Topic: Bayaning 3rd World, Rizal, Muro Ami

[commentary]

Hello all!

I'm looking for reviews of the aforementioned films!
Any and all are welcome to chime in their 2 cents on the topic. Another quick question, which movie do you guys think was better, Bayaning 3rd World, or Rizal?  And does anybody know of any plans to have these released on DVD?

Hope to have a good discussion!
Inggat!

[Noel_Vera]

The Many Faces of Jose Rizal By Noel Vera

Jose Rizal Director: Marilou Diaz Abaya Script: Jun Lana, Ricky Lee, Peter Ong Lim Photography: Rody Lacap Cast: Cesar Montano, Jaime Fabregas

Sisa Director & script: Mario O'Hara Cast: Gardo Verzosa, Aya Medel

The Philippines has long been obsessed with Jose Rizal-- writer, poet, artist, intellectual, doctor, educator, martyr.  Two of the earliest silent feature films made in the Philippines dealt with Rizal-"La vida de Jose Rizal" (The Life of Jose Rizal) and "El fusiliamento de Dr. Jose Rizal" (The Execution of Dr. Jose Rizal)-- and Ramon Estella made a three-hour version in 1956: "Buhay at Pag-ibig ni Dr. Jose Rizal" (Life and Loves of Dr. Jose Rizal).  Rizal's two novels, "Noli Me Tangere" and "El Filibusterismo" were adapted twice: the first time in 1915 and 1916 respectively by Edward Gross, the second time in 1961 and 1962 respectively by Gerardo De Leon-- arguably the Philippine cinema's greatest filmmaker.  De Leon also directed "Sisa," a variation on "Noli Me Tangere," which takes the story of one minor character in the novel and expands it to feature-film length (shades of Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guilderstein are Dead").  Lino Brocka made his modern-day version of "Noli" with "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" (You Were Judged and Found Wanting) in 1974.    Rizal seems to inspire both audiences (the two silents and "Tinimbang" were boxoffice hits), and filmmakers ("El Fili" has been described as De Leon's gothic masterpiece, while I consider "Tinimbang" as Brocka's best-ever film).  Now, with 1996 being the centennial of Rizal's death, and 1998 being the centennial of the country's independence from Spanish rule-- an independence to which Rizal contributed no small part-- the local film industry has made not one, not two, but three Rizal films, with one more in post-production at the time of this writing.  

The first-- Tikoy Aguiluz's "Rizal Sa Dapitan" (Rizal in Dapitan)-- has already been discussed in this magazine.  The second-- Marilou Diaz Abaya's "Jose Rizal"-- opened December last year, to widespread acclaim and huge commercial success.  Why not?  It's about Rizal, and at P120 million (US$3,000,000.00), it's the most expensive Filipino film ever made.

"Jose Rizal" is a vast exercise in logistics-- hundreds of extras, dozens of locations, Steadicam rental for over six months.  Diaz-Abaya's most impressive achievement is in marshalling all the elements together into a comprehensive view of Rizal's life-- his university days; his exile in Europe; his writing the two novels; his arrest, trial, and ultimate execution by firing squad.  

If there's a flaw in "Rizal," it's not in the technicals-- photography, costume, and production design are as perfect as three million dollars can make them-- what's basically wrong with the film is its utter conventionality.  There are speculations that events in Rizal's life inspired his novels (not exactly fresh insight), and one scene has a character from his novels urging him to support the revolt against the Spaniards-- but overall, this is Hollywood epic filmmaking at its most tasteful, in the grandly thudding tradition of Richard Attenborough's "Gandhi," or David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago."

It doesn't help matters that action star Cesar Montano is miscast as Jose Rizal. Diaz-Abaya must have had Montano's egotistic persona in mind when she chose him, as a way of emphasizing Rizal's vanity; but after a few witty and regrettably short scenes, nothing much is made of Rizal's egotism-- all we're left with is an action star trying to act like an intellectual.  Better is Jaime Fabregas as the defense lawyer, Luis Taviel; in his own soft-spoken way, Fabregas gives a far subtler performance than Montano.  His defense summation-- understated yet intense, spoken in fluent, effortless Spanish-- upstages Montano's own climactic speech.  

