The things we don't want to see

Last week I interviewed the film-maker Brillante Mendoza, who won Best Director at Cannes for his film Kinatay.

American critics with the notable exception of Hoberman (Village Voice) and Foundas (L.A. Weekly) loathe Kinatay, and many movie-literate Filipinos seem to agree with their assessment. The fact that most of them have not actually seen Kinatay has not prevented Mendoza’s detractors from joining in the howls of execration. “Can’t they just be happy that a Filipino has been accorded this honor?” asked a professor at the UP College of Fine Arts. Apparently not. For his compatriots to be happy for him, Mendoza has to be the socially-approved face of Philippine cinema to the world. Presumably they do not approve of his films. Assuming they have seen them.

For two years running Brillante Mendoza has directed the worst-reviewed movie at Cannes — underscoring the fact that for two years he’s been selected for Cannes, an achievement greeted with groans of “Oh, God” rather than cheers. I have wondered whether this was his strategy to get noticed: deliberately setting out to repel moviegoers. When I set our interview I expected an angry auteur, a provocateur given to making grand pronouncements. I was seriously disappointed.

Brillante Mendoza is a quiet, serious, youngish-looking man, a “regular person.” He is not a passionate activist and speaker like Lino Brocka or a witty ironist like Ishmael Bernal. He is not particularly entertaining to watch, not hyper-articulate or “impressive.” He’s just someone who wants to make movies. Oh the horror, that Filipino film should be represented by someone so… ordinary.

In the course of our talk the notion of “poverty porn” came up.

Mendoza, Lav Diaz, Jeffrey Jeturian, Jim Libiran, and many Filipino directors whose films are screened abroad are accused of catering to the Western fascination with the poor, filthy, “exotic” Third World. Mendoza says that although he is of the middle class, and has some access to the upscale urban lifestyle (He’s been a production designer for films and ads for two decades), poverty is what he notices every day.

The Filipino middle classes go to school, have jobs, live in houses, drive cars and go to malls. They assume that everyone else does. But they are a small minority of the population. The simple fact is that most Filipinos live in poverty.

Why have European critics responded to the work of Brillante Mendoza? Maybe some of it is the lure of the “exotic” Third World, but in large part it’s because he sees things in another way. He tells stories from a non-western point of view, in a non-dramatic style. As screenwriter Armando Lao (Kinatay, Serbis) points out, the Hollywood screenwriting code — the Syd Field manual — can not accommodate the Filipino experience.

This is their attempt at a new code.

The technical aspects of Mendoza’s films are part of this way of telling. Why should the movies look “glossy” and pretty when their subjects are ugly?

We like to think of ourselves as humanists, democrats, rationalists.

We have been taught that we can be anything we want to be; we can aspire to become president. Our parents tell us that if we study and work hard, we can achieve anything. The individual can overcome his/her circumstances.

Brillante Mendoza and Armando Lao are contesting this view. They are saying that we’ve been lied to: we cannot be all we can be. You can work yourself to the bone and be disappointed. It’s not because you didn’t strive hard enough or desire it badly enough. Effort, the teachings of Oprah, The Secret, and positive thinking only work for some people. The vast majority will not transcend social class and economic reality. Few will realize the promises of democracy and the free market. The individual is helpless against the power of his environment.

Not only does every story not have a happy ending, it may not even have a resolution.

It’s a bleak, pessimistic, miserablist view. It is repugnant to me personally. I do not want to be told that I am powerless against the system. How dare you. But the great thing about cinema is that it can contain opposing viewpoints. We can disagree.

When we sit down to watch a Brillante Mendoza movie, we can detach our own personal beliefs from the work. As discerning viewers we should be able to judge the movie for how well it achieves the filmmaker’s intentions, not whether we approve of those intentions. We judge the movie on its own merits, not for its adherence to our values.

Is this asking too much of the audience? Maybe. But I would rather the filmmaker ask difficult questions than not ask questions at all.

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My interview with Brillante Mendoza appears in Newsweek.

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