Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, Mario O'Hara, 1976)

A Love Story

Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God) starts on an ominous note: artillery and fire; corpses swept up by waves onto a beach; war and destruction. A narrator tells us that the three years during the Second World War when the Japanese occupied the country were "three years when there was no God."

Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964)

Looking at The Fall of the Roman Empire again recently, and it really grates on me how blatantly Ridley Scott's Gladiator rips this film off--from to the menacing feel of the Northern forests (the trees look like hostile giants ready to fall upon the Roman army) in the film's first hour, to the suggestion of incestuous feelings between Commodus and his sister (a lingering caress of the face), to the one-on-one showdown between Commodus and his former general Livius.

What rankles even more is that Ridley Scott doesn't improve on what he stole; Gladiator is essentially a dumb-down, druggy, digitally dolled-up remake. Joaquin Phoenix is not Christopher Plummer (who would be hideously miscast a year after as Captain Von Trapp in the (as Plummer himself put it) boxoffice smash The Sound of Mucus); Russell Crowe is not Stephen Boyd (who replaced Charlten Heston (Fall was to be Chuck and Mann's follow-up epic after the successful El Cid) but who, judging from their work together in Ben Hur, was a finer, slyer actor than Clueless Chuck could ever be); and in no way can I imagine Connie Nielsen as being anywhere near as desirable as Sophia Loren (who in this picture shows everything she owed to pasta, thank you very much).

And Ridley Scott is no Anthony Mann. Livius and Commodus are complex, driven men who grapple not just with each other but with various principles of politics and economics. Mann shows the realpolitik struggles that go on in these circles, and it's as taxing as any physical battle.

The battles themselves are spectacular--a million digital puppets simply can't compare to a few thousand extras running around in full Roman armor, a largely virtual coliseum isn't half as impressive as a full-scale fully constructed Roman forum (said to be the largest outdoor set ever built).

Well,maybe it's not all that simple--as Kristin Thompson's excellent review of Shilo T. McClean's book suggests, the fault may not be in digital effects, per se, but in the director's (Scott's) inability to serve up a story compelling enough to take our eye off the effects (hence our need to nitpick 'em to death). Not just script and acting, but a film style able to subordinate the effects to the storytelling, not allow them to call attention to themselves as mere objects of spectacle.

Commodus' showdown with Livius is excitingly staged and coherently shot and edited--no shaky camera shit or chop-suey editing for Mann, thank you (that he does it in aforementioned huge outdoor set--which would pose serious competition for the audience's attention--makes the accomplishment all the more impressive), plus I can't help but think Zhang Yimou borrowed the 'wall of shields' in this duel for his Curse of the Golden Flower. And this Commodus doesn't cheat (as in stabbing his rival before the contest); he waits until he's been fatally wounded by Livius, and then gives out treacherous orders. That's villainy with a dash of honor (not much, just enough to make the mixture intriguing) for you.

And to think Gladiator won the Oscar horse race for best picture. What bullshit.

Apocalypto (Mel Gibson, 2006)

Excerpt:

I hope there isn't anyone out there who still clings desperately to the belief that The Passion of the Christ isn't a hate-filled, anti-Jewish snuff movie. Despite the evidence--Gibson basing his script not on the Bible (as he claims) but on the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich (allegedly Emmerich's--there's a possibility that German poet Clemens Brentano forged them), who at one point confidently wrote that Jews fed on the blood of Christian babies; despite his portraying Jews as sinister, avaricious, bloodthirsty (True, Christ, his mother, and Simon are exceptions, but in Gibson's mind, they aren't Jews--they're really early Christians)--the few cries of protest were drowned out by the hysterical wave of love shown the picture in Manila.

And then the drunk-driving incident. Oh my, how inconvenient--in vino veritas, and all that. Fanatical viewers may refuse to remove the redwood log jammed in their eyes, but the photo of Gibson grinning drunkenly from his arrest photo seems to have taken most of the wind out of their enthusiasm.

Andrew Leavold, Trash Video

Dear Mr Vera,

I hope this email finds you busy as ever and in good health.

My name is Andrew Leavold, I'm a filmmaker and writer based here in Brisbane, Australia. I'm also a huge fan of Filipino cinema, and devoured your book Critic After Dark on the plane to Manila (it was a lifesaver!).

I have just completed a Manila Tour Diary of my research trip and documentary shoot to the Philippines last November. It's a monster (at 10,000 words, one of the longest articles I've ever written), but doesn't even start to include the interview material I collected. I'm thinking of sending it to a publisher as a proposal for a much longer book. Of course, that means coming back to Manila in February to do research for Part 2...

Please let me know what you think about the sample treatment - I really value your opinion.

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006), further discussions

The link I provide above leads to a post on Quiet Bubble on Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men. Aside from quoting extensively my post (which is not a little flattering, I can tell you), it does provide Matt Zoller Seitz's interesting response, and my response to said response. I wish the discussion didn't end there, but it did go further than I ever imagined it might.

The film hasn't opened in Manila yet, which gives me a chance to develop my thoughts on the film a little bit more, hopefully.

Babel (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2006)

Excerpt:

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel" (2006) is excellently directed, I think; what I'm not sure of, even when the end credits have started rolling, is exactly what it's directed at.

Is Inarritu trying to make some kind of statement about communication--the more connected we are, the more isolated we've become? I thought Kurosawa Kiyoshi in "Kairo" (Pulse, 2001), for one, has delved into that issue on a far more metaphysically and metaphorically imaginative level. Was he trying to show us the impact the United States and its citizens have on other countries--how an incident involving two American tourists can create a firestorm of social and political turmoil on one hand, and how a vast American construct (its fenced and guarded southern border with Mexico) can dash the hopes and dreams of a humble illegal immigrant on the other? If so, what's the Japanese storyline for? A tenuous link is proposed, but it's a laughably farfetched one: you come away with the somber if headscratching moral: "guns do not good presents make."

Todo Todo Teros (John Torres, 2006)

The spy who loved me

John Torres' Todo, Todo, Teros is, simply put, a lovely film. Part video collage of found footage, glued together with bits of poetry (by Joel Toledo, who co-wrote the screenplay with Torres); part espionage drama; part documentary look on the Manila of today (the sights, sounds, feel of it, the excitement, energy, jacked-up paranoia); part meditation on relationships and the impact one has on others, the film is by turns funny, disturbing, tender, erotic.