• Release date: September 19, 1984

• Director: Milos Forman

• Starring: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce

• Genre: Historical Drama, Comedy

• Star rating: 8.5/10

“Sire, only opera can do this. In a play if more than one person speaks at the same time, it’s just noise, no one can understand a word. But with opera, with music… with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at the same time, and it’s not noise, it’s a perfect harmony!”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Two simplistic tunes played on the piano.

The boasting of over 40 operas.

The reminiscence of a majestic bygone era.

Such words are uttered by a frail Antonio Salieri yet they are all obscure to the visiting priest, but all it took to recognize his long-departed rival was the ease of remembering the jovial G-Major melody of Eine kleine Nachtmusik.  With this example of sonic immortality comes the tragedy of Amadeus (1984) which orchestrates its characters’ dynamism and synchronicity redolent of the famed Viennese operas: a landslide of whimsical and strenuous emotions displayed in theatrical brilliance.

From the opening dialogue onwards, each measure ensures the initial dichotomy of its key figures with both blatant demeanor and subtle design that either way invites the audience with appreciative curiosity and compelling sympathy. Salieri is one who easily blends in the milieu, as he resides in comfortable luxury and in servitude to aristocratic rule, yet for such a conformist character, his envy for someone greater and his passionate petition for divine empowerment make him more humanly flawed than most beings onscreen. Mozart, by contrast, embraces his comical vulgarity and the scintillating audacity of his musical genius, yet the gravitas of his character lies on his misfortunes rooted in his carelessness and excessive passion for his reputable profession.    

“Forgive me, Majesty. I’m a vulgar man. But I assure you, my music is not.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

But underneath the distinctions lies an understated similarity between the two that, for the most part, is masked by Salieri’s dualistic nature of his narration. For someone who holds much contempt for the prodigy, Salieri secretly had great admiration for him. In fact, he may be the only one who could comprehend the ingenious Amadeus, and as such, therein lies a point of unison: their virtuoso in musicality, cinematically ingrained from dialogue to score, that presents music as not merely a precise arrangement of notes, but a sonic translation of the state of mind.

Where Mozart constructs his pieces like an elaborate architect, Salieri interprets its structure with poetic grandiloquence. While Salieri hears a cavalcade of strings and voices as he becomes overwhelmed by Mozart’s drafts, Mozart’s fears and desperation are reflected in his own compositions as the D Minor chord of Don Giovanni plays at the arrival of his disciplinarian patriarch or the overbearing demands of a dark-cloaked stranger. However, no scene reflects this poignant, sonic synchronicity than Mozart’s final night composing Requiem in D Minor with the helping hand of Salieri, a pinnacle of mutual understanding between God-given and human skills.

 “I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater, conferring on all who sat there, perfect absolution. God was singing through this little man to all the world, unstoppable, making my defeat more bitter with every passing bar.”

Antonio Salieri

Though, it is quite ironic (maybe cruelly ironic) that their fates too come in harmony like chords: their faces showing signs of a languished soul rooted in their shared overt passions that gave them life. Their roads diverge, yet they meet at the crossroad of the same destiny. Their lives are relative in key, but they share the same signature of vain and ego.

Thus, Amadeus introduces itself as a sort-of reckoning of the spiteful and the decadent, then gradually composes itself into a rhetoric on talent’s true purpose and worth.

Is it really for fervent worship to the Almighty or to the innate spectacularism of the self?

Is the greatness of one’s gift measured by God’s selectivity or by mere human paradigm?

Does the superiority of one really equate to the inferiority of another’s own?

“I will speak for you, father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am the patron’s saint.”

Antonio Salieri

• Release date: January 27, 1982

• Director: Peque Gallaga

• Starring: Joel Torre, Cherrie Gil, Sandy Andalong

• Genre: War, Drama

• Star rating: 8/10

Often, the tragic stories of war come from the most downtrodden of society. The misfortunes of Anne Frank resonate well with the Jews’ anguish from the Holocaust. The narrative of Walterina Markova echo the sentiments of the comfort gay overlooked in history texts. But perhaps the last people one might hear of such stories are those from the affluent. Enter Peque Gallaga and his magnum opus Oro, Plata, Mata (1982), that offers this unnoticed but equally gruesome perspective.

