Child of Debt is pretty straightforward as far as plots go. A father and child live in a farming village somewhere in India. Dad dies, and child is left with the father's debt of 300 RS. It's a grave problem that's suffered by millions of Indian farmers, and debt (among other things) is one of the reasons so many of them commit suicide.
The innocence of childhood soon gives way to the harsh realization that our main character, Subba, is for all intents and purposes a slave to his masters, and his fate had been decided when his father died. There are no more dreams to dream. Subba does not rebel against his masters; he follows dutifully, sometimes more than his masters deserve.
Things eventually boil down to a rather rushed conclusion (though to be fair, by that time, anything more and it would have devolved into over the top melodrama) and a dedication to a man trying to stop this phenomenon of debt from happening. Child of Debt presents its social cause plainly and at least that's enough to get a message through.
Zhat (or Xat), meaning The Stranger, is a film about Kazakhstan in the thirties to the fifties. A man escapes the Soviet Collectivization campaigns during those times by moving into the forest and becoming a man of the wild. Unfortunately this serves to alienate him from the community he left and any chance he had to live a normal life.
Our protagonist, Ilyas, represents the innocent lives lost during the conflict. He represents the struggle of the people who chose not to take sides during the many conflicts that took place during this period. In the meantime, his fellow village folk took sides and were drafted into a war some of them didn't want. And it was a greviously costly war. The cost of human life to the Kazakh people in the early part of the century thanks to conflicts in the neighborhood reached 5 million.
While our main character struggles to survive and fit into a post war milieu, there truly is no place for him anymore by the time the war is over. His only connection is an uncle who gives him moral support as he goes about his life, but in essence he is truly alone.
The timeline jumps forward at points and may be a bit confusing if you're not paying attention. Its pace is also slow for those who were looking for something a bit faster paced. Subtitles are not a literal translation, and disappear at parts. But The Stranger is interesting cinema, watching the tragic life of a man whose only wish was to live life free.
Hours after watching Iadya Mo Kami and I still have no idea what it was all for. It's part melodrama, part predictable murder mystery (based on the camerawork, the culprit is made obvious soon after the crime is committed) and part weirdness.
A priest (Allen Dizon) is sent to a remote village in the mountains because he fathered a child with someone else (Diana Zubiri). He then becomes involved in a murder involving one of the town's rich people (Ricky Davao). Of course comes the realization that he's not the only person with a dark past.
The movie is nicely scored and shot really nicely. It's the script that threw me into a loop. Most of the dialogue seems unrealistic and at times even weird. One dialogue in particular has our characters talking about the hierarchy of shit, which probably sounds better on paper than in practice. Many times I could hear the audience laughing inappropriately at dialogue that's supposed to be serious.
While I see that the movie is trying to make a point on how the world is an evil place, and that people are shades of gray, it doesn't express that sentiment very well. Pope Francis is also in the movie (archival footage, but still) for some reason and feels shoehorned in. And the resolution of the murder mystery is ultimately unsatisfying with twists that feel like melodrama and over the top evil antics that feel like a movie from the nineties. (Take note that a child was somehow present during this screening, which was kinda more disturbing than what was going on screen.)
Iadya Mo Kami led me in circles for almost two hours. While technically sound, by the end of the film I felt I went nowhere. I guess that could have been the point.
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