Lawlaw’s metro

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Not since Ishmael Bernal’s “Manila by Night” – rudely re-titled “City After Dark” by Imelda – and Lino Brocka’s “Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag”, has there been a Filipino film that succeeded in capturing the dying City of Man the way Lawlaw Fajardo’s “Amok” does.

And “Amok” is all the more gripping because we can all relate to it. It is set in modern times and the characters are everyday personalities. Unlike Brocka and Bernal, who used prostitutes, pushers, addicts and such, Fajardo’s characters are like you and I and our neighbors – the homophobic taxi driver, the ex-convict, the ex-cop, the corrupt Sarge, the cheating nephew, the aging stuntman, the loving mother.

And where Bernal and Brocka used nighttime as setting to further the story of Manila’s deterioration, Fajardo tells his in broad daylight, oftentimes in searing heat, in fact. It is a stunning work that combines the gritty realism of Brocka and the whimsical, sometimes cynical, take on life by Bernal.

But more than a pious work that educates, it first entertains. It is art alright, but it has an engaging story that takes us to places we may not otherwise dare.

“Amok” was one of the major films in Cinema Rehiyon held in Bacolod that closed last Saturday. Fajardo, of course, is from Bacolod, one of the bright stars of the Negros summer workshops and another testament to the teeming pool of cinema talents from this place. He now works in Manila, but as his introduction prior to “Amok’s” screening noted, continues to imbue his films with his Negrense sensibilities.

Indeed, what makes “Amok” rich in texture and nuance may well be traced to Fajardo’s Negrense sensibilities – only an artist from the outside could see the vaunted metropolis from the perspective shown in “Amok”.

The movie is a riveting sketch of dehumanized and dehumanizing Manila, told with intelligence and subtlety by Fajardo. From frame one, using clever camerawork that takes us to the nooks and crannies, upside and downside of the city, Fajardo establishes how Manila, the city of opportunities, in fact imprisons and grips those who dare try to outwit it. He never lets go of this theme, building on it as the story progresses, with little touches such as framing the characters behind bars. This is capped by that final scene of the dying amok lying by the side-street, below the sign that says, “Bawal ang tumawid. Nakamamatay. (Crossing this can mean death).”

It is a silent but searing indictment of how the city of man traps human beings and condemns them to inhumanity. In another scene, a dying man slumps on the wall, and as he staggers to his death, a graffiti is revealed: “I am ok”, a play on the letters that initially read “am ok” – another silent scream of how people gasps for survival here, oftentimes deluding themselves that things are ok, that they are alright, when they are horribly not.

Fajardo deftly plays on a lot of symbolisms, making for a very textured film. His use of the metro rail trains, cars and other vehicles that looked funeral in many scenes brings to mind Ezra Pound’s “Metro”, the poem that had looked at trains in Europe in similar fashion.

Briefly, “Amok” tells the story of several lives that intersect in a traffic jam, and how they are affected by the amok’s bullets. In a showcase of his storytelling skills, Fajardo tells this in a structure that I guess shouldn’t be revealed publicly so people who will watch it later will fully appreciate and enjoy it.

The movie succeeds also because of its good actors who deliver memorable performances, among them Efren Reyes Jr., whose few minutes as the cop who plans an arson is full of dreadful emotions punctuated by humor at the right places. There is Gary Lim, who manages to demonstrate his descent to madness wordlessly. And then, of course,  there is our dear John Arceo, who more than creditably pulls off the role of an ex-convict who tries, without success, to prevent his friend from exacting his revenge, which triggers the explosive end.*

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