For a film set in the turbulent years of 1940s Philippines, though, the usual enemies of the period (i.e.: the Japanese invaders and its allies) are near absent. If anything, the whole war is reduced to a mere footnote or a backdrop of the much bigger picture, but as with the ominous blaze of the rice fields surrounding the escaping family, danger looms close. The frivolity of birthday celebration shows false assurance of their own safety. The quaintness of an isolated farmhouse provides distraction from the violence beyond the lush forests.  The film masters the art of visual deception in spectacular fashion.

Fortunately, the film seemed kind enough to offer us viewers with a warning, a premonition if you will, starting with a quote from the poetic historian Nick Joaquin, then progressing further with more subtle symbolism and activity. A simple mahjong game, for instance, brings out the avarice and blissful ignorance of its players, or the idols of their religious worship juxtaposed their self-absorption and hypocrisy. Still, the brutality catches you off guard, just like the characters themselves. All that carnage that comes abruptly leaves one petrified and holding on to his own breath, as comfort descends into madness like a musical crescendo.

When the dust settles, it concludes to where it started: at a party in their own abode, but with stark contrast. The white noise become plain mumbling, the bright lights become dim, the food is a bit scarce, yet the merriment somehow retained. The lavishness and luxury stayed, albeit with scars of the family’s ordeal. “Naging hayop ang lahat sa’tin. Ang digmaang nito ginawang hayop tayong lahat,” preached Trining, yet all throughout, the film alludes that the demons have been embraced by the family long before the violence even came to their doorstep. The war may have transformed them, but it was foolishness that pushed them to the edge. The wealth that they thought would safeguard them only sew the seeds of their near demise.

Oro, Plata, Mata in retrospect may not be another war film after all. It is a well-conceived montage of visual splendor and viciousness that exposes the sinister fate of the ravenous and the imprudent. It lives up to its own name but adds a cruel twist to the superstition.  In strife, fortune and sanctuary might just come with the hefty price: blood.

• Release date: November 19, 1976
• Director: Mario O’Hara
• Starring: Nora Aunor, Bembol Roco, Christopher de Leon
• Genre: War, Drama
• Star rating: 4/5

Some of the best films tend to lean on war. Mostly, they focus on the glorification of the victories. Others pay tribute to the sparse magnanimity of mankind. But few would shed light towards the victims of war: human beings made undignified by the licentiousness of man, and often, one would hear of such despondent tales in those caught in the middle of battlefield such as the Filipino.

Where the West can take pride in the victory of D-Day or the Siege of Hitler’s Berlin, the once shining Pearl of the Orient only holds shame and despondency, from the agonizing Death March to the destruction of the beloved Manila. There is not one iota of national gratification for the countrymen, as cinematically embodied in Mario O’Hara’s Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (1976).

For the cinematic genre of war to tread on the aspect of religious virtue, it is such a rarity. For director Mario O’Hara, the reason seems simple: it is borderline non-existent and vanishes into thin air. To the adherers at the fringes, it is understandable to question the presence of the Divine in a conflicted period when it does not seem to exist, but perhaps it is best to understand this through comprehending when and how He is absent. Catholicism calls us to bring the Kingdom on Earth; what happens, though, if we do not?

“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”

Jesus, Gospel of Matthew

The world may start as innocent as the young Rosario (played by Nora Aunor) while danger looms closer and closer, yet like most of her family, she trusts in resilience and faith, hoping in the protection of the benevolent God and the safeguard of the great world powers, yet sadly, what can take a lifetime of prayer to build and keep the faith only took three swift years of conundrum to strip it away. But why? Because that same world turned different.

