What is Cinema?

Last month's QCinema International Film Festival (Oct. 13-22) gave me the wonderful opportunity to watch 22 contemporary foreign-language films. Two of these films allowed us to see things from a new and different perspective, which, I believe, should be one of the main goals of cinema. You can picture the scenario: You enter the movie-house with a dim or clouded view (literally and figuratively), but after a few hours of watching the film you come out of the theater fully enlightened. That's the ideal scenario. This is actually no different from when you start reading a truly good book. The first film is " José " (2018, Guatemala), written and directed by the Chinese-born and then USA-immigrant Li Cheng. The film concerns a 19-year-old boy (the title-character) working as an eatery server who engages in an affair with an immigrant construction worker named Luis. In the ordinary, struggling life that he lives in the city of Guatemala together with his deeply-religi...

You sense that something strange is going on in " Bacurau " (2019, Brazil) when, in one startling scene, a teacher is unable to point to his students the location of the titular fictional sun-scorched town on a map, suggesting that it might have already "disappeared" from the face of the Earth. Subsequent turn of events reinforce the fact that this is actually close to happening (already portended in the opening scene), as a group of well-off foreigners (mostly Americans) is in town for some nasty business: to hunt down and kill live people just for the kick of it. For these privileged sickos, there is no better place to serve as a hunting ground than the God-forsaken Bacurau. The third narrative feature of Brazilian auteur Kleber Mendonça-Filho, this time co-directing with frequent production designer Juliano Dornelles, might be their most accessible work yet, but has to be considered their best. Much like Nadav Lapid's " Synonymes ", "Bacurau...

(Note: The recently-concluded QCinema International Film Festival (Oct. 13-22) boasted a truly marvelous line-up of international films. Of those, I was able to watch 22 films in a span of 8 days. " Synonymes ", fortunately, was one of those films.) There is a scene in "Synonymes" (Synonyms, 2019, France/Israel), the third feature film of Israeli auteur Nadav Lapid, where the Israeli-born but French-wannabe Yoav, in close-up while directly looking at the camera, recites a litany of negative adjectives directed against his native country, in which he finds more than one reason to denounce it. His recently-met companion Emile, a natural-born French, chides him that it is a lot of words to describe his country, so that he only has to choose one. If the scene sounds kooky, it's because it is. In fact, we might just as well describe the entire film as such. Maddening and enlightening in equal measure, "Synonymes" is most likely unlike any other film th...

It is interesting to note that 2 of the 10 Filipino films in competition in this year's Cinemalaya (though I was only able to see 8) featured boys in their early teens who are about to come of age for very different reasons and under very different circumstances. I am referring to Thop Nazareno's " Edward " and Arden Rod Condez' " John Denver Trending ", both of which eventually won the festival's top two prizes: Special Jury Prize and Best Film, respectively. "Edward" is most of the time set in a government-run hospital, as the title-character (who's around 13 or 14) looks after his ailing father who's been confined there for weeks already while waiting for the laboratory test result to determine his actual sickness. Well, it's not even fair to say that Edward is "looking after" his father, because the boy prefers to horse around the hospital with his best buddy (who also has a family member confined there), whethe...

Throughout his tragically brief career in Hollywood, James Dean was able to act as a major star in all but three films. Had his life not been cut short by a car accident, he would most probably have made the angst-ridden youth as the signature character for the majority of his career. Such a character would define an entire generation and make a mark on a specific period of film history. The character first made his potent impression in the family drama " East of Eden " (1955, USA), directed by Elia Kazan (who shot the film in glorious CinemaScope) and based on the second part of John Steinbeck's epic novel. Even if one is still yet to read the novel, the film's biblical overtones can't be mistaken for any other. That is to say, the Cain and Abel theme. That Old Testament story couldn't be more grim and tragic: In the biblical context, we encounter here the first-ever familial discord and the first-ever act of murder that sprang from it, all happening to th...

David Lean's war drama " The Bridge on the River Kwai " (1957, UK/USA) is turning 62 this year (I can just probably dream that I'd get the chance to watch the film, shot in CinemaScope, on the big screen). If given a casual glance, one might think that the film indeed possesses all the qualities of being an "Oscar bait", which made it such a big winner at the Academy Award ceremonies at that time. It's set during wartime, has A-list actors, has big themes - and British (or directed by a British director and topbilled by a British actor). It's your classic epic, so to speak (and the director himself was known for helming epic movies). But then, setting aside all the accolades that the film has garnered and the stature it has gained in the history of cinema, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is in itself one of the greatest films of all time, a truly remarkable masterpiece. What makes it even more so is how, in spite (or perhaps because) of i...

In the midst of a wave of Filipino romantic comedies or horror movies that engulf our local theaters, Brillante Ma Mendoza consistently and diligently serves us a social-realist fare every now and then. " Alpha: The Right to Kill " (2018) is his latest film along such mold. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the San Sebastian film festival, it can perhaps be said that "Alpha" is what happens beyond " Ma' Rosa ", released two years earlier and penned by the same writer, Troy Espiritu. In that film, we have the title-character, a wife and mother living in a slum area in Mandaluyong, who uses her sari-sari store as a front to sell shabu to users. Unfortunately, the law enforcement officers close in on them, who, corrupt as they are, see in the situation an opportunity to squeeze money out of the woman and her family. The film doesn't pretend to offer a solution to the social malady. Rather, it adopts a fatalist outlook: that the broken system is...