Mario O'Hara's remake of Gerry De Leon's "Sisa" couldn't be a more different film.  Where Diaz-Abaya took six months and three million dollars to shoot, O'Hara did his Rizal film in ten days, for about sixty thousand dollars.  

There's much to dislike about "Sisa."  The sets are basically of the plywood-and-Styrofoam school of production design; the acting-- sex star Gardo Verzosa plays Jose Rizal, sex starlet Aya Medel plays the title role-- is crude, if not a bit embarrassing.  The story is complex and difficult to follow, shifting from past to present to fantasy to supernatural reality, with little preamble and no apologies whatsoever.    

Yet there's something about "Sisa" that's difficult to dismiss.  Sisa, as all Filipinos know, is the madwoman who haunts the margins of Rizal's "Noli Me Tangere."  Dressed in filthy rags, calling out the names of her two lost children, she's the single most memorable character in the novel.  O'Hara believes that memorable characters aren't created so much as they are based on people the writer knew in real life.  Rizal once spoke of a "Miss L., who has the most enchanting eyes."  It's O'Hara conceit (and the crucial difference between his film and Gerry De Leon's) that this "Miss L." was the basis for Rizal's Sisa, and that she was the great love of his life.

In a sense, O'Hara has been remaking "Sisa" all his life.  He not only wrote the screenplay for "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" (Brocka's version of "Noli Me Tangere") he also played Berto the Leper, lover of Koala, the Sisa figure in the film.  O'Hara may have revealed more of his feelings than he intended in "Tinimbang," both in the screenplay and in his acting; his Berto (like his screenplay) is warm and compassionate, infinitely loving and infinitely tender towards the helpless, insane Koala.  From writing a great screenplay for Brocka (and giving, incidentally, a great performance) to writing a great screenplay for his own film must have been an inevitable, all-too-tempting step.  

I've never really liked Rizal as a dramatic character; he's always been too passive, too intellectual a hero for me to believe in.  Except for his execution, he lived a meandering, uneventful life-- hardly ideal stuff for film biographies.  I've never really understood what drove him to write his novels, or believe what he believed.  His family was maltreated, yes, and he saw Spanish injustice firsthand, but that was years ago, when he was a child.  Could there have been someone closer to him-- some woman, perhaps-- whose tragedy drove him to do what he did?

This is "Sisa's" greatest audacity, its innermost ambition-- to explain Rizal in such a way that he comes to vivid life before us.  Everything O'Hara does complements and reinforces this ambition.  He knew he couldn't create the world of 1896 on a two-and-a-half million budget, so he deliberately creates an unrealistic one, out of plywood walls and Styrofoam props.  He knew he couldn't get topnotch actors to play his Rizal and Sisa, so he reconceived them as a pair of crudely intense, emotionally passionate lovers (Verzosa and Medel are nothing if not intense).  O'Hara has reimagined Rizal's life the way Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard reimagined Shakespeare's in John Madden's "Shakespeare in Love"-- as a grand, once-in-a-lifetime love affair.  If you don't buy it, you find yourself hooting helplessly in laughter; if you do buy it, you find yourself believing in Rizal for the first time, as a fully human being.

"Rizal sa Dapitan" was the first, "Jose Rizal" the biggest.  Coming soon is Mike De Leon's "Bayaning Third World" (Third World Hero), which was invited to this year's Cannes.  "Sisa" will probably fall between the cracks opened up by these three works.  It's a film too ambitious for its own good, a project that fails (though fails magnificently) to live up to the promise of its wildly innovative screenplay.  It may end up forgotten in the flood of Rizal films, relegated to the more obscure dustbins of film history...except by those who can respond to its magic, or thrill to its unfettered imagination.  

