Wanted: Border and the Slow March Towards Entropy

2009 was a year of violence. Perhaps, with enough distance and perspective, we'll come to view as no bloodier than any other year, this country (and the world in general) endlessly bursting with the potential for human harm. But right now, especially in the light of the recent Ampatuan Massacre (people should refer to it by name) in Maguindanao, one cannot escape the nagging feeling that 2009 was a year where man's monstrous tendency to do evil won over his supposed capacity for doing good.

This concept is at the cold black heart of Ray Gibraltar's Wanted: Border, which is now showing at Robinson's Indiesine. There is a month left to consider, but as of right now, it is my favorite film of the year, because in just a little over ninety minutes, Gibraltar provides the painful release necessary to flush out that demons that lay in the terror of this year.

The movie takes its title from a misspelled sign the director would see on his way home to his apartment. The mistake provides a strange insight into the human condition; that as much as we value freedom, there's a lot to be said about the need for boundaries within ourselves. The movie centers on a group of people whose decisions are governed solely by their Ids. They gorge themselves with food, watch endless hours of pornography, take copious amounts of drugs, and constantly give in to whatever temptation is laid in front of them.

At the core of all this is Rosanna Roces, who plays Mama Saleng, the owner of a boarding house-slash-eatery that secretly serves up human flesh in its bowls of soup. We see her in four phases, the first with her as a child, being teased by other kids, called an aswang and accused of eating humans. In her second phase, she is the girlfriend of a brutal government agent rooting out communist agents for the dictator. It is in this part of her life that she comes to fulfill the prophecy laid at her feet through the cruelty of children, cooking up the victims of her lover in a vicious broth.

In the third phase, she is the mother figure, taking in lost souls at her boarding house, providing sustenance through her eatery. It is here where she truly becomes a monster, internalizing her evil as a calling from God, her way to helping clear the streets of people unworthy of God's good grace. In her fourth phase we see her in a discussion with what appears to be God himself, who not only condones her butchery, but asks to be part of it.

These phases are shown fragmented and out of order, but her path towards monstrosity is deadly clear. She emerges from a culture of violence, beginning life questioning her own humanity. Call someone a monster often enough, and they might just turn out to be one. In the same vein, if someone is told often enough that they're untouchable, they might just come to believe it. These examples come at two extremes, one from oppression, the other from power, but it is at these extremes where the boundaries of humanity are most easily taken away.

It begins with a small act of corruption that goes unanswered, a debt to civilized society that is never collected. In the movie, a horny stepfather begins his inevitable abuse with a cautious inspection of his stepdaughter's room. A whiff of her clothes. An odd caress here. An extended touch there. The satisfaction isn't from the act itself, but in getting away with the transgression. In our country it started decades ago, the fragmented nature of the nation giving rise of feudal lords who would fight over territory and curry favor with politicians by promising the support of their serfs, by hook or by crook. Usually by crook. And maybe it began with the beating of a member of a rival clan that went unnoticed by the authorities.

The abuse is inevitable. Should we have been surprised? Upset. Disturbed. Horrified. Angry. Yes. Surprised? Sadly, depressingly, no. The saddest part is in realizing how we let it happen. How we always knew about it, but did nothing about it. The film leaves its deepest bit of despair for the mother of the abused girl, who lived under the same roof, and saw signs of her husband's perversions, but did nothing to save her daughter from a very foreseeable fate.

The entire universe leans towards chaos, the very boundaries of space giving way as the cosmos expands beyond everything we can ever imagine. All matter, even man, follows the universe into entropy.

Amazingly, as bleak as the film is, it offers a glimmer of broken, twisted hope. In this world, evil can mostly go unpunished, but entropy also means a tendency towards self-destruction. These untethered beings most capable of doing harm to others cannot go on forever, their unbridled Ids leading them towards their own downfalls. There will be an evil too big to ignore that whatever decency remains in humanity cannot stomach it. In Wanted: Border, Mama Saleng leads herself towards crucifixion. In the real world, the same thing pretty much happened. It is a horrifying thing that we must go through this at all, but it is better to know the evil in this world than to close our eyes and pray it goes away.

I do not know if I have made much of a case for the film. I'm told people go to the movies to escape. But I would urge people to see this film to face down the year that was, and tell it that we're going to fucking survive.

Common sense isn't too common in a country that identifies itself as Christian. You might have, for example, an electoral body deciding that a group meant to represent the interests of homosexual Filipinos is ineligible for the party list on the grounds of immorality. Or the more brilliant reasoning that since there are already several gay representatives in congress, gays don't need their own party list. Or it might result in a Baptist pastor, also a congressman, blocking legislation designed to prevent discrimination against gays in a committee meant to be upholding human rights. It might lead to a purported journalistic protector of the weak to say things like gays and lesbians should be happy to simply be tolerated.

