Eskapo begins with video footage of the days just before Martial Law: eerie,
washed-out images of marching demonstrators and riot police. I've
always thought that in this cybernetic age our memories would appear
as if shot by videocam and with the first few minutes of his film,
director Chito Rono seems to suggest this--the First Quarter Storm as
a collective nightmare, witnessed through the unblinking eye of
television. It's a terrific beginning that sets an ominous tone for
everything that follows.
What follows is a '70s party in full swing. Rono glides his camera into the middle of the action, and the result, intentional or not, is a sort of visual comedy a la Pedro Almadovar. If intentional, it's brilliant: Rono rubs our noses into the decadence of the period, reminding us pitilessly of how embarrassing we looked. Those clashing colors! Those teased wigs! Those floor-sweeping pants!
Primed
for some sharp social comedy, we are instead given straight drama.
Serge Osmena (Richard Gomez) and Geny Lopez (Christopher de Leon) are
portrayed as loving family men and sober, if idle, scions of
Philippine society. It would have helped the early part of the film
if the two men were more sharply particularized: a sense of humor
(some Marcos jokes?), a human flaw or two.
The
movie regains its bearings when the military arrests Serge and Geny.
The step-by-step procedure by which they descend into the maws of
Martial Law, from invitation to interrogation to incarceration, are
clearly and harrowingly set out. Locking Serge in a dentist's office
is a nicely chilling touch; we still haven't forgotten Marathon
Man. Same with having Geny lie down on an X-ray table; the
silent machinery, the calibration marks on the table that measure
Geny's splayed-out body, nicely underline his vulnerability.
Under
the pressure of arrest and later imprisonment, we come to know the
two men. As written, Serge Osmena is strictly one-note; soon as he is
captured, all he does is think of escape. Richard Gomez can do little
with Serge; his main contribution to the character is refusing to
imitate the real Serge's pomaded hairstyle, opting for his trademark
blowdried look. Gomez does have one good scene, when he is introduced
into a room full of blindfolded men. All those still, standing
figures, with black cloth across their eyes make for an arresting
image; you can understand their terrified silence. But after a while,
Serge sees through the idiocy of putting prisoners all in one room
and simply ordering them not to talk--his taking off his blindfold
and urging the rest to do the same is a triumph of common sense.
Serge
is so single-minded and determined that it's a wonder that it took
him five years to escape. You wish he got out earlier because his
presence quickly gets tiresome. Which is not the case for Christopher
De Leon's Geny Lopez; he is such a still, held-in presence that he
implodes onscreen. You watch the pressure pile up on Geny as he
realizes, year after year, that he's not getting out. In the
penultimate confrontation with Serge, who accuses him of
faint-heartedness, he replies that Serge only has to think of
himself: his family is safe in the US. Geny has fears and concerns
outside of his own predicament, and they paralyze him against taking
any form of action; the film's high point happens when he is finally
forced to face the fact that the only way out is escape. De Leon
brings us so deep inside his character that the simple act of praying
the rosary becomes a touching sign of endurance.
Mention
must be made of Joel Torre, who puts in a brief but vivid sketch of a
political prisoner who shows Geny and Serge the way out. Even
shorter, and even more memorable is Teresa Loyzaga as a marvelously
mad Imelda Marcos. In the scene where Geny attends his father's
funeral, she floats in and mouths incredibly tactless words of
comfort into Geny's ears; then for a truly insane climax, Rono
achieves a godlike aerial shot that looks down on her as she scatters
rose petals on the coffin. Some have criticized this scene as
inaccurate; in actuality, she threw petals at the gravesite. But even
if it isn't true, it's such a great scene that it ought to be true;
it would be just like her to do something like that.
The
escape itself is all the more thrilling because Serge and Geny do not
use the action-flick standard-issue automatic rifles with M-203
grenade launchers to blast their way out: they know that an escape
takes planning, patience, and not a bit of luck. And when something
goes wrong, as it does more than once, it also takes the brass balls
to go ahead anyway and to hell with the consequences. They do get
shot at by pursuing military, but the scene is a brief lapse into
conventionality on Rono's part. Especially striking is his use of
crane shots to follow the duo's progress through the cogon: from the
elevated view, Geny and Serge look like mice running the maze of the
Marcos dictatorship.
People
have questioned more than just the funeral scene; it's been said, for
one, that Marcos simply let the two go. Others have questioned the
making of the film itself: why this story, among so many, and far
more dramatic, others? Why now, with the coming elections?
Why
not? Election bid or self-serving propaganda, Eskapo is
so entertainingly well made that it leaps clear out of the usual pack
of dogs that call themselves Filipino films. In terms of
intelligence, visual style, and acting, it deserves to escape with the
title "Filipino Film of the Year."
First appeared in The Manila
Chronicle, 1/31/95
Published in Critic After Dark: A Review of Philippine Cinema
Published in Critic After Dark: A Review of Philippine Cinema
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