We are a nation that loves boxing: people like Elorde and Pacquiao are household names, national icons. The country once stood silent every time the people's champ had a fight. Their battles become our battles. But for every Pacquiao that succeeds against all odds, thousands more fail. The sport of boxing is violence contained in the four corners of the ring, but as Christian Paolo Lat's Ginhawa shows, it spills out beyond those four corners, creating a monstrous machine that takes in idealistic young men and spits out broken bodies.
The film follows Anton (Andrew Ramsay), an aspiring boxer who meets tragedy early on in his career. This tragedy compels him to take his training seriously and he gains the attention of his brother's former trainer (Dido De La Paz). He makes steady progress but his perception of the boxing stable cracks little by little.
The official English translation of the title is Solace, meaning comfort or consolation especially during times of sadness. Although Anton meets trusted friends in his journey, he has to walk it mostly alone, even if it means leaving them behind. Beaten down by a hard life, Anton is meek, passive, making him prone to exploitation. While we see the idealized image of the poor man succeeding against all odds, that is the exception to the rule. Outside the ring, the rich take advantage of the poor, treating their boxers more like racehorses than people.
Yet these boxers endure all sorts of indignity to provide for themselves and their family. Ginhawa can also mean relief, and the promise of a comfortable life lures these people into a trap that they cannot easily escape. This oppressive, exploitative culture becomes a reflection of society at large, one that serves only those at the very top, or those who are lucky enough to escape the cycle.
Ginhawa's biggest flaw, ironically, is in how it decides to frame the actual boxing. Most of the fights are filmed in extreme closeup, the action often seen as a blur. But perhaps that is the point. This isn't really a story about boxing; it is a story of violence - of a sport built upon it and of people who inflict it on other people who do not know they have the capacity to fight back.
Alice (Max Eigenmann) works in a humanitarian NGO. She's split with her toxic boyfriend Ben (Vance Larena) when she finds out she's pregnant.
The best character studies are immersive, letting you into the personal and emotional spaces of its main subject so profoundly that it feels uncomfortable, even voyeuristic. These films find their greatness in characters that feel human: messy, complicated and far from ideal. I feel 12 Weeks belongs in this category, perhaps the best example of its kind in recent memory.
Alice's journey through her pregnancy is complicated by her relationships with the people around her. Her relationship with her mother (Eigenmann's real life mother Bing Pimentel) is strained, as it turns out she wasn't in the picture in Alice's life, and her excessive doting now may be a way of trying to make up for that. As the film delicately peels off its layers, we find that mother and daughter might not be that different in terms of circumstance after all.
And then there is Alice's relationship with Ben. It is by far one of the most uncomfortable relationships I have seen on film, because it feels so real. Ben is not overtly violent (though there are hints peppered throughout the film), but we feel the violence he inflicts in other, subtler ways. Despite being rejected by Alice, he always finds ways to worm himself back into a relationship with her. He is manipulative, cunning, and he gets what he wants. He is a red flag made human. Alice should be avoiding the hell out of him, and she tries, but he always manages to make her come back to him like a moth to a flame.
12 Weeks recognizes how society shapes a woman's decisions, in how her pregnancy is portrayed, or in how the unborn fetus is seen by others. Her decisions are ultimately her own, but they are shaped by the people around her even if she notices or not. And even here, Alice is living in an ideal: while access to abortion in 12 Weeks is available to women like Alice, here our reality it is still very much illegal. In our reality Alice would have been forced to carry the baby to term regardless of what she wants.
The last few frames of 12 Weeks superficially feels disconnected from the rest of the film, but I see it as a symbol of anxieties passed on from generation to generation, from mothers to their daughters and granddaughters, a symbol of an uncertain future that doesn't feel like they had much choice in. It is a profound sense of loneliness that is exceedingly hard to articulate, but is conveyed rather masterfully here.
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