From Cinemaya magazine, April 99

(Comments?  Mail me at <noelv@i...>)

[Noel_Vera]

This is not a Rizal film

Noel Vera

"Baya ning Third World" (Third World Hero) is Mike De Leon's long-awaited film on  Jose Rizal.  It took over three years to complete, beginning way back in 1 996 with the announcement by GMA Films of a massive, P70 million epic starr ing boy-toy Aga Muhlach as Rizal.  Then Muhlach left, reportedly because De  Leon was taking so long; eventually De Leon himself abandoned the producti on, to announce that he was making his own, independently produced film.    No less than three other Rizal films were initiated and finished while De L eon's picture maturated: Tikoy Aguiluz's "Rizal sa Dapitan (Rizal in Dapita n); Marilou Diaz Abaya's "Jose Rizal" (ironically, the same production GMA  Films intended De Leon to direct, rumored to have an even bigger--P120 mill ion--budget); and Mario O'Hara's "Sisa."  The picture was invited--sight un seen, mind you--to the Director's Fortnight at Cannes International Film Fe stival (which it failed to attend).  There were long periods when no one kn ew what was happening--the project was shrouded in a secrecy as tight and m ysterious, it seemed, as Kubrick's own latest (and last) work, "Eyes Wide S hut."  

I finally saw the finished product last week, and can personal ly testify to the atmosphere of electric anticipation that hovered over the  audience.  Some eighty minutes later, when the film's end credits began to  roll, an image and six words popped into my mind.  The image: Magritte's f amous painting about a pipe, and its enigmatic label.  The six words: "this  is not a Rizal movie."  

Or, it's not a Rizal film any more than Magr itte's pipe is not a pipe.  

The film follows two filmmakers (played b y Ricky Davao and Cris Villanueva) as they attempt to do pre-production res earch on a film on Rizal.  The two get into endless, impassioned debates; t hey propose all sorts of absurdities (Rizal Underarm Spray), and make witty  observations (Rizal on a devalued one-peso coin is still number one).  The y go out and interview people from Rizal's life--his brother Paciano (Joone e Gamboa), his sisters Trining (Rio Locsin) and Narcisa (Cherry Pie Picache ), his mother, Dona Lolay (Daria Ramirez), his (reputed) confessor, Father  Balaguer (a hilariously villainous Ed Rocha), and his (reputed) wife, Josep hine Bracken (Lara Fabregas).  

Their conclusion (people who wish to s tay surprised may want to skip to the next paragraph--though doing so may u ltimately prove pointless) after much hemming and hawing basically boils do wn to this: Rizal's life is unfilmable.  It's the long, shapeless and rathe r inactive life of an intellectual bum (something I concluded myself long a go, when I was involved in writing the screenplay of "Rizal sa Dapitan").   De Leon (with his scriptwriter and co-director, Clodualdo Del Mundo) go so  far as to allow that many interpretations can be made from Rizal's life--ro ughly translated, "to each his own Rizal."  But significantly, the film lac ks certain basic elements of traditional narrative film: there is no dramat ic story, and no recognizable dramatic characters--no one who is changed or  transformed during the course of the film (the two filmmakers, who get sta r billing, are named "filmmakers 1 and 2").  Significantly, the last shot o f the film shows filmmakers 1 and 2 (stand-ins for De Leon and Del Mundo?)  throwing up their hands and walking away from the project.  This is a Rizal  movie about the impossibility of making a Rizal movie.  In short, this is  NOT a Rizal movie!

Possibly the single most brilliant director of the  Philippines (alive or dead) and his closest and best scriptwriter have play ed a joke on the long-expectant--three years in the making, not to mention  the waiting--Philippine public.  And what a joke!  It's long, multi-layered , and elaborate; it's richly allusive--drawing not just on practically ever ything we know about Philippine history and our national hero, but also on  everything Mike De Leon knows (which is considerable) about film and filmma king.  And the punchline works like a time bomb: you may find yourself laug hing your head off hours after seeing the film, or--thinking about it a few  days later-- chuckling irrepressibly.  Or you may find yourself not laughi ng at all--to each his own reaction to the film.  

