Independencia is a playground for Raya Martin’s tricks

The opening scenes insinuate a night of romantic interlude: the strumming of a guitar, beautiful Filipinas of a certain period daintily fanning themselves with embroidered abanico and men serenading them. A distant blast shatters the music-filled night, and so begins Raya Martin’s movie, Independencia. A movie that begins with an explosion sends a message that something is shattered. Indeed, Martin attempts to shatter some stereotypes about movie making, especially in the Philippine context, by using techniques that interfere with the flow of the narrative. In the movie, part of Martin’s project, I think, is to engage the viewers of this film in a non-passive way. He doesn’t want to take them along a wonderful joyride of scenes; it seems that such is not the framework he has in mind for Independencia. Instead, he involves the viewers in a way that makes them think critically about the filmmaker’s intention. The relationship among the filmmaker, the movie, and the viewer is thus altered. Martin engages the viewer in a way that makes them ask questions, which don’t necessarily have answers because it is evident in the movie that Martin is not the kind of director who wants to hand out answers. What Martin hands out in the movie are cues when he wants to engage the viewers using his ploys, to keenly observe what is happening not only to the characters and the story development, but also to what is being done to the movie by the filmmaker. For instance, as the mother and son characters -- played by Tetchie Agbayani and Sid Lucero -- make their way deep into the woods, Martin’s camera work slowly reveals to the audience glimpses of a painted forest which he uses throughout the movie as a background. The painted forest is as fake as fake can be. This ploy is jarring for the audience, and Martin succeeds in making the audience feel uncomfortable. It is disturbing to the eye, which instantly recognizes the background to be unreal. But this is one of Martin’s clever tricks. Another trick is this: the moon that shines upon the characters at night is not a moon but what seems to be an out of focus camera staring at a distant light bulb. Martin doesn’t romanticize the moon. By doing so, he creates a situation where the audience is able to think: Is the director messing with me here? How dare he put that fake background of a forest right under my nose? But in doing so, Martin shatters his audience’s natural tendency to suspend disbelief. Instead, he gives the audience an opportunity to ask questions about what is real, what is fake, and ultimately, what is make-believe. As a director, what he seems to enjoy doing in the film is to indulge in his propensity to keep pushing the envelope. There is a scene in the movie where a character ‘breaks the fourth wall’—the character, conscious of the presence of the audience, looks at the camera and addresses them directly, as though talking to them, urging them to do something and not just be passive watchers. Martin is a playful storyteller and he can’t keep himself from tinkering with various palettes of non-color. The black and white gradient of the movie shifts from nuanced shades of black and white to something that’s a bit greenish to something bluish. Sometimes, the moving images are polished with shades of sepia. He does this throughout the movie. These playful techniques somehow convey the idea that the filmmaker is foisting his presence on the viewers, as though telling them, “watch me play with hues." He does this to the extent that the director himself, in a sense, and although invisible, becomes a character in the movie. In the acting department, the main cast -- Sid Lucero, Tetchie Agbayani, and Alessandra de Rossi -- turn in competent performances, though the movie is not a vehicle for an acting award for any of the actors. It can also be argued that the main character in the movie is not one of the main characters played by the actors, but the movie itself. The movie calls attention to itself, especially to its making. There are scenes where Martin makes good use of subtle insinuation. In the scene where the character of Sid Lucero gets lost in the labyrinth of the forest, no words are used. Instead, Martin locks the frame and makes the character go back and forth into the frame—Lucero enters from the right, from the left, and from behind a thick wall of leaves. And to drive home the point, Martin makes the actor remove his shirt and wear it again inside out—a folk belief among Filipinos that when one is lost in an unfamiliar place, one must wear his shirt in reverse to find his way back. Another scene where Martin makes use of insinuation to convey what’s happening is when one of the character dies and there is just the sound of flies hovering nearby. In most of Philippine cinema, scenes that imply instead of explain are rarely used by directors. I don’t particularly like scenes where the director seems to be explaining what is happening instead of simply allowing the scene to unfold for the viewers. Martin seems to follow the adage ‘show don’t tell’ and rightly so. The shrewd use of sound in the movie gives the viewer an enhanced appreciation of the story. One doesn’t even have to listen intently. The sound jumps out of the cinema audio system in full force and vibrant with life. Throughout the movie, sound is made more vivid, clean, and crisp. The sound of rain sounds just like the real sound of rain. When the rain has petered out in the forest, the sound suggests so - you can hear it softening until it becomes almost a whisper. Martin has a thing or two to teach other Philippine directors on how to effectively make use of sound in telling a story. Independencia is a movie that should be seen with a fresh pair of eyes. To use old ways of seeing in order to view the movie is to limit one’s capacity to understand and appreciate Martin’s ploys and tricks, which are essential for his project. To dismiss the movie as pretentious would be an argument that Philippine cinema can no longer be reinvented, or at least be shaken up somehow. - GMANews.TV