Raya Martin seems fascinated with duality and dichotomy. On the surface, the two films he released this year that seem to parallel each other, Now Showing and Next Attraction, are both two separate films in one. Now Showing, at almost 5 hours, is a small epic about a girl named Rita in her childhood and again as a young adult. Separating the two sections are muted and deliberately damaged images of a 1939 Filipino film. An air of quiet sadness lingers in the two stories of Rita. The first story emphasizes her innocence while the second focuses on its irreversible loss, as past and present conflict with each other. Now Showing differs considerably from typical narratives in many ways, and yet it is able to achieve the same intensity of poignancy as other emotionally charged films, even with its abundance of subtlety and absence of theatrics. Now Showing is visually dynamic but it is in his highly effective use of sound that I admire Martin the most (somewhat closely approximating the genius of David Lynch in this department).
Next Attraction loosely connects with Now Showing in some of the film’s setting (a house, a hotel room and Cubao). It opens with a long, static, voyeuristic shot of Jacklyn Jose’s character sitting on a chair in a familiar backyard, a scene that would set the tone and the mood of the film’s first half, which is a behind-the-scenes look (literally) at the making of a short film based on a true story. The camera remains steady as it observes actors, the director and the rest of the crew go about in their business of shooting the film. We only hear actors delivering their lines but never actually get to see any scene they are filming. In the second half, we see the finished product, although it is (sadistically) muted. The audience is left to piece the puzzle together and connect the disjoint between image and sound. The title is also an interesting play of connotations reflecting its thematic dichotomy between movie-making and personal struggles, as well as fiction and reality.
On the opposite end of the Filipino experimental indie spectrum is Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s Imburnal, a baffling, 200-minute barage of static, beautifully shot images and sounds. Like Now Showing, it is fragmented, disjointed, atmospheric, reflective, deceptively simple and visually interesting. Unike Now Showing, it is opaque, emotionally disconnected, endless and painful to watch. Exciting piece of film but nearly unwatchable without any payoffs in the end (but who knows, maybe that is the point).
Finally, Melancholia is Lav Diaz’s latest eight-hour opus (short by comparison to his other works!). It’s a meditation on the nature of sadness and disintegration as seen from the perspective of the loved ones left by the desaparacidos. Diaz is an expert at framing his static shots, and he is especially effective with the quiet, dialogue-free scenes that we slowly and curiously watch unravel.
I remember thinking a few years ago that the digital indie filmmakers of the recent wave were not nearly as bold or groundbreaking as their foreign counterparts. Of course, I have been proven wrong.