In war, the rules can change; virtue need not apply.

In war, it is not a fight for mankind. It is mankind for himself.

In war, loyalty is key, an easy shortcut to security.

But it can also be the Achilles’ heel, a subtle admittance to betrayal which in turn means risking death. What a cruel irony!

Yet for all its harsh pessimism, what is there to gain from Mario O’Hara’s magnum opus? It may at first glance be a product of the times, a seemingly despicable call to abandon devotion in the face of dictatorial rule, but it cannot be. If anything, O’Hara may have offered to us a warning sign. In the efforts to refuse adversary, the conditions that were forced upon us can transform us into the very “animals” we despise, and before we knew it, we watch in horror as mirrored in Rosario’s eyes petrified as her fatal destiny falls into the hands of her neighbors while the figures of the saints ostensibly stood still and watch helplessly her demise. Thus, it reveals the most compelling nature of war: how the true evil can come from those closer to home.

Then, the film concludes in ambiguity like a rhetorical inquiry. It asks: who are we in the face of strife? Are we like the blinded man, the most downtrodden, yet still steadfast in belief, or are we like the townspeople, easy to forsake goodwill and conceded to vengeance and anger?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

• Release date: September 8, 1999
• Director: Sam Mendes
• Starring: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari, Chris Cooper, Allison Janney
• Genre: Drama, Comedy
• Star rating: 4.5/5

Written by: Jomar Fernandez

As far back as our childhoods go, the world mostly places America at a high pedestal as a grand example of a great country to live, and why could it not be? When you think of the best civilized American cities, the following images come into mind: grand office skyscrapers that dominate the downtown skyline, the picturesque views of quaint suburbia, portraits of happy and satisfied families living the so-called American Dream.

But behind every image lies a meaning; in this case, it is a sinisterly constructed one that conceals the actual dissatisfaction of its people and the corrupted values of a powerhouse nation. Even as far back as the millennium’s end, there were some subtle expressions of one’s disenchantment with the quintessential middle-class life, yet no film was able to show this so bluntly than Sam Mendes and Alan Ball’s American Beauty (1999).

“Our marriage is just for show. A commercial for how normal we are when we’re anything but.“

Lester Burnham

The film well exemplifies irony and sarcasm in almost all its cinematic elements, from the posh production design, to the varying tones of character dialogues, to the complex characterizations, all with the purpose of yanking off the veils of seemingly perfect American bourgeoise lives of the “sedated” father Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), the “bloodless” matriarch Carolyn Burnham (Annette Benning), the awkward daughter Janie Burnham (Thorna Birch), the enigmatic love interest Ricky Fitts (Wes Bently), the promiscuous friend Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) and the masculine strongman Col. Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper).

We see an avaricious home, a successful product of ambitious work of the Burnhams.

We see the man of the Fitts household ruling it with structure and discipline.

We see the sultry American blonde, the embodiment of feminine beauty.

These are the face values of beautiful modern standards…except they are not. If anything, it is pretty ugly.  

It requires high maintenance and cruel authority to keep up with the image of success.

It perpetuates insecurity for one’s own being and submissiveness to the norm.

It inhibits mutual, intimate, and candor relationships.

But most of all, it is all fake: arbitrary constructions of perfect living. And the worst part of it all: we boldly deny it.

“My dad thinks I paid for all this with catering jobs. Never underestimate the power of denial.“

Ricky Fitts

So, how is life worth living, then? What is a beautiful life? The answer the film offers is not as complicated as it may seem; in fact, chances are, you have already lived through it (or maybe you will experience them one day).

It is the sense of one’s comfort that heals you from your vulnerability.

It is the memory of compassion that goes with growing with your beloved ones.

It is the feeling of wonder that flows through you in even the most mundane of objects.

That is the beauty of life, found in the simplest, most ubiquitous and the freest of places and experiences. Sure, there may be some needed moral limits to it, but when one way of living stifles one’s personhood from their fulfillment, it brings pain to hold back.

