Review: Waiting for '100: The Musical!'
abs-cbnnews.com | 07/28/2008 4:42 PM
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By RAMIL DIGAL GULLE
abs-cbnNEWS.com
It's strange when you think about it: the Chris Martinez indie film entry at the recent Cinemalaya 2008 won the most awards, five in all. These include Best Direction and Best Screenplay (both for writer and filmmaker Chris Martinez); Best Actress for Mylene Dizon who played the lead character Joyce de Leon; Best Supporting Actress for Eugene Domingo; and finally, the Audience Choice Award for getting the most votes from viewers who chose it as their favorite. But it did not win Best Film.
Chris Martinez's citation from the jury explained that he won Best Director for "excellence in technique and effective depiction of a young woman coming to terms with her mortality." Likewise, Mylene Dizon was cited by the jury "for her moving portrayal of a woman raging against the dying of the light."
So why didn't "100" win Best Picture, then? To be honest, I am of the view that the answer to that question isn't important. "100" on its own is a wonderful experience, partly because Chris Martinez shot it so beautifully, and partly because it is quite unlike what you would usually expect from a movie about a character's struggle with his/her mortality.
Curiously, whenever I tell someone that "100" is about a woman who accomplishes 100 things or almost 100 things before she dies from terminal cancer, the person invariably says, "Oh. That's like 'The Bucket List.'"
No, it's not. There are no old men here. There's no cancer-ridden billionaire helping a cancer-ridden blue-collar worker. "The Bucket List", ultimately, is an Old Rich White Male fantasy that tells us money can buy redemption (be it moral or social). "100" commits no such travesty.
Besides, in "100", Mylene Dizon has a love scene with TJ Trinidad. In "The Bucket List", Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson do not have a love scene together--unless they did it somewhere off-screen, on their way to the Taj Majal. Okay, enough of that, Roger Ebert already skewered the film much more skillfully.
However, "100" does run the risk of painting a much-too happy portrait of cancer, and too optimistic a view of a dying cancer patient--it nowhere nearly commits this folly as terribly as "The Bucket List", but the risk is there.
Thankfully, "100" ultimately does not make light of cancer nor of a cancer patient's plight--in fact, it's that highwire walk between hope and pollyannish naivete that Martinez so amazingly succeeds to pull off.
Busy dying
Without giving away too many spoilers, here's a plot summary:
Sexy, single, young, ravishing and successful Joyce de Leon is busy--not with her life, but with her death. Since being diagnosed by two doctors as having terminal cancer, she has resolved not to fall into despair, but instead take life in and seize her remaining days with the same fierceness, discipline and passion that she directed toward her successful career.
Joyce doesn't tell anyone that she's dying--not her boss, not her co-workers, not even her mother. She does, however, tell her lifelong friend Ruby (Eugene Domingo) since she will need help in the coming days in accomplishing all the tasks she sets for herself.
There is little or no introspection on the part of Joyce in the film. We don't see her contemplating the meaning of her life or the unjust reality of her oblivion coming much too soon. Instead, she struggles through the horror of her imminent demise with whatever energy she has left, smashing her way through the stages of grief (Denial, wham!; Anger, Kee-rakk!; Bargaining, Ka-blam!; Depression--you get the idea) fiercely head-on.
Along the way, we learn a few things about Joyce. She's angry at God for taking away her father who died of prostate cancer. She's angry at God for taking away Emil, the love of her life, who for reasons we do not know till the very end, broke up with her. We also learn that, heartbroken with Emil's abandonment, Joyce has chosen to be the mistress of a co-worker, Rod (played by TJ Trinidad).
One of the first things Joyce does is break up with Rod. In fact, that's what the post-it note says: "Break up with Rod (Be a good girl na)". Post-it notes stuck on Joyce's kitchen wall help us keep track of the frenzied pace by which Joyce lives the end of her days on earth. She seems even busier with dying than she was with being alive.
She makes a trip to Hong Kong with Ruby and crosses off more items on her list there. They watch a Vilma Santos movie marathon together. They have fun in Malate. They get their hair done, cook, buy gifts, etc. During one hairy moment after their Hong Kong trip, Ruby in a panic thinks Joyce has died in the backseat of their car.
Dizon rising
Mylene Dizon gives the performance of her life in this movie. In fact, once "100" is marketed and promoted properly, and released in cinemas--we can safely predict that she would have established herself as one of the most important actresses of her generation.
She already is but majority of the Filipino audience don't know it yet, because "100" has not been seen around so much. Once it is, it won't be surprising for Dizon to go from sought after indie actress to a real star--the type with more substance, relevance and cultural importance than just kilig-and-pakyut-fuelled hype.
Dizon gives such a large performance in this movie. Even when she's just playing Joyce letting down the window shades in her condo unit to sleep (Post-it note: "Sleep All Day"), Dizon simply overwhelms your consciousness.
Throughout the time you're watching this film, your world disappears and you inhabit Joyce's mind and heart, getting swept along for the ride--thanks in large part to Dizon's juggernaut performance.
Memorable scenes
So many scenes in "100" play out beautifully--partly because of Martinez' fabulous writing, partly because of Dizon, and partly because Joyce's mother is played by Tessie Tomas and Ruby is played by Eugene Domingo; also, the crisp, nuanced use of light and shadow, the framing, the choice of scenery--all of which combine to infuse an incandescent, searing luminosity in some scenes: it's the solar clarity and intensity of Joyce's life that is at once nearing its zenith and its doom.
