sky and weather effects? If so I wish Diokno had doubled down on his decision to do a stage production (shades of Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar) and kept strictly to a scrim with modulated lighting (if I'm wrong I apologize and withdraw the objection)).

The cast, mostly from stage, is amazing of course, and if I had to pick standouts from an excellent cast I'd pick Kakki Teodoro's Nimia singing lyrics that rework Ricky Lee's words into (especially in the nightclub scenes) a fuller religious satire; David Ezra as filmmaker/photojournalist Orly, formerly a stand-in for Bernal, now more explicitly a stand-in for us casual observers, and Neomi Gonzales as the tragic Chayong, Elsa's best friend turned fiercest believer turned eloquent if unspeaking critic.

As for Aicelle Santos as Elsa-- loved her singing voice and the fact that she's not a conventional beauty; as a more fully formed Elsa she's a heartrending actress. But I do miss Nora Aunor's iconic performance; she was distant, she was-- or seemed-- untouchable, with everyone swirling around her either trying to make sense of her or worship her. Her spiritual crisis is here given an entire musical number to help us understand and empathize and I'm not ashamed to admit I did shed a tear empathizing, but what made Aunor's non-performance so memorable was that she didn't have to act, she simply had to be. Her dusky native beauty, unique in a cinema full of lightskinned mestizas, guarantees our eyes would remain locked on hers as she stood-- or knelt-- onscreen and spread her arms wide and gazed heavenwards at whatever it was she saw in the sky; the fact that we don't know why she does this or what exactly she sees is what makes the image so powerful. 

Diokno's no Bernal as I suspect he'd be the first to agree; that said he has moves. The scene of Elsa's crisis begins with camera on shattered mirror, suggesting an entire scene having taken place just before the moment proper began. The film's climax has Elsa's believers in chaotic disarray, repeating Elsa's words ("There is no miracle, the miracle is within us!") to the point that the words begin to feel like an unmistakably rhythmic religious chant, the new agnosticism replacing the former fanaticism as easily as swapping a blown-out fuse-- here Diokno does approximate Bernal's kind of ambiguous meta-mythmaking, his imagery beginning to approach the level of Bernal's.

Seeing only four of ten festival films hardly qualifies me as an expert, but Diokno's film stands so tall above the rest I can't help but suspect it is the best, not just one of the better Filipino films I've seen in recent years but one of the best on the subject of fanaticism-- a subject that sadly remains relevant what with the recent cult on Duterte and the reigning cult of Trump. Wonderful film, hands down the best musical of the year (looking at you Wicked), and I'd submit close to a great one if it wasn't for the existence of Bernal and Aunor's inimitable original.