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D ecem ber 31, 2014
The harsh realities o f life in Manila are depicted in a scene from ‘Metro Manila.’
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PHOTO COURTESY OF CAPTIVA ClNEMA DISTRIBUTION
Confronting Harsh Realities
Third world drama ‘Metro Manila’ one of the best films of 2014
O pinionated
J udge
I saw "Metro Manila" back in February at
the Portland International Film Festival and
was so blown away by it that I hoped, against
hope, that this taut and carefully constructed
tale of a Filipino family trying to survive the
harsh realities of life in Manila might actually
get a U.S. theatrical release, though the com
mercial prospects for a tale in Tagalog seemed
doubtful. My hopes failed to materialize, but
the film is now available on Netflix and iTunes
and Amazon, and I'm determined that every
one should see it. It's one of the best films I
saw in 2014.
Y ou wouldn't necessarily get that from the
film's marketing or from reading the reviews.
It's marketed as an urban thriller, and that is
the focus of the praise it has garnered (which
in J i i x , i
D \ ri i i \ O ki e g \
is less than it deserves, in my view). The latter
part of the film does indeed turn into an
intricately plotted, life-and-death crime story,
but the film derives its power from the human
story at its center, a story that many critics
seem to have dismissed as pedestrian.
Its protagonists are Oscar and Mai, a
loving couple with two small daughters who
have been eking out a living farming rice in
a remote province. When the economics of
rice farming become untenable, they quite
reasonably decide to move to Manila to find
work. They are used to hard work, and both
are strong, smart, and determined. But noth
ing can prepare them for the harshness of life
in the city, and the cruelty of the people and
circumstances they will encounter there.
There is nothing clichéd about the film's
depiction of the couple's circumstances; we
are hardly swimming in movies that sink
deeply into the harsh realities of life in places
like this. The film shows us what kind of
people Oscar and Mai are and what fuels
their choices. We see how they work to
gether, how they respond to setbacks, how
they attend to the needs of their daughters.
Their love for each other is simple and spe
cific.
They are duped out of most of their mea
ger savings almost immediately upon arrival
in Manila. It is clear that their naïveté is bom
of lack of experience; no one would expect
the harshness of what they encounter. Mai
is forced to take a job in a go-go bar, her
loveliness her only marketable asset in this
place. She stolidly submits to the reality of a
situation that she clearly finds repugnant;
though Oscar takes it as a mark of his own
failure to provide, she tells him, simply,
"Sometimes the only thing left to hold onto
is the blade of a knife."
After not getting paid for a day of honest
manual labor, Oscar appears to luck into a
more lucrative and dangerous opportunity:
he takes a job driving an armored car through
the streets of a city whose extremes of wealth
and poverty are far beyond what most Ameri
cans can imagine. His seeming benefactor is
Ong, who helps him through the application
process and takes him on as his partner. But
before long the story moves from drama to
thriller as the stakes of Oscar's situation
escalate, and Oscar soon finds that he must
fight past his own revulsion on occasion.
Ong, with his fast talk and ready laugh, is
Oscar's guide to the ways of this world. His
advice to Oscar to "stick your finger down
your throat" (mistaking Oscar's despair for
physical illness following a night of manda
tory hard drinking with his colleagues) feels
laden with significance.
I was surprised to learn that the film's
director, cinematographer, and screenwriter
continued
'W '
on page 12