In the Clouds With Feet on the Ground

By Jan Philippe V. Carpio

This review of the film Angels will focus on the most important aspect of the art of filmmaking that is often taken for granted: filmmaking as a form of truth telling.

Most films generalize experience. Rhetoric and razzle-dazzle push emotional truths into the background. Characters deliver sermons and spoon feed a film's ideas. Technical obsession reduces deep feelings into flashy camera movements or editing tricks. Angels refreshingly makes attempts to move away from these limiting presentations of life.

Several honest moments arise from the film. For these moments alone, it deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.

The fortunate witnesses to these moments packed the U.P. Film Center on March 14 where the film was screened as part of the 14th International Women's Film Festival. The film had premiered earlier at the 2001 Cinemanila International Film Festival as part of Star Cinema's now defunct digital film division.

The gap between the two public screenings puzzles me. I wonder why Star Cinema does not push for a wider release of the film. Its digital video format may limit its screening venues, but Star Cinema can always transfer it to the standard commercial screening format of 35mm film or find other alternative public screening venues.

I do not wish to give away the entire experience of the film. Though I will need to cite specific scenes to illustrate the film's honest moments.

The film bases itself on the true-to-life story of the Gonzalos family. It leaves traditional story structure, and instead documents the day-to-day living of a family where the father and mother are blind masseurs. It shares their happy moments, as well as their struggles.

Angels avoids most of the trappings of bad melodrama in Filipino movies. No evil forces oppress helpless victims. The film does not classify people into categories of good guy or bad guy. People here do not feel sorry for themselves, and they do not allow us to feel sorry for them. Their strength of character humbles. They try their best to get by in life. They succeed. They make mistakes. They possess a certain degree of dignity, respect and control over their own lives. In other words, they are not caricatures. They are human beings.

Instead of sitting back and making pat judgements, the film dares to enter the perspectives of these people. The filmmakers seem to actually care for them.

On occasion, the film does fall into sentimentality and emotional clichés. Though the instances are few. Another problem I have with the film is that for a few laughs in some scenes it presents a Visayan regional stereotype in the person of a maid.

Moving on, it treats the blindness of the father Rudy (Nonie Buencamino) and the mother Angie (Gina Alajar) not as a curse. Like in Taoist philosophy, the couple converts this weakness into strength. The lives of the blind are indeed different on sensory levels, but they share the same emotional and spiritual concerns of all people. So the fact that they are blind does not seem to be in focus too much. Rather, they are unique individuals who just happen to be blind.

The film also touches on our limited perceptions of the blind. It shows how we sometimes unconsciously or deliberately perceive them as less than people.

The next door neighbor argues constantly with Angie on how to best raise her family: ten year old Jonathan (Michael Angelo Caangay), five year old Grace (Joan Tan) and mentally impaired sixteen year old Cherrylou (Wena Basco). A jeepney driver tests the "conceited" Rudy's mettle by dropping him off in harm's way at the bottom of a vehicle underpass. The couple visits a police station and the policemen on duty comment about blind people also being malibog.

This also connects with another important truth: the difference between how we perceive our own selves and how others perceive us. Going back to the jeepney scene, Rudy declares confidently to the jeepney driver that he can take care of himself. The jeepney driver interprets this as arrogance.

It is commendable that the film does not present in a patronizing manner the physical limitations of Rudy and Angie and the mental limitations of Cherrylou. Nor does it sensationalize or exploit them for an audience teardrop or two.

Instead of relying on exaggerated dramatic issues, the film finds its drama in the ordinary parts of life that most people take for granted: like a family fighting to stay together despite the difficulties. Parents that desire only the best for children. Children wishing their parents to not interfere too much with their being children.

It also tells the truth of people with good intentions, the limitations of these intentions in practical expression, and the gap between the desired result of the intentions.

A rich woman tells Jonathan that she wants to adopt him and take him to the U.S. Just this thought of leaving his family frightens and saddens the boy. In tears, he politely refuses her offer. The woman does not force the issue. In a beautiful and subtle manner, she expresses her loneliness, frustration and feelings for the boy through her own tears.

After eavesdropping on one of the family fights, the next door neighbor brings in two social workers with equally good intentions. Rudy and Angie perceive this as outside interference in their family affairs. In most other films, this would degenerate into a court battle for custody of the children. Here - inside their own living room - the family stands together in a dialogue with the social workers.

Angels points out some true differences between parents and their children. Two scenes best express them: Jonathan rails at his parents in frustration and declares that he does not understand why they are being so strict with him. Next, with the threat of separation hanging over their heads, Angie asks Jonathan for reassurance that he wants to remain with his family.

Finally, commercial movies usually pass off cutie pie midget adults as children. Angels is the first Filipino film in a while that for the most part portrays children as children.

Children at play are loose and spontaneous. They enjoy sound effects, chases, mock fistfights, mock gunfights, and video games. Their dreams are different from adults. They pick cartoons over the evening news. In addition, Angels also shows the true feelings of children.

In one scene, Angie gives Jonathan a spanking. In retaliation, he overturns their living room furniture to impede her movement. She trips on a chair and falls to the floor. Grimacing in pain, she asks if he did this because of the spanking. He does not answer, but tears of remorse fall from his eyes. He rushes to her aid.

The fact that the film stems mostly from the actual experiences of the Gonzalos greatly contributes to the level of honesty it achieves. The writing and directing tandem of Ricardo Lee and Ellen Ongkeko Marfil and the rest of the Angels cast and crew deserve much praise.

In a film industry that churns out sexploitation films that pass themselves off as art, long-winded sermons in film clothing, shallow teeny-bopper fluff, visual exercises that reach the heights of stylistic and technical brilliance but at the bottom of empty flash, Angels is a rarity. It is a film that tries its best to tell the truth about people and life, and does so most of the time.

***

This review was printed in the Entertainment Section of the The Philippine Star on May 18, 2003, Sunday.

Jan Philippe V. Carpio is a freelance writer and filmmaker. His latest film Balay Daku, the first Ilonggo full-length independent movie, like Angels, has earned praises. Check it out at http://www.geocities.com/balaydaku/home.htm.