Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (Lino Brocka)

Anguish.

Living in the modern Filipino film culture, one can't easily delve oneself deeper into it without even hearing about the film "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" and marvel about how heavily metaphoric the title really is. And then, with an unconscious compulsion, you then become curious. What is the film really all about? I, for one, initially thought that this film, although undoubtedly one of the finer Filipino films, isn't clearly one of the all-time greats. That's me and my unflinching idiocy. I then rewatched it with the aforementioned question rerunning in my mind, and then some. And just like that, I was in utter awe.

"Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" may widely be considered as Lino Brocka's seminal masterpiece, but somewhere within the corners of my mind where "Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag", "Bona" and this film are on a continual struggle for subjective supremacy, it might just be his best work.

Contrary to Brocka's trademark ambient sounds-enhanced, raw visuals-enforced neorealisitic approach to contemporary Filipino squalor that has been ever prevalent in his later films such as "Insiang", "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" boasts of a powerful human drama set within the hypocritical social and religious milieu of a seemingly quiet rural town.

Part coming-of-age film and part cinematic indignation of inhuman judgments, the film succeeded to disturb, touch and shake viewers all at the same time with its potent ability to deliver both an encompassing social commentary and an observant exploration of an adolescent's moral journey from debilitating indifference to something mirroring righteous courage and humanity.

The teenager, named Junior, played by then-rookie actor Christopher De Leon (who won a FAMAS for his performance in the film) who surprisingly handled the role like a seasoned veteran, is caught at an early crossroad; in this existential standstill, he can't seem to find his own path. Should he follow his father's successful yet women's perfume-laden path (a serial womanizer, that is)? Must he pursue a romantic, but ultimately hollow and immature commitment, or does he have the fiber to embrace the lives of two sideshow social outcasts whose deeply felt relationship overpowers their physical and mental shortcomings?

In some ways, just as how Brocka applied it to his later film "Jaguar", "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" is a film that deals with crucial choices. Even with the dream-like opening sequence alone which, in a very hallucinatory way, portrayed the emotional nightmare of an abortion, both in its procedure, the aftermath (this powerful scene prophetically answers some of the questions that were raised in the 1985 film "Hinugot sa Langit) and the psychological effect once the choice regarding it was finally made, though in the film's case, a one-sided one at that (Lolita Rodriguez's Kuala seems unwilling).

Today, mentioning the name Lolita Rodriguez is like unveiling a dignified marble statue of a true Filipino cinematic icon, and for that kind of automatic pop culture thinking, suffice it to say that it was duly in part of her legendary performance in this film as the town lunatic, Kuala. It's one of the best performances in all of Filipino cinema, and her detailed conveyance of staggering facial expressions and uncanny gestures brilliantly merged and crisscrossed both the overly animated movements of a dirty mental case and the uncommon emotional depths of a woman who just suffered too much and is begging, by way of her soul creeping silently through her eyes, for all of it to end.

Mario O'Hara's role as Berto the leper is just as tricky to pull off. Listening to some of his lines, the character may easily drift into one-dimensional nobility, but O'Hara kept it all together quite consistently and has able to display the visceral goodness of a man who has nothing left to lose but just enough time to love. Eddie Garcia also shined in his role as Junior's father, Cesar, a role he so conveniently and effortlessly played that the very polygamous core of the said character has since been iterated quite heftily in his action film roles (the 'Manoy' persona).

One of Brocka's real, unequaled strengths is his great execution of endings. The one here in "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" is a great example. Playing with the facial expressions of both the extras and the chief actors while still maintaining the emotional strain of the ending's dramatic center, the film, although can easily be branded as a communal tragedy, is still hopeful despite of its wounded premises. And as Junior emerges from Kuala and Berto's hut, carrying a symbolic purity that is a product of two individuals that were subjected to inhumanity, there's a feeling of solitary safety, and at last an emphasis, as Junior looks upon the people's guilty faces, of what was really weighed and found terribly wanting: the town itself.

FINAL RATING

Hinugot sa Langit (Ishmael Bernal)

I have always been fond of Maricel Soriano’s acting range. Be it her occasional noisy self via her comedy films, usually with Roderick Paulate, William Martinez and Randy Santiago, or her truly intense side conveyed through her penetrating eyes, facial expressions and startling line deliveries. Here in Ishamel Bernal’s “Hinugot sa Langit” (written by Amado Lacuesta), the latter is in full display, and not just for show, but a beautiful character representation of a master’s vision of morality (and an adamant view of religious zealotry and hypocrisy) and how modern living, as what Amy Austria’s character Stella stated, requires it to be compromised.

At first glance, or specifically almost half-way into the film, it seems as if it is just a melodramatic story about a young woman named Carmen (played by Maricel Soriano) whose unexpected pregnancy (and worst of all, with a married man) unwillingly plunges her neck-deep in a narrow well filled with crucial choices, heavy-handed decisions and a brooding sense of social stigma. So the film's initial conflict is this: To abort or not? But then aside from that, the film gradually becomes denser in its thematic content. Tackling such themes as death, poverty and cynicism (the same ones that Ishmael Bernal has finely tackled in his masterpiece “City After Dark”), “Hinugot sa Langit” stopped from being a simple dramatic film and turned into yet another multi-faceted exploration of a Filipino society inflicted with distorted moral values, helpless lower class struggles and meaningless romantic flings.

Ishmael Bernal was able to create a perfectly contrasting balance between Carmen’s subdued yet panicky characterization and her cousin, Stella’s loquacious exterior and cynical pragmatism. Although the Stella character seems to be a bit clichéd in its depiction of a desensitized individual conforming herself with an immoral social stream, Amy Austria portrayed the character with a mark that is her own and, considering the moody atmosphere of the film both in cinematography and motifs, is the energetic center of the film that is also the closest thing “Hinugot sa Langit” can get to a slight comic relief.

And then there’s the legendary Charito Solis’ performance as Carmen’s overly religious landlady Juling (that also puts her in the ‘Alive! Alive!’ social stereotype) that evokes suggestive villainy out of her ‘not practicing what she preaches’ type of character arc. It’s also a pure breath of fresh air from her previous, though equally iconic, roles. From her past film projects prior to “Hinugot sa Langit”, she has played the titular “Ina, Kapatid, Anak” (along with Lolita Rodriguez), the martyr wife in “Kisapmata” and the former prostitute mother in “City After Dark”.

With her playing a role that is not an immediate kin to our main character, it exemplifies freshness in characterization and also puts a mysterious depth in her portrayal of a landlady that, in the first place, should have been very well detached emotionally from Carmen’s very personal life but instead slowly takes form that is akin to a possessive mother.

Aside from the unnecessarily happy ending that is a staple for run-of-the-mill Filipino melodramas, the film is a powerful meditation not just of abortion but the overall existential sprawl of social hardships and endless hypocrisy. But its hypocrisy, as what may be the common conception, doesn’t just root out from the film’s portrayal of religion.

There’s this powerful scene near the end of “Hinugot sa Langit” where Carmen, pounding and beating angrily at Mang David (the late Rey Ventura) after he stabbed Aling Juling, exclaimed “Wala kang karapatang pumatay!”, then cut to Carmen’s half-second facial shift from the one accusing to the one accused.

Through this important sequence, Bernal unearthed the sensitive subject of ‘murder’ both in its bloodily immediate connotation and its clinically-assisted one, brought it in an ambiguous light and never sided with any argumentative absolutes. Instead, the said scene puts a simple question in retrospect and symbolically shoves it in Carmen’s very face: “Look who’s talking?”

FINAL RATING