‘TAKLUB’ Review: NOBLE TRIBUTE

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.

Review: Brillante Mendoza's THY WOMB Is A Fascinating Look Into Nature, Culture And Humanity

BY OGGS CRUZ

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http://twitchfilm.com/2012/12/review-brillante-mendozas-thy-womb-is-a-fascinating-look-into-nature-culture-and-humanity.html

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http://oggsmoggs.blogspot.com/2012/12/sinapupunan-2012.html

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Thy Womb opens with a woman giving birth. Shaleha (Nora Aunor), a midwife, accompanied by her husband Bangas-an (Bembol Roco), assists the soon-to-be-mother in delivering her child. Shaleha then routinely requests for the baby's umbilical cord. She brings the keepsake from the afternoon home, hangs it alongside all the other cords she has collected from the many mothers she helped. The hanging cords in her home are ostensibly a record of her noble profession. Ironically, it also serves as a painful reminder of the one nagging imperfection of her marriage with her husband, which is her inability to bear children for him. Nature has fated her with infertility. However, her culture has given her the opportunity to remedy it. By finding another suitable wife for her husband, she is able to fulfil what for her is the most essential of her familial duties. 

Mendoza strips the film of most external conflicts, concentrating instead on the nuances of infertile Shaleha's relationship with her husband as she sets out to find a second wife for her husband to bear a child for him. Set in Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines' southernmost isles which have become infamous for being torn by warring government and Muslim secessionist forces, the film valiantly avoids sensationalizing war and instead delves into the human condition of a people who have grown accustomed to military presence. At one point, a wedding dance is abruptly stalled by violence. When the shock and confusion dissipates, the dance continues, almost as if nothing happened. Mendoza has effectively created a believable world wherein military conflict has weaved itself into the culture by sheer familiarity. 

Thy Womb indulges in its depiction both nature and culture. Mendoza does not hide his fascination, relentlessly breaking his storytelling to make way for gorgeous images of endless seascapes and colorful tradition. He takes time revelling at whale sharks under the sea, or turtles' eggs hidden dearly beneath Tawi-Tawi's remote beaches. He stages elaborate Muslim ceremonies and rituals. Surprisingly, the film never feels as if it is treading too closely to exoticizing its subject locale. The overt visualization of both nature and culture seems essential to Mendoza's goals of exploring the interactions of culture and nature and the people who rely heavily on them for both sustenance and identity. 

Henry Burgos' screenplay is admirably spare. It is unafraid of being judged not by the lyricism of the words spoken by the depicted ordinary folk, but by the measured silence. It allows the couple's relationship to simmer, to take root, to emotionally attach to the peering audience, before exposing the fissures that will unavoidably grow bigger. It masterfully orchestrates heartbreak, without any hint of artifice or machination. It gives Mendoza enough breathing room to scrutinize the world, which he does so without hardly any hesitation. 

Aunor, who has been absent from Philippine cinema for several years despite being renowned as one of its living acting treasures, is the film's beating heart. Her dutiful portrayal of Shaleha is both spontaneous and intelligent. She cleverly interacts with her surroundings, not as an actress inhabiting a role but as a human being naturally reacting to very real scenarios. When the film requires silence, she makes use of her eyes, which seamlessly hypnotize the audience to believe her character's plight and sacrifice. 

Thy Womb is observably quainter, tamer, and more mannered than Mendoza's previous works. However, it still resonates with the same removed yet still potent anger that only an artist who wants to depict truth from a distance can evoke. The film ends with more questions than answers, as it has to. The story, which is essentially the film's element that begs for a proper ending, is but a tool for Mendoza to frame the grand ironies that afflict humanity. When Shaleha asks for that final umbilical cord, she has finally severed the tie that has severely burdened her. We can only cry because we are also human.