What hurts is that despite all of this being outrageously discriminatory and hateful, none of it is surprising. It is predictably stupid, the kind of idiotic nonsense that sprouts up any time some form of social progress threatens to change something in the increasingly myopic worldview of grumpy old men.

The good news is that the old men always lose, and society will lean towards the most common sense conclusion: we're all created equal. Until then, we'll just have to sit through a whole lot of garbage flowing from the mouths of old men who cling to their crosses while ignoring the words of the man who got nailed to it.

Love one another, you douchebags.

Schedules to be announced. Rest assured, it's in good hands.

The Worst Reality Show Contestant

She wouldn't stop looking at her hands. The AD kept telling her to keep her chin up when giving her confessionals, but she'd never do it for more than a second. She would keep going back to her hands, fidgety and tense, empty but for each other.

"How do you feel about the challenge later?" The AD finally asked.

Without looking up, she replied, "I didn't come here to win, actually."

"I came here to make friends," she said, almost a whisper.

Afterglow

She literally glowed after sex. Her skin would emit a soft green light, a little dimmer than your average glowstick, just seconds after she reached orgasm. It lasted about an hour, the light fading as her pleasures became more distant.

She could never fake an orgasm once she'd had a real one with a partner, her partners always looking for a visual cue of their prowess as they licked and tweaked and pushed and thrust, their machinations growing more arcane and desperate as they fumbled for the right switches to turn the light on. And she would lie there in the darkness, looking for a spark.

And when it finally came (if it came), she would illuminate her tired partner's face, the soft green glow making their satisfaction cast shadows on their love.

Chosen

"You've been chosen," the angel said.

John adjusted the buttons on his right sleeve. They'd been bothering him for most of his drive to work, and now that the angel had frozen time and space to deliver his message, he thought it would be as good a time as any to fix it.

"For what?" he asked while twisting the second button of his sleeve into its proper hole.

The angel stared a hole through him, his wings collapsing slowly around his frame.

"You know what?" the angel said. "Never mind."

Interesting Times

He was yelling through the megaphone, even though the device was specifically designed so he wouldn't have to yell. "This is the moment," he double yelled, "that we decide the fate of our nation." His words were met with applause and a couple of the movement's slogans.

"We are at a pivotal point in our history," he continued. The knuckles on his right hand had gone white from the grip on the megaphone. He raised his left fist, revealing a small hole in the armpit seam of his bright yellow t-shirt. "Today, we have the power to change everything."

And he had watched this video several times already, and he could still never get over the hole in his shirt, and how young he looked, and how yelling into the megaphone had only muddled his words.

There are no answers, only words.

Hastily written, roughly assembled, sad, inadequate words.

Today, the work continues. Because it cannot end. We won't let it.

So it's Cult Cinema Week at Mogwai, and we're showing a bunch of films that have found new life in the grand tradition of the midnight screening. We're showing midnight screening classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Big Lebowski. And those are great films that deserve their cult status.

But neither one of them can hold a candle to The Room. Over the last five years, The Room has become a cultural phenomenon, a film endorsed by the likes of Paul Rudd, David Cross, Will Arnett, Kristen Bell and Jonah Hill.

First things first: The Room is a terrible movie. But it is fascinatingly terrible. Writer/Director Tommy Wiseau has about zero filmmaking skill, no sense for pacing or storytelling. He has no grasp of characters or of dialogue. He's also a terrible actor, which is a problem since he's also the star of picture. Wiseau can barely speak English, his accent so strange and think that he makes Schwarzenegger sound like Laurence Olivier in comparison.

And so yes, the film is crap. But all that crappiness is strangely appealing. Observe:

I definitely have breast cancer

Oh hi Mark!

Hi doggy. You're my favorite customer

You are tearing me apart, Lisa!

But it's too easy to harp on the "so bad it's good" cliché in explaining the appeal of this film. The real strength of this film is the sincerity with which Wiseau lays out his ideas. His ideas are terrible and downright misogynist, but he lays them out with a strange earnestness that just wins you over. You get the sense that at some point in Wiseau's life, he was really betrayed by a woman, and that his only recourse was to spend six million dollars on a terrible vanity film.

Wiseau is at the heart of this picture, a man who might as well be from another planet trying to understand some of the twistier portions of the human condition. It's all horrible and strangely compelling stuff, and none of my words can do justice to how downright funny this movie ends up being.

So if you're free on Saturday, The Room is showing 10 PM at Mogwai Cinematheque. Go check it out.

There used to be a time when people bought magazines to get something to read. I know, crazy, right? The Philippines Free Press, a one hundred and one year old relic of publishing's golden days, still tries to hold true to that crazy tradition. The latest issue pays tribute to the late President Cory Aquino, featuring writing from Teodoro Locsin Jr., Fr. Catalino Arevalo and Oliver X.A. Reyes.

But wait. That's not all. It's also the 101 Year Anniversary issue, and the Free Press staff digs deep into the Free Press Archives to show all these young people writing from a time when people cared about writing. Featuring articles from Gregorio Brillantes, William Nolledo, Kerima Polotan, Jose Quirino, Jose Lacaba and Quijano de Manila.

