Movie review: The grace of 'Graceland'

It will be easy to think “Graceland” is exactly what has become of our run-of-the-mill local independent films, those that are about poverty and violence, about selling this particular image of nation in the throes of anarchy and disarray. There is even more reason to think it a removed and distant gaze trailed upon this space: Ron Morales, its writer and director, is a Filipino who comes from elsewhere. It will wrongly matter to you as you enter the cinema to watch this movie. It seems to wrongly matter to the indie cinema industry in Manila, when “Graceland” finally arrives here, and there is nary a celebration.  You will then find that after the first 10 minutes or so, this movie will keep you glued to that screen and cringing in your seat. You will realize that all those preconceived notions about the indie, about the indie by a Pinoy from elsewhere, are false. Here, “Graceland” proves its particular existence as a film, to be a validation of and in itself. 

 

It is nothing you imagine it to be, even as it also takes from the poverty that this nation knows too well.

 

This is no Pinoy film that seems to consciously cater to the expectations of a foreign award-giving market (ehem Brillante Mendoza). There is an earnestness to “Graceland,” an honesty if you will, that keeps the grit and grime of Manila, the poverty that is here, as fact. Not something that is being romanced, nothing but the premise that carries much of the story through, but which isn’t the point really.

 

The point being a dead-end, one that is totally and absolutely about poverty, but also is about the corrupt and the evil, and how that spirals down to the ones who cannot but follow, who have no choice. And here is not a romance with the lack of choice either, as it is a narrative precisely on where else this dead-end leads, how the impoverished are faced with a gamut of choices, ones we can’t even imagine.

 

This is the story of Marlon Villar (Arnold Reyes), a long-time driver to Congressman Manuel Changco (Menggie Cobarrubias), who is corrupt and dirty and everything horrid you can imagine about our politicians. The story begins at the point when Marlon messes up and a story about the Congressman’s sexual exploits appears in the papers. Marlon thought he was doing something right, giving a young girl the money she earned for a night with his boss. 

 

Here is where you realize that Marlon is right. He does what is right even in as he is stuck in what is wrong and illegal, if not downright evil. He gets up every day to take care of his little girl Elvie (Ella Guevara), they say their morning prayers, he visits his sick wife in the hospital. There is nothing extraordinary about Marlon really, not if you have a sense of this working class, which we silence, pretend does not exist beyond what they do within our homes or offices. We do not care to hear where they live after all, what their problems are. We do not care much for them in fact. 

 

And this is what “Graceland” reveals about Marlon’s lot in life vis-à-vis Congressman Changco’s. It is what you find is crucial to the telling of this narrative, where crisis, the loss of their two daughters, does not necessarily mean being eased onto the same page of fatherhood. In fact it just means that the oppressions contingent upon social class are magnified in the face of crime, and the hand of the law is one that clutches the politician’s money: Detective Ramos (Dido dela Paz) is all shades of scary because he is powerful and corrupt. 

 

But these powers shift, are disrupted, given kidnappers who take control because it is not money that they want. Soon enough you realize that revenge is the name of this game, and this unraveling grips you about this film. You do not expect it, neither do you know of how far it will go, given the kind of retribution it demands. And when in the end the poor driver survives, when the unraveling reveals his unstable innocence, you are still at the edge of your seat because it is endless. 

 

This struggle, the one that is Marlon’s? It is endless. Painfully so.

 

It’s a stab at your heart really, where the knife is twisted over and over, a measure of how well-written “Graceland” is, its swift telling one that doesn’t sacrifice structure, its limited set of characters all important and crucial, its dialogue succinct, tears and breakdowns kept real and believable. 

 

But this is really also about Reyes playing Marlon, a portrayal that is sensitive without surrender, where the insistence on struggle makes sense, even when it doesn’t aspire for wealth, merely demanding that family be safe. There is nary a sense of evil in Marlon, and Reyes’ characterization carries the weight of this refusal to do wrong, and you forget completely that this is but an actor playing a man, as it is a man who exists. Because you know he does. 

 

And you watch him.

 

Here is “Graceland” and its grace: you’re pushed into that chair, told that there is nothing you can do, even as you know you must be complicit in this state of nation that creates the many versions of Marlon on these shores, watching as you only do from that comfortable seat in this air-conditioned cinema with food in your hands. It is your disgrace really, as it is this nation’s. 

 

That so few have spoken about “Graceland” and its value and success, in a country with the predisposition to celebrate every Filipino no matter that they might not even call themselves such? I’d like to think we just don’t know how to talk about the pain that is here, the one we live off every day. –KG, GMA News

 

“Graceland” is on its last day of screening today, September 18, at Robinsons Galleria Cinema 7, with 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. screenings.

 

Katrina Stuart Santiago writes the essay in its various permutations, from pop culture criticism to art reviews, scholarly papers to creative non-fiction, all always and necessarily bound by Third World Philippines, its tragedies and successes, even more so its silences. She blogs at http://www.radikalchick.com. The views expressed in this article are solely her own.