'Merika (Gil Portes, 1984)

Alienated

Gil Portes' 'Merika (1984) opens the same way any ordinary life will usually open--in the morning, in bed. But Mila (Nora Aunor) can't seem to get out of bed; she can't seem to bring herself to touch the icy floor with her feet, or brave the chill air beyond her room. She has to sit there, shivering, her comforter wrapped around her like protective coating.

Portes films the story in frozen weather and I think the decision is deliberate, brilliant even. Jersey City (where much of the picture was shot) can take on the unfriendly look of an anonymous urban population center and at no time is it more anonymous or more unfriendly than during the wintertime. There's plenty of sun but it's a weak sun, a pale sun, with rays that can barely warm the fingers, much less melt all the ice. This is a cold city, cold people, cold country--to even touch someone or glimpse his face you need to free the people from their layers of scarves, mufflers, sweaters and long sleeves before you reach human skin.

Mila is in effect living The American Dream, or at least the Filipino's idea of the American Dream. She's a nurse in a hospital with green card in pocket; she's earning well, she's living comfortably if sparely, and presumably she sends money home to her family, money that I'm sure is much appreciated. When push comes to shove, however, when the 'melodramatic' subplot kicks in (she has a lover named Mon (Bembol Roco) who wants to marry her; turns out he possibly needs to marry her for her green card), it's almost unimportant--a precipitating event, in effect, that only serves to crystallize her decision to go back home.

“Why?” Mon pleads with her. “What can I do to change your mind?” Nothing really--the achievement of Portes' film is to show us the answer without using a line of dialogue, in the endless vista shots, the series of lost, lonely gazes Aunor gives the camera, the constant flow of work/TV/bed/rise/work again, the utter meaninglessness a life lived in America can have. One pursues the Dream, but whose Dream is it really, who decides it's worth pursuing, and who decided that you must be the one to pursue it?

Portes does this subtly, simply, a Yasujiro Ozu chasing nuances of emotion across people's faces but employing Naruse's even more self-effacing camera style (no tatami mat-level shots, here). With Aunor he helps create one of the actress' finest performance, where the answer to Mon's question is really found in the emotions that flit across her luminous eyes, like shadows on a still pond. “I can't tell you why,” Aunor informs Mon; “you can't find out if you don't already know it, if you don't already feel it.” Any Filipino who has left his beloved shores, has spent any time at all in lands alien to his skin and sensibility will know--not so much “home is where the heart is” as it is heart hearkening to home's call. The motherland, the land of one's birth, the land of one's friends, family, childhood, making its irrefutable claim on one's soul.

First published in Businessworld 12.7.09; re-edited on 5.1.25