Cinema as viewed from the couch

So far, there are still no major film festivals happening in town, which would make devoted cineastes up and running. Thus, aside from the occasional visits to moviehouses, this film urchin spends most of his movietime as a couch potato, surfing among various cable movie channels in hopes of being able to chance upon some film gems or, at least, those that are worthy of note (whether homegrown or international). The effort was not entirely in futile. 

On Cinema One (channel 56, Sky):Jerrold Tarog's "Confessional" (2008)

It is just as astonishing if a filmmaker is able to tell a whole lot of meaningful things in such a short span of time. It is simply a testament to the director's prodigious skill as a storyteller. Jerrold Tarog is one such filmmaker, as displayed in "Confessional", shown on Cinema One channel a couple of Sundays ago. The film is the first installment in his "Camera" trilogy, the last of which, "Sana Dati" (the first that I saw), was shown in last year's Cinemalaya and was a major award winner in the said event. And just like the former, the latter film was a marvelous exercise in economic breadth and depth. It is like with each viewing, there is a hidden treasure that is waiting to be mined anew (though up till now, I've seen "Sana Dati" just once). Whereas the latter film used the romantic drama genre to deliver heartfelt and poignant musings on love, longing, loss, heartache, guilt, starting over and moving on - essentially, a philosophy and poetry of the human heart - as "recorded" on camera by the wedding videographer, the former film utilized a mockumentary approach with a slapdash of the suspense-thriller genre to convey telling and intriguing notions in regards the nature of truth and lies, fact and fiction, what one is willing to show and hide from the camera, and the filmmaker's responsibility and objectivity in finding the truth. All of these, within a mere an hour-and-a-half running time! "Confessional" even goes further to pose the question of when confronted head-on with the truth itself, how prepared are we to handle it. Are we even willing to confront it? Ryan Pastor, the film's documentarist, has such a steadfastly neat aim of making a by-the-numbers report on Cebu's annual Sinulog Festival that when unwittingly confronted by an ex-politician, Lito Caliso (one of his interviewees - and not even an original choice!), who is all-too-willing to confess in front of the camera all of his past crimes and misdemeanors when he was still in power (though through his bearing, one can assume that he still has some "clout"), he just seems to regard it as too good to be true. The former mayor somewhat takes on the character of Ivan Karamazov's Devil, someone who is about to transport firsthand the clueless filmmaker through the dark depths of human nature. Yet, when the truth seems to offer itself readily right in front of him, he is just as ready to abandon it there and then, unconsciously upholding the Surrealists' canon of "finding and leaving the truth". "Confessional" is a film that manages to provoke without blatantly assaulting us in an instant. Rather, everything in the film - the direction, the screenplay, the editing, the performances - gradually piles things up together until the defining moment comes where it is already necessary to hit us hard. 

On HBO (channel 54, Sky):Peter Jackson's "King Kong" (2005)

Who could have imagined that it's been nine years already since Peter Jackson's "King Kong" (shown on HBO last Monday night) stormed our local theaters. During that time, Jackson was still fresh from the monumental success of his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and this was his "first" non-Middle Earth film after the trilogy. Being accused of blasphemy notwithstanding, I enjoyed more Jackson's take on Hollywood's most iconic giant beast than his epic trilogy. In fact, this was the time when I once again truly enjoyed a Jackson film after he ventured into Hollywood, the kind of fun I felt with his homegrown splatter fests "Braindead" and "Bad Taste". There were no plot convolutions, literary jingoisms, and divine and ethereal characters here;the viewers were in for just one hell of a thrill ride. The script may feel awfully bloated, but we have to credit the guy for his grand sense of adventure and painstaking attention to details. Of course, if it's Peter Jackson, we know that everything is going to be fantastic and grandiose. And "King Kong" has loads of it - all in one package! The look and feel of 1930s New York is deliciously incredible. And I don't know if it was just me, but it feels like Jackson was rummaging through previous epic Hollywood blockbusters like "Jurassic Park" and "Titanic", H.G. Wells and Lewis Carroll, and the obscure romance "Ice Castles". Once the characters set their foot on Skull Island, there is just no let-up of one breathtaking set-piece after another. And it never feels tiring! "King Kong" is admittedly long at three hours, but it never once felt dull. It could just be the fastest 180 minutes of one's cinematic life! What's even delightful to find out is that the film is a kind of love letter as well to the craft of filmmaking. And do we even need to mention that, albeit CGI, Jackson managed to "humanize" the giant beast, even went on to declare in the end (through the movie director character of Jack Black) that "it was the beauty who killed the beast". Sad. 

The filmmaker getting face-to-face with truth in "Confessional"