The opening scene of Grace Simbulan's A is for Agustin is that of its titular subject playing a song on a guitar. It's obvious Mang Agustin, who gathers and sells coal by trade, is a talented person, full of promise. But the social realities of Mang Agustin's situation prevent him from realizing his full potential. There are also intersecting concerns that hinder him from achieving more: he lacks a formal education, and as an Aeta, his tribe has long faced its share of discrimination. Because of his own personal desire to achieve more, and on the urgings of his mother, Mang Agustin sets off to go back to school.
It's a simple story, presented as is, yet powerfully told. There's something both infectiously charming and affecting about Mang Agustin's earnestness to learn to read and write. It's a story that has been addressed before in fictional films, but Billy Madison and Back to School this isn't. Mang Agustin tries to study the best he can, but he still needs to feed his family. The question now becomes, how can he balance his life with studies? This is a question many students face when they go to school, but here it gains extra power because of the unique circumstances at play.
There's power in A is for Agustin's simplicity. It's technically adroit presentation only manages to enhance its depiction of a simple, hardworking man who wants nothing more than to uplift his family from poverty. It's also a call for the importance of education, and how it should be a basic human right for every Filipino, young and old.
There's a textural quality to Qiu Sheng's Suburban Birds that feels tantalizing - it is a film that pulls energy and inspiration from different filmmakers, yet it stands on its own as a unique meditation on memory and forgetting. It evokes the mystery of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's arthouse films, with the rapidly developing industrial landscapes of Qiu's Chinese contemporaries, and an old camera technique seen most recently with the films of Hong Sang-soo.
Its two disparate stories weave together in strange ways: the first, a tale of surveyors tasked with finding out if a part of the city is sinking. The second, a tale of a group of children facing separation and adulthood. The first tale addresses political issues and bureaucracy (each team member has a different approach to the problem, while some would rather sweep everything under the carpet), while the second addresses issues of class (each child comes from a different socioeconomic background, one notes that his bed is hard while luxuriating in his classmate's comfy bed).
The common thread in both films is the landscape strewn out before them: the surveyors take long trips to find out if the land is level, the children walk through the quickly denuding concrete jungles that are their homes, threatened by demolition and rapid urbanization. In both cases, like birds whose migratory paths have been disrupted, they wander. Are the two stories really related? Are they separated by time? Is one story being imposed on the other, like superimposed layers on a painting? It's a mystery with no clear answers, but it is still fun to parse nevertheless.
But these landscapes, eroding and fading away like hazy memories, change and evolve over time. And in both narrative threads, the forest exists as a refuge - the last bastion of cherished memories, or a place to rest. But there is also wistful longing for friends now gone and memories lost. Suburban Birds may be slow, esoteric and obscure. It is not for everyone. But to this viewer, it is a stunning debut, an utterly magical experience.
Fly By Night is an energetic Malaysian crime thrillers that addresses ideas of class and race. By its nature and in the languages that we hear throughout the movie, it more accurately reflects the diversity of its population and culture in such a way that I haven't really seen since the early to mid 2000's with the films of the late Yasmin Ahmad.
It has all the hallmarks of a great crime story: a family based extortion ring, a cool and collected boss, a trusty lieutenant, a rebellious younger member who is way over his head, an over the top villain (who seems to be channeling Jared Leto's Joker,) car chases, buckets of gore, violence aplenty.
It's fun watching plans go awry, subplots piling up one after another until it all violently explodes in our faces. Perhaps the disparate plot threads could have been tied together better, but I'll take what I can get. Genre fans will eat this up and its easy to see why. Despite the stylistic influences, the film remains uniquely Malaysian.
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