So look for it, people. It's the right thing to do.

Between the free wifi, the constant stream of gift certificates, and my need for sugar in the morning to function, I am pretty sure I will die here in Krispy Kreme Gateway. Someday, you will pass by here and find my bones hunched over the counter with the sockets. It's just the way it is.


If you were listening to RockEd Radio this week at around 10 PM, you may have heard me yelling at Emily Abrera. I did not mean to do it, but I'm passionate about the subject. I'm passionate about not caring about the title of national artist.

The reaction to the naming of Carlo Caparas as national artist has been perplexing. Not because Carlo Caparas actually deserves the title (he doesn't), but because it never occurred to me that the title actually meant anything to anyone. I've always seen it as just another political appointment, yet another one of those misguided Marcos programs meant to show people that they were supporting the arts while failing to do anything substantial for the arts community.

People complaining about the abuse of process should first consider that the process isn't all that great to begin with. The NCCA isn't immune to the political machinations involved in any awards selection process. True, they are what you can call experts, but they do not exist in a magical meritocratic bubble where only the truly deserving can pass muster.

It's rather telling that on the subject of several artists on the list, people are forced to equivocate the choice. "Yeah FPJ made a lot of crap, but..." And many good reasons are given, but if the people are serious about holding the national artist title as the living standard for what art ought to be, then we shouldn't have to make excuses for it.

And in honoring these artists, public money is spent on their pensions, their celebrations, their well-being and their eventual deaths. Money that could be spent on actually bringing art to the people. Or on preserving the legacy of these artists already on the list. Gerry de Leon's movies are disappearing as we speak. Soon there will be an entire generation of Filipinos who will never even have the opportunity to see a Manuel Conde film. That is a far bigger tragedy than the title of national artist being sullied by the presence of Caparas.

The way I see it, Caparas is just a symptom, a particularly ugly boil on the surface of this award. But the disease goes far deeper than that. In the end, the NCCA is still a government agency, subject to all the ugly politicking that happens in any government office. In my opinion, the government ought to stick to promoting the arts, rather than trying to define it.


Hey what are you doing this Saturday? You have plans? Well cancel them. Because Yvette Tan is launching her collection of short stories at Powerbooks Megamall at 4 PM. Yvette is undoubtedly one of the most talented writers in the country. If I had half her talent, I would set about ruling the country and subjugating the people to my will. Thankfully, Yvette uses her powers for good. As far as I know.


Have you picked up the new Uno Magazine yet? It is awesome, you know. This month, jewelry designer Ciara Marasigan graces the cover. Inside, Bianca Valerio pays tribute to pin-up icon Bettie Paige with her terribly daring S&M shoot. Inside, words from Gregorio Brillantes, Krip Yuson, Luis Katigbak, the aforementioned Yvette Tan, Aldus Santos, Tim Tayag and even a few from me. Go look for it. It's easy to find. It's the damn best looking magazine on the racks.


Next week at Mogwai, we're paying tribute to the late John Hughes. If anyone's still reading this thing, I hope you guys go. I just watched The Breakfast Club again last week, and it holds up. Hughes may have painted in broad strokes, but there are few films that feel as earnest and genuine as The Breakfast Club. The screening schedule goes like this:

MONDAY: Weird Science
TUESDAY: Planes, Trains and Automobiles
WEDNESDAY: Sixteen Candles
THURSDAY: Ferris Bueller's Day Off
FRIDAY: The Breakfast Club

I'm not entirely sure if I can swing it yet, but I'm going to try to get Mogwai to play music from the Hughes movies all week. Screenings start at 9PM. I hope to see you guys there.

So it turns out that I was born in Kenya. This might be a problem when I become president. Sigh.

From Roberto Bolaño's 2666, in The Part About Fate (emphasis mine):

That night he slept on the couch in his mother's house. He went to her room just once and had a glance at the body. the next day, first thing in the morning, the people from the funeral home came and took her away. He got up to let them in, gave them a check, and watched how they carried the pine coffin down the stairs. Then he went back to sleep on the couch.

When he woke up he thought he'd dreamed about a movie he'd seen the other day. But everything was different. The characters were black, so the movie in the dream was like a negative of the real movie. And different things happened, too. The plot was the same, what happened was the same, but the ending was different or at some moment things took an unexpected turn and became something completely different. Most terrible of all, though, was that as he was dreaming he knew it didn't necessarily have to be that way, he noticed the resemblance to the movie, he thought he understood that both were based on the same premise, and that if the movie he'd seen was the real movie, then the other one, the one he had dreamed, might be a reasoned response, a reasoned critique, and not necessarily a nightmare. All criticism is ultimately a nightmare, he thought as he washed his face in the apartment where his mother's body no longer was.

He also thought about what she would have said to him. Be a man and bear your own cross.