One scene that won't be ruined by being mentioned is the skinny-dip scene where Tessie Tomas (yes, she who played Amanda Pineda in "Champoy" and Imelda Marcos indelibly in our pop consciousness), Eugene Domingo and Dizon rush naked toward the beach in moonlit abandon. It's a scene that is significant for its playfulness and poetry--the full moon, naked women, how much more Wiccan, how much more Goddess Myth can you get?
We could mention other scenes here, but why rob you of the pleasure of seeing them yourself? "100" will be screened at the University of the Philippines Film Center on July 31st, at 5 pm.
Mortal coil
Is there life after death? In the only scene where we see Joyce and Ruby contemplating death, Joyce asks the question every person faced with death--her own or a loved one's--inevitably asks: What comes next?
Martinez answers that question after a fashion but leaves us, ultimately, with the immensity of Mystery. No one knows. Who could know?
In tackling the ultimate questions of life and death, it's remarkable how "100" avoids having to delve into the body's suffering as it breaks down and is ultimately destroyed.
We don't see prolonged scenes of Joyce's body failing--you know, losing bowel control, getting wracked with pain, etc. The film skips all of that, and focuses on how Joyce sucks on the marrow of her life and, significantly since she is a Filipina, reconnects with her family and loved ones.
It's as though Martinez wanted to focus on how Joyce makes a choice, an act of will, not to give in to despair and hopelessness. She even makes a Powerpoint presentation for the benefit of her guests at her own wake--a wake that she herself already pre-planned and set up.
Larger than life
In restrospect, a viewer may be left with this impression, one that—one suspects—has been at the back of the mind throughout one’s viewing of “100”: Joyce de Leon is no ordinary person.
And to a certain extent, neither are any of the characters in this huge film—the sensation of largeness, the feeling that “100” is painted on such a broad canvas, a mural, a tapestry, may be attributed to all the characters in this film being larger than life.
The harrowing situations they are faced with makes them weep, laugh, rage, even fulminate against each other, against fate--yes, but they are at the same time empowered with the kind of titanium backbone, the kind of hope and faith, wit and wherewithal, that we ordinary mortals inhabiting life outside the big screen could only dream of.
Does this make the characters less sympathetic? Does this erode the film’s so-called realism? I would say the opposite happens—it is because these characters are larger than life that we believe the premise behind “100”; that we root for all of the film’s inhabitants all the way. They live the lives, and die the deaths, we wish we could.
Hocus focus
It’s a “realistic” film in the sense that the narrative introduces no fantastic situations or plot twists, but it instead exaggerates the focus on these so that we see them through a magnifying glass. Take, for example, two of Joyce de Leon’s Post-its: one says, “Crispy Pata” while the other says, “Leche Flan”.
What Joyce means to do, of course, is gobble up these two iconic fiesta dishes before she dies. And how! Mylene Dizon, with either feigned or genuine gusto gobbles up a crispy pata (marinated, deep fried pork leg with the knuckles or trotters) sans cutlery.
Just look: her fingers grasping and tearing cooked animal flesh; full lips and surprisingly huge, expert mouth engulfing, swallowing, savoring brown meat; crackly, crisp pork skin getting splashed into the soy sauce-chili pepper-onion-and-garlic dip—it’s carnal gastronomy that would be porno in another context.
Your teeth hurt and throat chokes, burns with caramel overload during the Leche Flan Scene. Ever had a childhood fantasy of transporting an entire llanera of leche flan (crème caramel) through your digestive track? Mylene Dizon does it for you, taking spoonful after jiggling spoonful of the creamy, egg-y, thickly sweet, melt-in-your mouth concoction.
The guy watching beside me could only exclaim, after watching Dizon accomplish these feats, “Ano ba ‘yan?! Ang cholesterol! Magkakasakit na siya sa puso, magkaka-diabetes pa!”
It is a tribute to Chris Martinez that he makes this technique work so well in”100”, to an unbelievable yet absolutely riveting degree. It’s like watching a stage magician saw an elephant in half, put it back together, and then, with a long needle, prick it on the tip of its trunk, making the ponderous pachyderm puff out and away like a balloon, into thin air.
“100: The Musical!”
Unfortunately, I was unable to watch “Boses”. My schedule during Cinemalaya week wouldn’t allow it. So I won’t be making any case for “100” as thwarted Best Film. (And why should anybody do that, huh, really?)
I will, however, make a pitch for “100: The Musical!” The very largeness of Martinez’ opus simply begs for it to be remade into a musical. Just like “The Lion King” and “The Lord of the Rings” and yes, even “Mama Mia!”.
Imagine Eugene Domingo not just speaking but dancing and singing her lines, or Tessie Tomas, Eugene Domingo and Mylene Dizon stripping onstage for the skinny-dip scene.
We could have Gerard Salonga, Lourd de Veyra, Jet Pangan, Joey “Pepe” Smith and Ogie Alcasid create the score and libretto. “100: The Musical” could have a hook-filled, signature song like “Seasons of Love” from “Rent”.
“100” shows us the value of living large in the face of death—the literal End or just the small deaths, the annoying but seemingly fatal frustrations in our mundane existence—and of getting a boost from friends and family, a fit of bone-jarring laughter, or simply adopting a dogged refusal to let life or death bring you down.
Even though “100” is about a dying woman, it is really a very Pinoy fiesta, a celebration of life’s inevitable season of losses and slow decimations. You’d be a dolt not to see it. Again, “100” will be screened at the UP Film Center on July 31, 5 pm.
All psyched up about “100”? Go to Chris Martinez’s multiply site http://cdmartinez.multiply.com/ and watch the “100” trailers on YouTube.