The film is simply  stuffed with jokes and references.  The film's structure, for example, mode ls itself on Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane:" the first twenty or so minutes i s a fast and funny recapitulation of Rizal's life and significance (a la Ka ne's life, recapitulated in "The March of Time).  Later the interviews begi n, with the different people who knew Kane--I mean, Rizal--bringing up and  debating various issues.  One shot, of a Filipino declaiming in front of a  huge banner, recalls a similar one in Welles' film, where Kane is giving a  speech; several times we catch the filmmakers poring over a huge blow-up of  Rizal's execution, a direct quote from Michaelangelo Antonioni's film "Blo w Up."  De Leon's favorite German Shepherd makes several appearances in the  film--gently mocking Alfred Hitchcock's tendency to make personal appearan ces in his films.  

Other jokes: Cris Villanueva, talking to different  people and concluding that their life's story would make a better film tha n Rizal's.  Father Balaguer's testimony of Rizal's last days in prison, whi ch De Leon mercilessly lampoons in all kinds of subtle ways (having read pa rt of Balaguer's testimony, I can say that De Leon manages to make fun of h im without once exaggerating him).  My personal favorite, however, is the m oment when the filmmakers finally confront Rizal himself (played by Joel To rre): his replies to the filmmakers' questions prevaricate hilariously, as  befits a true student of Jesuits ("What did you do the night before your ex ecution?" "The Spaniards did what they had to do; I did what I had to do").  

Some reservations: despite the astonishingly wide range covered by  this relatively short film, De Leon fails to bring up the matter of money-- the difficulty of funding a Rizal film, or any film for that matter (De Leo n in the years after his GMA debacle should be more than familiar with the  subject).  Lara Fabregas ruins the fascinatingly unreliable character of Jo sephine Bracken (did she marry Rizal, or didn't she?) with a cartoon Englis h accent straight out of Repertory Philippines--I mean, neyewbahdie tahwks  loyk thaht!  And De Leon blunts the sharpened point of his joke with a voic eover statement at the very end of the film--to sit through all that ambiva lence and ambiguity, only to have everything cleared up at the very last se cond!  Del Mundo admits, though, that that final voiceover is still tentati ve, and may be removed during the film's final sound remixing (here's to ho ping they do).

Where does De Leon's film stand in comparison with othe r recent Rizal flicks?  I can't comment regarding "Rizal sa Dapitan" for ob vious reasons; for equally obvious reasons, though, I think "Bayaning Third  World" is a far superior film to the monumental "Jose Rizal."  The first i n its eighty short minutes covers more of Rizal's life than the second does  in three hours, with more clarity and historical accuracy.  It gives prope r--that is, primal--importance to the question of Rizal's retraction, frami ng the issue thus: if Rizal didn't retract, then he stuck to his principles  and died a hero (and a heretic).  If Rizal DID retract and returned to the  Church, then he went against everything he had written and said and died a  coward (or, as I would put it, a recognizably human being).  "Jose Rizal's " implication that Rizal retracted and is still somehow a hero is, as De Le on's film so eloquently points out (without once directly pointing it out),  a complete contradiction in terms.  

I can't quite call De Leon's fi lm superior to O'Hara's "Sisa;" both recognize the difficulty of filming th e life of Rizal, both use diametrically opposite approaches--"Bayaning Thir d World" filling up the gaps with wit and intellectual speculation, "Sisa"  with imagination and heart.  "Bayaning Third World" displays remarkable ing enuity in trying to make what should have been a dry historical debate live ly and involving; "Sisa" displays equally remarkable ingenuity in trying to  make a coherent and even moving historical drama out of an impossibly smal l P2.5 million ($25,000) budget, shot in ten days ("Bayaning Third World,"  though I can't be sure, must cost at least P5 million or more, shot for ove r a year).  Calling one better than the other is probably a matter of taste  (personally--and I think you can see this coming a mile away--I plunk down  in favor of imagination and heart).  Both films, however, should be a matt er of modest pride for all involved: Rizal finally, brilliantly deconstruct ed on film--twice.  This may not be a Rizal film, but it's a remarkable Riz al film nevertheless.

