Today's batch of reviews begins with two documentaries about Batanes - Vahay: The Ivatan House and Tataya: The Ivatan Boat. Both are comprehensive and talk a lot about the history, geography and culture of the small island province. Vahay is perhaps the most fascinating of the two because the film goes deep into the construction process of these houses, designed to withstand even the strongest typhoons, yet without the benefit of modern construction technologies like concrete.
The two films also pose an interesting paradox: the traditional house and boat are important cultural artifacts, but because of environmental laws meant to protect Batanes and its natural resources, these traditional things are getting harder and harder to make, since they require a decent amount of trees, stone and coral to build. The Vahay and Tataya are slowly becoming a thing of the past.
Both documentaries are informative, engaging and tailored to educate even the most clueless viewer.
Theodore Boborol's Iska follows its titular character as she tries to survive the circumstances of her life. She takes on multiple jobs to stay afloat, she has to deal with a layabout, philandering husband, and she also has to take care of an autistic grandson abandoned by his mother.
The film deftly balances misery with dignity. Compared to this year's deathly bleak Jesusa, Iska has some humor in it, and for most of the film it doesn't feel like the fates are mercilessly trolling our poor heroine for the fun of it. The misfortunes that happen in Iska's life have roots; they are a product of the system failing her in so many ways. It is exactly a film that shows how hard it is to be poor, because it really is hard to be poor; with the proper storytelling, it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.
There's one scene where Iska has just faced a major setback, and she sits in the middle of a group of UP students. One assumes they could just actually support her, maybe give the poor woman some money. Instead, they chant their activist slogans, lampshading her plight. There's a disconnect here between theory and practice: these students are fighting for the bigger picture and to fight systemic problems, but to the poor person just trying to survive, such words feel empty. Both perspectives are valid, and it's interesting to see it play out here.
Ruby Ruiz is exceptional in this film. Owing to her skill as a veteran character actress, Ruiz breathes life into Iska's character and turns her into someone we can empathize with, someone whose trials and tribulations we come to understand deeply. I have problems with the ending perhaps devolving into irony or pure miserablism, but it also helps show what happens when social support systems are gone. It's a call for empathy for our fellow man in a way, and I can get behind that.
For the characters of Ash Mayfair's The Third Wife, the lush, beautiful mountains surrounding their small village might as well be a gilded cage. Because of the rules and conventions of the time (the film takes place in 19th century Vietnam), women are married off or become servants while men do the work.
The film begins with one such girl, 14 year old May (Nguyễn Phương Trà My) as she is married off to a wealthy husband. The first few minutes are silent and devoid of dialogue, a means to immerse and to express the rhythms of everyday life. She figures out the social structure in the household and begins to lead a relatively quiet, idyllic life. But behind that idyll May begins to experience a sexual awakening of her own, and a desire for true freedom begins to form.
However, those ideas are no more than a pipe dream at this point. May soon finds out that the women in this house (and in society in general) are no better than breeding stock, no better than cattle left to die when they are of no more use. In this world, these women have no other comfort but with each other, and a sort of sisterhood forms between them. On the other hand, while she forms such a relationship with fellow wives Ha and Xuan, it soon becomes clear that they are in a race to produce a male heir for their husband.
The film gives these women a voice to speak, relegating the males to the background (in fact, the husband probably doesn't have more than 10 lines in the entire movie.) May and the other women in the film fight and struggle in their own small ways, but entrenched traditions and patriarchal systems are seldom toppled overnight. When the artifice is peeled away, the cage is stifling, and death seems like a viable option. But the film does offer a bit of optimism in the end in the form of a literal light at the end of the tunnel, a promise of better things to come.
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