Yes, it is human to be easily duped by our own perspectives. We are obsessed with the delicacy of the roses that we often dismissed the thorns that come with it. Our sense of reality is gullible to the deceptive framing of a window view or a videotape. Still, it is also human to yearn beyond the despicable humanity, and perhaps sanctuary is found in the ineffable, personal experience juxtaposed over the convolution of worldly schemes.

Thus, the movie encourages, if not challenges, its dearest viewers. Think harder. Look closer.

“But it helps me remember… I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.“

Ricky Fitts

• 

• Local release date: December 20, 2019 (Philippines)
• Director: J.J. Abrams
• Starring: Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac
• Genre: Adventure, Action, Science Fiction
• Star rating: 3/5
  

Written by: Jomar Fernandez

Concluding one of the most well-acclaimed and ubiquitous film series can be both bittersweet and daunting. It takes finding the just finale for our beloved heroes, a story to finally tie up loose ends, and, occasionally, the ambiguity of a possible continuation of the saga

All of these are easier said than done. How much more when you face high anticipation for one of the most awaited movie trilogies of the decade: The Star Wars sequel trilogies? It is no secret that the past two releases polarized the most ardent of followers. The Force Awakens (2015) was somewhat lambasted (albeit still praised) for being a sort-of redux of A New Hope (1977). The Last Jedi (2017) was either gravely hated or critically lauded for going beyond accepted canon and subverting expectations. This now leaves the makers of the final chapter, The Rise of Skywalker (2019), with a mounting task to finish quite a divisive saga on at least a satisfactory note. Did it deliver?

Face value shall eternally be the Star Wars films’ starring quality. The lightsaber fights to the death. The clash of the leagues of warships. The exploration of the different worlds of a vast galaxy. One cannot imagine Star Wars without all of these, and to no surprise, it obviously delivers on that aspect. Sadly, it is this very aspect used to conceal and compensate for the convolution that is its narrative direction.

Adored or abhorred, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi (2017) was certainly a radical shift in direction for the Star Wars lore, leaving behind a vast possibility to explore more of the intergalactic universe and to mature past its Skywalker roots. With this, J.J. Abrams is placed at the crossroads: will he continue developing Johnson’s audacious themes of change or will he keep treading on conversant roads? Unfortunately for Abrams, he does not take the dauntless route, and therein lies the apparent problem with The Rise of Skywalker (2019): its dependence on the saga’s past elements inhibits the cinematic universe’s need to endure as a widely inspiring and constantly evolving narrative.

Even then, more shortcomings plague this film due to its indecisiveness, from the confusing motives of the antagonist, to the uneven pacing of events, to the rushed introduction and utilization of side characters, to the coerced character connections, and so on.

Despite all this conundrum, however, it did achieve its intended goal: to give the Skywalker saga the satisfying conclusion it deserves. Bringing back its nostalgic elements and joining forces with its contemporary components give that familiar, cathartic feeling of triumphantly rising against the dark side of the Force. The filmmakers may not be perfect with their creative process, but they certainly offer it with the respect that its traditional tale of heroism merits.

So conclusively, how does The Rise of Skywalker fair? Well, it has its honorable and understandable intentions, yet its execution leaves much to be desired. This film will not guarantee the unanimous approval of its fervent audiences, but surely, the intergalactic tale has finally concluded, for better or for worse.

I have always loved film since I was a child. It would almost be a regular family thing to go to the cinemas every Saturdays. It didn’t matter what film; it’s just for the sake of getting in the theater and watch.

I remembered how our house would have both DVD and VCR players when I recollected the CDs and hand-me-down tapes for Christmas, and the nostalgia would just hit me.

Then, for some reason and at some point in time, I told myself, “I want to learn more.” There was something more about the film that meets the eye, and learning that expanded my horizons and understanding what was in front of my screen.

Still, however, I wanted more.

Sometimes, there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it

Ricky Fitts, American Beauty (1999)