Pamilyang Ordinaryo (Ordinary People, Eduardo W. Roy Jr., 2016)

Brocka's children

Eduardo W. Roy Jr.'s Pamilyang Ordinaryo (Ordinary People 2016, now streaming on Netflix with English subtitles) is one of the many and arguably one of the best recent films to continue the brand of social realism Lino Brocka helped initiate in Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975)--if anything, raises the ante on challenges facing the eponymous couple. Aries (Ronwaldo Martin) and Jane (Hasmine Kilip) aren't just homeless they're homeless teens, aren't just homeless teens but married homeless teens with a month-old child named Arjan (a portmanteau of both their names) dependent on their constant hustling pursesnatching shoplifting for bare minimum sustenance.

Roy uses a largely handheld camera to capture 2016 Metro Manila and his findings can be summarized in that classic US Marine acronym: SNAFU ("Situation Normal: All Fucked Up"). Julio Madiaga in Brocka's masterpiece struggled to live on the margins of this vast metropolitan sprawl, and while Aries and Jane are younger and more agile they face the same intimidating problems with (if anything) an even lower level of education.

On occasion Roy cuts to a surveillance camera (simply locked-down camera footage in black-and-white, with a time signature running on the upper right corner) and we're given the urban digital equivalent of the Godlike point-of-view: the single eye looking down, dispassionately recording every passing moment. Roy often uses this shot as chilling testimony to the couple's various crimes, at one point generating considerable suspense (Jane walking past her marks as they talk on a street corner--will she give up? Snatch that purse? Approach them and beg for help?).

Early in the film a plot twist--and suddenly the challenges Aries and Jane face becomes that much more challenging, perhaps impossible to meet. Along the way Roy touches on the different strata of society--the business owners who look on these two not just with indifference but hostility, and not without cause (Are they going to buy something? Steal something? Wreak havoc?); the police officers who take the opportunity to inflict some sleazy sexual harassment (To Jane: "How old were you when you were first fucked? Did you enjoy it?"); the men and women who play on youthful gullibility ("Don't you need a loan? You don't have to pay me back just yet."). 

At one point we meet Jane's mother (flintily played by Maria Isabel Lopez) and looking at her bitter exhausted face you understand why Jane would take to the streets ("Fuck this life," the elder woman mutters, neatly summing up everyone's feelings to date). 

As for the upper class--they don't even bother showing up for the film, they just have their domestic servants represent them instead. 

Some issues: Moira Lee plays Ertha, one of the few adults who pays any attention to these indigent youths and instead of chiding the film for showing a transgendered actor playing a negative role I'd rather say she's proving transgendered actors can play any role, negative or positive (she's very good for the record, wheedling encouraging charming annoying all at the same time). 

Samples of public media responses to the couple's plight raises a valid question: isn't baby Arjan better off with a more materially wealthy couple? Jane brushes the arguments aside with more vehemence than reason; at one point she's asked if she can recognize her babe and she says without hesitation "Of course. I would recognize my child immediately. I'd know my own blood." There are things, Jane insists, that no training or preparation can teach a mother, just as there are things a mother gives a child that no caretaker no matter how wealthy can easily substitute.

That's Jane's assertion and to Hasmine Kilip's credit she presents them directly, with total conviction. That she's easily fooled actually helps her case--she may be intimidated or turned on her head but she never tells a deliberate falsehood; she says exactly what she means, 100 percent. You stare at her face and for at least a passing moment maybe longer you can't help but be sold, however mildly or partially, on the truth of her words.  

Roy to his credit doesn't explicitly speak up for or against Jane, just allows her to speak (she does make a strong case). One feels ambivalent at the prospect of this couple finding their child--and then what? Go back to their hardscrabble life? Raise the baby to become yet another homeless teen? 

Roy provides no clear solutions but the questions remain troubling. He does maintain the intensity to the point that when Jane does score big the moment feels more tragic than triumphant--that it has taken this, an enormous unlikely stroke of luck, to move them forward only so much, and even this near-impossible good fortune will be wasted on an unreliable source of help. Because they have no one else to turn to. Because they have no choice.

A quick google survey shows improving figures on poverty incidence in the Philippines: 16.6% in 2018, down from 23.3% in 2015. That said the numbers remain staggering: 17.6 million Filipinos who don't earn or possess the P2,145 (around $43) necessary to survive for a year. Of those 4.5 million are homeless, with 3 million sleeping on sidewalks in Metro Manila alone, and some 200,000 teenagers becoming pregnant in 2017. 

Of course given the information-gathering resources and techniques in the Philippines these figures are likely outdated. I wouldn't argue that the figures are overstated however; if anything they're probably understated, as few of these surveys explicitly factor in the effect of Duterte's campaign on illegal drugs (estimated 30,000 dead and counting), and none of them even begin to consider the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic and its resulting lockdowns.

The point? Things are bad, not exactly getting worse, but we have a long way to go before we can deal effectively with kids like Aries and Jane (Roy at one point has the pair lying on a tin roof sniffing glue, and you think "How long would they survive in Duterte's drug war? And why does he target them instead of the upper-level criminals supplying the drugs in that war?"). Roy however is no nihilist--despite everything, Aries and Jane somehow manage to hang on to their humanity. If they lose everything else they at least have that, which isn't saying much but is saying something. 

The film ends with Aries and Jane on a bus, the image reminding us of the last shot of The Graduate--the two lovers having broken free of society's clutches, together but facing an uncertain future. I'm not a fan of Nichols' outwardly cynical inwardly sentimental movie; this is that last shot done right, the two (married this time or so they say) facing an even more desperate more uncertain future. 

First published in Businessworld 7.17.20