AT the end of Taklub, the Brillante Mendoza film, I kept wondering why I did not get a sense of sadness or despair or joy.
There is nothing wrong with the film but there is an absence that was more palpable than the presences—the characters, the landscape and the pervasive dreary, bleak air.
I wanted to be moved by the film, which explores life after the destruction of Supertyphoon Yolanda. Perhaps, that was the problematic situation I placed myself in. In Thy Womb, Mendoza’s acclaimed 2012 film, there was no problem about the story touching the audience. Mendoza crafted a world of the Badjao that was more truthful and had more candor than any previous attempt to capture this group of people on film. The power of Thy Womb is that the director’s camera was more focused, more dedicated to a simple, quiet story.
The silences in the film did not stop the filmmaker to allow the scenarios and the actors to grow before us until they have bigger than life-size. This is the sort of transformation that makes films great, and urges us to rethink about the avowed power of cinema.
It is, of course, not morally proper to celebrate destruction, especially if one had not been there at the center of the storm. But art, more than our moralizing and grieving, has the function to rewind time and allow us to see once more what indeed happened on that day. Yolanda has such a lyrical sound to it and when one appends that music in that name to an event of discord, then one has to grapple with memory—and with art.
How to depict a land that is reduced to ruin and mud and ash? How to tell the story of the lives of people who did not have any wealth except each other?
Mendoza has been through this path already, and his sharp aversion to melodrama pushes him to slash and burn through the horizon. Violence becomes poetry in his hands. In Taklub, he decides to be prosaic about it. This may be the reason I could not be moved by the scenes. This is not saying that there are no good scenes in the film. There are but, far from weaving them into the lives of the four lead characters, they are like threads that are unspooled.
Julio Diaz has the most colorful character among the leads. In one scene, he carries the Cross in a ritual that bears the notion of self-flagellation to the extreme. Films are always the sum of choices, and in Taklub, Mendoza makes one of the best decisions ever: to portray the faith of the people to the point of pain. Here is a city battered by the storm and, as a response, the community decides to hold a penitential procession. Who taught them this religion of terrible sacrifice? A slice of life is but a slice, but there is a scene in Taklub where Larry (Julio Diaz) comes to their house to meet up with Bebeth, the character played by Nora Aunor who loses her children in the terrible wrath of Yolanda. The exchange is full of candor and no bittersweetness to the two separated couple. The other woman remains outside, waiting by the tricycle, neither timid nor arrogant. A masterful rendition of pathos is caught by this scene.
Renato, as played by Lou Veloso, is the character who sails out to sea and prays that he be swallowed by it. Renato has lost his loved ones and it is his fate that the sea always brings him back to shore and an unwelcomed safety. Again, there is a meeting between Bebeth and Renato, but the latter watches merely. This, I believe, is where the weakness of the film lies—in characters that do not seem to have anything between and among them. We are like Bebeth walking and walking in a hazy way, devoid of direction and purpose.
Is Mendoza illustrating for us the critical state of life in Tacloban, where people wait aimlessly and where aid and assistance come to the land but do not reach those who need them?
Those who believe in the genius of Nora Aunor will be relieved. In a role that can be deemed insignificant, Aunor never searches for moment as inferior actors are wont to do. In the first place, this peerless actor has no scenes that she, as the idiom goes, could chew on. Given the narrow space bestowed upon her by the screenplay, Aunor once more shows that there are no small roles but only small actors.
What we are treated to is Aunor, the actor, who, carrying herself in the film with her back in an almost scoliotic bend, manages to portray for us the unseen burden of those who experienced the sorrow, the surge and the deaths. All this in a long shot showing Aunor’s Bebeth leaving the hospital.
It can be a cultural flaw but Bebeth, as essayed by Aunor, is the person whose resignation to fate is as fatal as the belief that, after a massive destruction, help will come. If ever the silences in Taklub work, it can only be ascribed to this actor who treats stillness not as gaps but as gorgeous emptiness where the soul is awed by its darkness or lightness. The camera pays homage to Aunor in many scenes where nothingness gathers itself into a force that compels us to watch and watch forever lest we miss out the message of nature not meant to serve humanity always. I wish though that Aunor was given more difficult scenes. At this point of her career, Nora Aunor can practically do anything.
