JASON PAUL Laxamana’s Magkakabaung is a film about coffins and the men who make them. The film, however, is not about death but about the lives of those who confront death in the most physical sense of it. Death in the sense of rotting flesh, of the stink that comes from bodies left unembalmed, from men and women who traffic dead bodies in the name of science and education, all for money. It is about fathers who love their daughters more than their mothers, and mothers who care about daughters after they have died.
The devil, they say, is in the details. Well, in the case of Laxamana’s latest film, there are details that bedevil us and make us think how this parable about death is really about plots of lives going topsy-turvy. Add to the twists of destiny the facts about police and funeral parlors and the justice system in a small community, and you have the recipe of loss, resignation and the ordinariness of our physical life.
This time the story is the winner, the screenplay written by Ferdinand Lapuz and the director himself, Laxamana, a smooth weaving of personal biography and poverty against the backdrop of empty landscapes, and rivers and ponds that seem to have lives of their own,
For me to lay out the story is to reveal spoilers and spoilers that are apt to ruin the allure of this film
The film is not a whodunit; there are no murder victims here. Strangely enough, there are many killers and two of them would admit to the crime, which is not really a crime but a guilt.
At the cusp of the narrative is an event that leads to another event. Again, the narrative is not built on a cause-and-effect; one event brings upon another direction in the storytelling. The death of a person allows us inside a small hospital. Everything is clinical, including the announcement of a death to the bereaved one. In the tradition of cinema verite, the passing of a patient is not the only one covered by the camera but the breakup of a nurse with her boyfriend, the crass indolence of a janitor, and the usual case of a cash-strapped father unable to bring out the corpse of a beloved from the morgue.
Magkakabaung is a wonderful parable of how the twists and turns in our life seems to be bereft of logic. And yet, when one examines the endpoint of a comic or a tragic tale, one finds the forces of the universe. The case of the coffinmaker is a special one; the universe was listening when he refused to be seduced by money. Poetic justice comes to him in one fell swoop. He finds the strength to drive away his young girlfriend who loves him for the prepaid load he gives her regularly; he is able to confront the mother of his daughter who has always blamed him for the misfortune of their love between each other, and he is able to honor his daughter in the manner that his profession as a coffinmaker will allow him to do.
Gladys Reyes is a surprise in this film. As the real mother of the coffinmaker’s daughter, Reyes’s portrayal of an ordinary role—that of a wife with newfound prosperity—is positively sterling. Watch her as she is informed that the father of the daughter she has kept secret is now at the gate. Watch her even more as she opens the gate, hears of the bad news and closes the green gate with the determination of one who does not want her secret known by her kumares. Then catch her irrelevant with her umbrella as she confronts her ex-boyfriend, and look at her as she retreats, her sadness barely visible under the searing sun.
Allen Dizon as the maker of coffins makes for us perhaps one of the most unforgettable ordinary roles in indie cinema history. His voice barely rises as he keeps his emotions close to his heart. Each day, he wakes up his daughter for breakfast; each night he tucks her to bed in a hut that, to borrow a worn-out phrase, is a sorry excuse for a home. And yet it is a home for him and his daughter. No loving words come out of this father’s mouth but his gentle ways before his daughter speak volumes. Dizon’s character is not a simple song but a complex concerto that eases to an ending that is pure bravura.
From Astro Mayabang to Babagwa and, now, Magkakabaung, Laxamana has always displayed an original touch. The irony is there in all of his works, but in Magkakabaung, that irony is dripping with sentiment and sentient emotions, and poetry. The landscape in this film moves from white sun-drenched lahar ground to ponds that seem to go nowhere. At the opening, a girl lies sweet and soft in an open coffin, her face turned up to the sky. A group of men are doing their finishing touches on a row of coffin. Later, the young girl rises from her sleep and is scolded by her father for staying under the sun. At the end, the girl is once more there onscreen. She is tucked to deep sleep by her father who loves her more than her mother.
Somewhere a funeral deal gets busted. The owner is hauled to prison as the policeman reads him the Miranda in the most hilarious way, bungling nouns and adjectives. We laugh at this point. Death can be humorous in this land as the making of coffin is just a job and, as they say, “walang personalan.”
Laxamana, however, has made a personal statement without placards and speeches about how even if we make fools of ourselves with life, we can always be noble as we arrange things in death.