(Comments?  Mail me at <noelv@i...>)

[Noel_Vera]

The official Filipino film of the new millenium

Noel Vera

"Muro-ami" (the word literally means "fishnet") begins with a ship anchored by a coastal village looking for children to hire, while a voiceover narration informs us that the parents are hoping their child will be chosen (which is silly--we see the children being recruited; why the voiceover?).  Parents wave farewell and dab their eyes; the children wave back; the ship swings about, then heads out for the open sea.  

So far so good--we've witnessed a fairly impressive sequence involving hundreds of extras boarding a dilapidated ship.  Granted, none of the children were introduced in any memorable way--they were lined up and loaded like so many Christmas ornaments--but there's still plenty of time (over two hours' worth) left to get to know them.

Next, we're introduced to the ship's captain (Cesar Montano, with shaven pate and aerobicized figure a la Jean Reno in "The Big Blue"); the children call him "Maestro," while his taciturn father (the ever-intense Pen Medina) calls him "Fredo."  Montano lays down the law, "Patton" style, striding back and forth on his makeshift stage with a hundred eyes on him; he even has George C. Scott's squint down pat (thankfully, the idiot smirk that characterized Montano's performance in "Jose Rizal" is largely missing).  He leads the children into one of many diving expeditions, where they use stones to beat on the coral and frighten the fish into waiting nets.  Later, we hear Montano speak of his long-range goal to his father: to catch five hundred "banyeras" (what look like large tin washtubs) full of fish before January 1, 2000.

By the new millenium's dawn, Fredo will have done several things: 1) dived repeatedly for fish, without success; 2) had at least one traumatic flashback; 3) taken a prostitute (played by Amy Austria) for his private, onboard entertainment; 4) nursed his vessel's engine through one of countless breakdowns; 5) lost his ship in the Philippine equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle; 6) tossed one of the children overboard for shark bait; and 7) put down a mutiny staged by his own men.  Before the movie ends, we will have realized three things: 1) the film is long (two hours plus); 2) the underwater photography (by Marissa Floirendo) hauntingly beautiful (with little of the standard-issue "Discovery Channel" look about it); and 3) the story is about practically everything under the sun (or in the water) except the children.  

There are few attempts in the film to characterize or distinguish the kids; few attempts to portray the kind of friendships (or antagonisms) that must have been forged during the months they spent together on that ship.  About halfway through Montano learns that one of the boys is actually a girl--but it's too little too late, and too strange a twist for an already overstuffed storyline (a girl posing "Mulan"-style as a boy--in a "muro-ami" ship no less!--deserves a film of her own).  For most of the movie, the children are props (to be tossed about, slapped down, shouted at), or background filler (for "authenticity"), or are treated the way the puppies were treated in that dim "101 Dalmatians" remake--as a long, weary running gag on the difficulties of child care.  For most of the movie the focus is on Montano: his angst (wife and child were killed in a tsunami), his appetites (physical, sexual, and otherwise), his ultimately inexplicable need to be Y2K compliant (500 "banyeras" by December 31, 1999).  So much of the film's 120-plus minutes running length is spent on him, in fact, that when director Marilou Diaz-Abaya suddenly cuts to a shot of the children in their bunk beds, sick and coughing, we're startled into saying: "oh right--there are kids in this film.  But when did they manage to find the time to catch pneumonia?"

Which is a pity.  The story of the "muro-ami" children is a great one--boys from ten to eighteen years of age, driven to dive repeatedly into the deep, braving freezing-cold water, treacherous currents, and man-eating sharks, all for a fistful of cash.  For some inexplicable reason (star power, producers' prerogative, whatever), the filmmakers decided to tell Montano's story instead--and the potential for doing justice to that greater story is lost.