A huge ship is seen astoundingly beached, its prow hitting the sky. I think Nora Aunor’s Bebeth, like the ship, is stranded in the narrative about a land that lives by its name, which means “covered” in Filipino. I go back to Thy Womb, where Nora Aunor as Shaleha delineates a barrenness through a performance that is fertile in metaphors and as soaring as the birds that punctuate her anguish and abandonment.
Taklub is directed by Brillante Mendoza from the screenplay of Honeylyn Joy Alipio. Diwa de Leon provides the misic. The cinematography by Odyssey Flores alternates between crusty and soft-focused images, giving the film a touch of the documentarian.
4 comments
Actually I was amazed at how miss Nora Aunor treated the character… It could have been the stereotyped movie where the lead would burst into feats of hysteria and near psychosis and measured a bucket of tears to convey the emotions… Her attack on the character was sublime and as realistically resigned to the fate that was of disbelief to a situation never before witnessed nor experienced… The nuances even of her back walking away showed a resignation to an inadequate help she had hoped for from those assigned to help… Trying to hang on to shreds of whatever minuscule of human dignity she could gather… Finally the resignation at the grave yard… Acceptance, surrender and sadness sank in with just a tear… Others would have exhibited hysterical grief but Yolanda’s experience was unique because it was never experienced before… So her image engrained a troubled resigned society to an incapable help from a system that doesn’t seem to care… Yes it was hardly watched … Economics of marketing comes in… Why didn’t the producer and the government showed interest to promote it so as to be aware of the climate change… Conflicting revolving confusing schedules of the exhibition of the film was glaring.. Not an iota of publicity to stir interest… Because instead of being a film to make people aware of the ill effects of climate change it showed the gross incompetence , negligence, planning, disinterest in helping the victims, and confusing system the administration has placed to deal with tragedy… And that was very disturbing.. Nora showed restraint… On the other hand I found the characters of Lou veloso ,s acting theatrical and so is w Julio Diaz…
Kung hindi si Nora ang bida baka nagka interest pa ang taong bayan diyan. Kaya nga yun producer hindi na gumastos sa publicity kasi madadagdagan lang lugi nila kay Nora Aunor. Wala silang kadala dala sa isang Nora Aunor na matagal ng laos.
Thank you, Mr. Valiente for this review.
Mr. Valiente is referring to Rome Mallari, who played Bebeth’s estranged husband. Interestingly, it was the actual Bebeth who played the other woman who was in the tricycle, if I am correct. I don’t know what Brillante Mendoza wanted to say, but it’s worth your idea, Mr. Valiente.
In my opinion, the government did not or will not promote the film because it also clearly stated what justified anger can do – mobilize the people. The signature campaign toward the end of the film is the sign.
Wala ng bago kay Nora Aunor. Nakaka uta na ang acting style niya kaya di na rin siya pinapanood. IIlan lang nakaka appreciate kay Nora Aunor. Kapag nanonood ka ng pelikula niya, makakakita ka ng dalawa, tatlo, hanggang limang nanonood. Paano naman hindi mapu pull out ang ganyang pelikula? Pero nasa pelikula ba ang problema o nasa artista? Bakit naman ang Heneral Luna kumita kahit isnag indie film din ito? Bakit kapag si Nora Aunor ang bida ay tila yata iniiwasan ng publiko. Aba eye opener ito s amga Indie Film directors na bakit pa nila kukunin ang isang Nora Aunor na sigurdaong lalangawin lang sa sinehan ang pelikula kung pwede naman palang kumuha ng ibang artista na mas panonoorin ng publiko. Masakit isipin na kahit ilang awards pa ang ibigay kay Nora Aunor, hindi pa rin ito sapat para muling ibalik ang interest sa kanya ng publiko. Minsan nga sa dami ng awards niya ay nawawalan na ito ng halaga gaya rin ng iba pang commodity na kapag marami sa palengke ay nagmumura. Sa dami ng awards ni Nora ay nagiging sampu singko tuloy ito. Haaaayyyyyy. HIndi na kailangan ni Nora ang ganitong pelikula. Dapat naman kumita ang movie niya at ng hindi siya namumulubi.