Oca and Mai (played by Jake Macapagal and Althea Vega) remind us of Julio and Ligaya of ‘Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag’.
This is probably your last day to catch the Sean Ellis film Metro Manila in the cinema, and we suggest you go on ahead and give it a chance (we hope you live or work around the Ortigas area because last theater standing is Cinema 10 of Robinson’s Galleria).
Forget the Facebook friends who’ve discouraged you with their passionate condemnation of the film just because they’re so sure — on the sole basis of reviews, write-ups and trailers — that it’s just a piece of poverty porn, a white man’s view of Manila as a ghastly town only out to scam unassuming out-of-towners.
Well, yes, the movie has that, no point denying it.
A story about a family who moves from Banaue to the metropolis to seek a less desperate existence, its first half hour seems what one would imagine Dan Brown’s “gates of hell” to be, showing you the grit and the grease of the city, you can almost smell its collective puke and pee.
The film is certainly not the feel-good film of the year; it’s thoroughly depressing. Mabigat sa dibdib from the beginning.
And yes, the family from Mountain Province whose lives the movie is centered on gets scammed once too often, and almost as soon as their soiled feet land on Manila’s streets: first by a guy who leads them to a house-for-rent they had to shell out all their money for, only to find out the next day they gave all that they had to a fake owner; then by a contractor who only paid bread in exchange for a day’s heavy lifting; and then finally in a big way by a security officer of an armored car company who in the beginning offered friendship, employment and a promise of a better life but eventually unmasks himself to be just another, well, douchebag scammer.
Fine, it’s all about people taking advantage of the weak and the helpless bagong-salta, but so what?
1) It’s fiction. Maybe Ellis will make another film about Manila’s upper class in the future but this is the story he’s telling now. Maybe the family could have tried their luck in, say Baguio first, (“Maynila agad-agad?” quipped one cineaste) but the fact that they went straight to Manila proves all the more their mix of gumption and cluelessness.
2) It’s a pretty good piece of filmmaking (it’s the UK entry to next year’s Oscars Foreign Language Film race, if that says anything) — and even if, yes, it reeks of poverty porn
3) It redeems itself in the last half when it reveals a surprisingly compelling edge-of-your-seat suspense drama.
4) It seems to be two different films in one but it draws your heart and attention from the beginning that you’ll find yourself just going along for the ride. And what a ride it is.
5) The cinematography is excellent — especially those shot in Edsa, with the diffused headlights of cars and buses in the background
6) The performances are clever and inventive but real, although maybe the main protagonist, Oscar Ramirez (played by Jake Macapagal) could be a little less refined in his speech and manner (and JM Rodriguez, for someone who is supposed to have been betrayed badly by circumstances, looks a little too well-fed).
7) John Arcilla is imposing and scary as the veteran armor van driver, and theater actress Ana Abad Santos gives a wicked turn as his mistress who is in on a secret. Someone mentioned over lunch recently that Oca and his wife Mai (played by Althea Vega) makes you think of Julio Madiaga and Ligaya Paraiso in Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag. That Metro Manila’s Oca and Mai are Maynila’s Julio and Ligaya had these last two lived. Nice reference, actually. Because having seen the restored Maynila recently, this Brocka film, considered one of the greatest in Philippine cinema, is easily one of the earliest and most popular showcases of the city’s heartbreaking matchbox shanties that stand among rivers of trash, it’s dirt and despair, and it’s cold, scheming heart.