Fine; so they decided Montano would sell the film better than a bunch of unknown tots.  It's their money, it should properly be their decision (the one thing you might rightly fault them for is the misleading title)--couldn't they, making said decision, at least have told Montano's story properly?  He's given a tragic past like Mad Max in "The Road Warrior;" a rebellious crew like Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty;" a grand obsession like Ahab in "Moby Dick;" and a symbolic festering wound like Raymond Bagatsing's helpless kidnapper in "Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion" (Criminal of Barrio Concepcion).  So much allegorical baggage from so many sources is heaped on Montano's shoulders that it's a miracle he can walk, much less float.  Worse, his character is written into so many contradictory, contortive knots--an egotist who thinks of others; a ruthless captain with a weakness for kids; a manic-obsessive filled with kindness and sensitivity--that he ends up not leaving any impression at all.  This can easily be called ambiguity, but I think there's a recognizable difference between a character that's ambiguous and a character that's just plain confusing.  Montano's Fredo isn't much of anything--he doesn't really abuse the boys (the children merely seem to be attending a fairly demanding diving seminar), and isn't all that ruthless (he saves the child he threw to the sharks, and later tries to save the leader of the mutineers).  The writers (Jun Lana and Ricky Lee) must have tried their level best, but I like to think that they were given such a hopeless mishmash of conflicting orders (make him a tyrant--but not too much) that their hands were ultimately tied.

It doesn't help that Montano is such an uncomplicated actor.  He was totally out of his depth in trying to portray the intellectually intense Rizal; he's equally out of his depth in trying to suggest the first thing this role requires--a mix of Captains Bligh and Ahab and Aguirre, the Wrath of God.  Watch this basically likable action star swagger across the decks Klaus Kinski-style, trying to maintain his macho posture, and you can see he doesn't know the first thing about megalomaniac obsession--how it isn't about being macho, but goes beyond the concept of macho.  It's about fixating on some great white whale of an ideal at the expense of all else, even of one's own life.  

[Noel_Vera]

For the record, I think "Jose Rizal" is Rizal's Greatest Hits album.

"Rizal in Dapitan" is a documentary of one episode in his life.

"Bayaning Third World" pulls him off his pedestal and deconstructs him with intelligence and logic.

"Sisa" pulls him off his pedestal, strips him of his clothes and on top of Sisa, rutting away, all done with passion, imagination and magic.

[weddingsingr]

Hanep sa post ah Noel_Vera.  Kapag hindi pa ba naman nagkaroon ng idea si commentary sa mga post mo eh ewan ko na.

The Muro Ami VCD is on sale the last time I checked.

[commentary]

Thanks Noel, for the in-depth reviews.   And to weddingsingr for the repsonse regarding the VCD.  Anyone else seen any of the films and want to drop in with their opinions?  I'm really curious what movie people perfer between Rizal and Bayaning 3rd World.  There's such a disparity between the two, it intrigues me which of the two the pinoydvd crew prefer.  

--------------------------------------
R.I.P. to the souls of the victims in the U.S.
Our prayers are with you.

[rse]

Bayaning 3rd World.
Witty, unassuming, funny...
I bought the VCD but eagerly awaiting for a DVD release with at least English subtitles so that I can show it to my foreign friends.  The only thing that I don't like is the casting of Lara Fabregas as Josephine Bracken.  Her accent's just so fake...
Aside from that minor complaint, it's the best Filipino movie that I've seen in years.

Rizal, Muro-ami
I was expecting too much...I was highly disappointed.
Boring, boring, boring...Cliche after cliche after cliche.
Marilou Diaz Abaya is way too overrated.  I am yet to see a good movie from her.
Skip these ones, ignore the so called awards they've received.  I'm yet to see Bagong Buwan.  Not really looking forward to seeing it.  How was it, any good??

