By: Oggs Cruz
Rappler.com
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Source:
http://www.rappler.com/entertainment/movies/106438-taklub-review-brillante-mendoza-nora-aunor-julio-diaz
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'Taklub,' a movie about
the aftermath of Yolanda, doesn't preach or make spectacles of suffering.
Brillante Mendoza’s Taklub could have easily
been about making spectacles out of suffering, but it doesn't take that easy
path. Set during the aftermath of Yolanda, the typhoon that turned Tacloban
into a miserable tent city, the film could have taken the easiest way around
the sensitivities surrounding the calamity by playing the advocacy card.
Taklub could have been preaching about
resilience in the midst of tragedy and various other virtues that feel slightly
offensive especially coming from someone who has not experienced the tragedies
first hand. Thankfully, it does not, or if it does, it does so with quiet
nobility.
Perpetual limbo
Mendoza has all the reasons and justifications
to make a film that panders to the expectations of a people who desperately
need respite from melancholy. Co-produced by the government, Taklub could
have gone the route of propaganda, twisting truths to give the government a
better position within the context of the calamity.
Thankfully, Taklub is neither a
sappy mush nor an implausible advocacy ploy. The film stays away from
convenient emotions that one can naturally expect and retains the same gritty
style Mendoza utilizes for his urban parables in creating a world of Yolanda
survivors who are trapped in what seems to be a perpetual limbo.
Government is close to invisible. It conveys an
inutile instrumentality whose bureaucratic mannerisms lend further frustration
to the survivors. Mendoza favors truth, even if he peppers his brand of realism
with slivers of poetics. What remains is something close to pure, a veritable
examination of lives forced into the margins by a mixture of natural and human
forces.
Survivors
Taklub centers on several survivors of
Yolanda whose different needs summarize the dissipation of basic humanity in
the midst of harsh survival.
Bebeth (Nora Aunor), who maintains a small
canteen that services her neighbors, has been patiently dealing with both her
ex-husband and the government in matching DNA records with the remains of the
thousands who drowned during the typhoon. Larry (Julio Diaz), a pedicab driver
who regularly participates in all church activities, begins to question his
faith amidst all the suffering. Erwin (Aaron Rivera) does almost everything to
provide shelter to what remains of his family.
The screenplay by Honeylyn Joy Alipio pulls away
from the obvious and conventional by documenting the characters’ mundane tasks
alongside the peculiar crosses they have to carry.
The characters are depicted as humans, with
emotions that are but responses to the various impulses that are around them.
They are motivated not by conceit but by their instincts. Mendoza does away
with depicting them as heroes or victims but as ordinary people placed in a
scenario that cannot be prevented.
It is truly a tricky subject to deal with,
considering that the characters are all victims worthy of all the positivism
that can be mustered. But doing so without the benefit of a rationale is
shallow and defeatist. There is no other way but to showcase their faults,
their fissures in the face of grief and loss, their invaluable humanity.
Dignified
performances
The filmmakers’ intentions are of course but a
portion of the battle. The rest remains with the actors and actresses who have
to withhold comforts and egos to depict the characters with the dignity that
they deserve. Considering that the characters are barely grasping the virtues
of their former lives, it is up to Aunor, Diaz and Rivera to clothe them with
sympathy instead of needless sentimentality.
Taklub succeeds in maintaining a singular
vision of projecting an affecting portrait of survival that eschews fabrication
for authenticity, notwithstanding the pressures of dealing with governmental
funding and actors and actresses who seem to deserve roles that stretch their
acting potential.
The film is empowered by its subtlety. Not one
element stands out, making its centerpoint, which is the overpowering humanity
of those who have survived and are still surviving, the prime subject in the
spotlight.
In the end, Taklub aches with
palpable pain not because it is such an impressive work of art but because its
art is barely noticeable because of its fealty to the truth.
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