Movie review: ‘Mga Anino ng Kahapon’ is a realistic look at schizophrenia

The story of the film "Mga Anino ng Kahapon" (Shadows of the Past) actually began for me nearly two years ago. One Saturday in late July, I was asked to cover an event where a visiting South African psychiatrist talked about the value of injectable drugs for schizophrenia patients to a group of psychiatrists. (Here is the resulting article.)

What was eerily coincidental in hindsight was that this happened to be on the last weekend of Cinemalaya, a festival where director Alvin Yapan made a splash in 2011 with "Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kabilang Paa". So when I got to see "Anino" early in December of this year, many of the talking points from Robin Emsley’s 2012 lecture came flowing back almost in logical order. It turned out that the same pharmaceutical firm was responsible for Dr. Emsley’s visit and "Anino".

The challenge of making a film about schizophrenia is to avoid caricature and cliché, and to Yapan’s credit, the film tends to avoid both. Agot Isidro’s acting showed the heightened sense of paranoia and delusion which schizophrenia possesses, and I found it one of the best things about the film.

I also admired how the rest of the ensemble were able to portray a family coming to terms with the illness. I noted too how TJ Trinidad’s measured anger and concern echoed what exactly he brought to the earlier 2013 film "Sana Dati".

Where it became a little more challenging was Yapan’s attempt to fulfill his brief by talking as well about the “national schizophrenia” that characterizes contemporary Philippine political discourse. By situating the story of schizophrenia against the backdrop of Martial Law’s legacy, the role of the military, and the communist insurgency, Yapan wanted to show that the desire for paternalism (by both right-wing and left-wing politics, I must add) vis-à-vis a desire for freedom produced a disorder of sorts in our politics. That I can agree with. But how he showed it was one of the weaker points of the film. Without spoiling anything, I must say that the challenge of using dialogue to make one’s point is that the audiences who may not be paying attention will not get it.

One thing worth noting here, though, was the film’s music. One of the discoveries of 2013 for me was Denise Santos, the film’s composer, whose work made some difficult film material easier to bear, but with varying results. Those who follow the independent music scene may know her as the pianist of the fusion-jazz ensemble Hidden Nikki, but her guitar-driven score, dwelling mainly on repeated riffs and themes as accents, reminded me a bit of a lesser-known ensemble with which she was involved, the post-rock group Bones Like Snowflakes. This was so far the best score she has done, as the understated way in which the music wove in and out of scenes helped heighten the drama of the film. Unlike her fellow female film composer, the equally prolific Teresa Barrozo (who worked on Yapan’s Cinemalaya 2013 project "Debosyon"), Santos has not been as fortunate in the quality of the films on which she has worked, but what she has done so far has shown some promise. It is to her lasting credit that the film’s music drew the attention of the Cinema Evaluation Board, which mentioned it in giving Anino an “A” rating.

On balance, the film delivers on what Yapan was asked to do: to make a realistic film on schizophrenia and draw attention to the possibility that manageable treatment for it exists. As an advocacy film though, I sense that this will require the kind of treatment such a film usually gets, which is quite a bit of explanation. Yapan and his team have their work cut out for them, because without the kind of by-the-numbers message on the subject which I got from listening to psychiatrists talk one Saturday morning, this film may leave people asking questions that deserve answers in the after-film Q&A. — BM, GMA News

"Mga Anino ng Kahapon" (Shadows of the Past) was part of the 2013 Metro Manila Film Festival New Wave program, highlighting new work by independent filmmakers. The film won a best actress nod for Agot Isidro and a special jury prize at the MMFF awards last December 27.

The views expressed in this review are the author's own.