[Noel_Vera]

"Bagong Buwan:" paper moon

Noel Vera

Marilou Diaz Abaya's "Bagong Buwan" (New Moon) is about the longstanding battle being fought in Mindanao, and particularly about Cesar Montano as a Muslim doctor, called home to his village because his son was killed.  Montano decides the best thing for the community to do is pack up and look for a refugee camp, which they do; along the way, they pick up a Christian boy whose companions died in a raid, and promise to take him back to his parents.

This is Filipino filmmaking at its most earnest, and if sincerity and nobility of purpose were enough to make a film great, this would be a great film; they aren't, and this, unfortunately, isn't.

The film would like you to think it's informing you on the issues involved in Mindanao (which, incidentally, was the film's original title).  Well and good, if you happened to have lived in a cave all your life, but anyone else within sighting distance of a newspaper, or hearing distance of a television or radio set would already know that things aren't going well in that troubled isle.  The word "Mindanao" has long been synonymous with political turmoil, insurgency, and military violence for so long that scabs have grown over the wounds first inflicted in that war; instead of pained interest, we tend to respond to news from that region with cynicism and apathy. More than a primer on Mindanao politics, we need a way of breaking through the apathy, of tearing away the scabs so that the wounds bleed afresh. What's needed is a way of making us care again about an old and apparently incurable issue, by the simple means of using imagination and storytelling skills.

The film would like you to think it's introducing you to Muslim culture but it isn't, not really; it's introducing you to a politically correct way of viewing Muslim culture.  It's a whitewashed view, much as Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves" was a whitewashed view of American Indian culture, presenting an alien people as essentially colorful and harmless folks--just like you and me, only wearing bandanas and veils.  Muslim culture is much more complex than that, their faith as flawed and as complexly wrought as our own Catholicism.  True understanding only comes with complete understanding--with seeing them in the round, virtues and vices intact.

The film would like you to think that it's well made, and it is, up to a certain point--the sound is crisp and clear, the photography and production design excellent.  They even have a real tank, and a real helicopter (which refused, unfortunately, to land or come close to the camera).  More important than these, however (all of which can be achieved with mere money--possibly thirty million pesos' worth), is the filmmaking talent to do battle scenes.  Director Marilou Diaz-Abaya is a talented filmmaker overall, but her war sequences are wretchedly shot and staged--a serious weakness, I think, especially in a war movie.  

To be fair, Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal are two of the Philippines' greatest filmmakers, and I don't think they could direct war sequences worth a damn, either.

Finally, the film would like you to think that it is new and unique when it isn't--another film made recently that also showed the ravages of war on innocent civilians was Mario O'Hara's "Pangarap ng Puso" (Demons 2000) set in the Negros islands.  "Pangarap" does everything "Bagong Buwan" fails to do.  It uses imagination (a combination of magic realism and poetry) and old-fashioned storytelling (a moving love story) to make its audience care about the issues; it looks at its characters "in the round," with their flaws and virtues inextricably linked; and it is a piece of well-done filmmaking (in terms of skill, not size of budget).  It did all this earlier, and it did it all for a mere 3 million pesos.

("Pangarap," incidentally, did a nice little tour of the international film festival circuit, having gone to the Singapore Festival, the Hong Kong Festival, the Vancouver Festival, New Delhi's Cinefan Festival (where it won the NETPAC award), London's Regus Festival, Cahiers du Cinema's "Festival d'Automne," the Goteborg Festival, the prestigious Rotterdam Festival, the Frankfurt Festival, the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival, and just recently, the Jeonju Festival.  Sometimes little films do manage to go places, where bigger ones sink in mud)

[keating]

The dvds are out already in the market except that Bayaning 3rd World and Muro Ami are in barebone edition.

[RitchieNolasco]

AstroPlus is selling Jose Rizal DVD, released by GMA Films, for P425. Is it worth it?

[Noel_Vera]

I don't think so.