The Philippine Online Chronicles

Brillante Mendoza knows how to inspire extreme reaction.

Kinatay, his second consecutive attempt at the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, has drawn both admiration and derision from the critics who “either love or hate him.” Some have gone on to describe the movie as “compelling” and “a tour de force,” while others have called it “apalling” and “Cannes' worst film.” Either way it's a queasy watch, even for those with strong stomachs.

Mendoza is no stranger to mixed reviews. His film Serbis, which also vied for the Golden Palm, became something of a mini-scandal at Cannes last year due to its graphic depictions of sex in a run-down porn theater, disgusting overflowing toilets, and the act of a man puncturing a boil in his rear with a Coke bottle. Although some balked at the grossness, others appreciated its visceral approach to the realities of working-class Filipino families.

Among Mendoza's other works are Masahista, which won the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno International Film Festival, and Cannes showcases Foster Child and Tirador. All are forages into the rich, ugly, striking world of lower-class Filipinos, brought to the screen by cinema verite techniques. Mendoza's movies don't look like movies. You won't find big actors or big-budget special effects in them. Instead, they look like documentaries or cleverly-shot home movies. This underscores Mendoza's attempt to hold a mirror to reality, in all its blunt harshness. Though his achievement of this in Kinatay is, as always, subject to split opinions.

Casual violence

Kinatay is a dark, painful tale, based on a true story, about crime and corruption in urban Philippines. It isn't meant to reassure the audience, or introduce a moral lesson. What it presents is the journey that transforms men into monsters.

The celebrated director takes the audience into the harrowing story of a young man named Peping. Daytime finds him getting married at a group wedding, and then going through his day as an up-and-coming policeman. He also does small jobs for criminals to make money on the side. He then receives a text message from a mob boss who offers him a higher amount to take on a different assignment. The job is to teach a lesson to a prostitute who has not paid the gang her dues.

As night falls, Peping and other members of the gang kidnap the woman, who is then beaten, raped and murdered. Her body is cut up and then disposed of by throwing the parts out the window of a moving van. Peping did not know she would be killed. At the same time, he is unable to stop it from happening. The next day breaks and finds him an entirely different person from who he was before.

The grittiness of the storytelling and the explicit use of elements that are unpleasant to the senses, such as the cacophony of traffic, explicit gore and lengthy scenes shot in bad light, are all meant to bring home the harsh truths Mendoza sets out to tell. The movie is purposely disturbing.

Mendoza polarizes Cannes

At Cannes, the movie's screening was met at the end by both applause and boos. Wildgrounds immediately came out with tweets about Kinatay. “First big boo of the festival...” one user commented. “Mendoza ticks off the Cannes crowd once again.” As one said “It's a very good film”, another countered with “...It seems kind of extravagantly pointless.”

Critics predictably jumped to either side of the fence. Strongly opposing the direction the movie took is critic Roger Ebert who posted in his blog “It is Mendoza's conceit...his Idea will make a statement...if only he makes the rest of the film as unpleasant to the eyes, the ears, the mind and the story itself as possible.” He points to the film's strong tendency to repel audiences rather than attract them.

Boston times blogger Wesley Morris also calls Kinatay's screening at Cannes a failure. He describes the film as “lifeless” and “is as close as a good director should come to current American torture-pornography”.

On the other hand, critic Maggie Lee agrees that watching Kinatay is like watching smut at certain points but insists that, “the experience compels one to watch even as one wishes to turn away.” Through being deliberately callous, Mendoza means to express what real crime and violence are like, and what is going on in the minds of those who perpetrate them.

In agreement is Sukhdev Sandhu, who says that although “most people will find Kinatay...either unremittingly tedious, harrowing or vile”, it is also a “strong depiction of modern-day life in the former American colony that some are comparing to Gasper Noe's Irreversible.”

For Mendoza, it is more important to be able to tell his story. He tells THR.com that he does not intend to put Kinatay up for a wide theatrical release because it's unlikely the mainstream audience will be able to appreciate it. Instead, he wants to bring it to film students and universities, were the audience will more likely be receptive to his style, and more importantly to his message. “There are 90 million Filipinos,” he says. “There are very few ... who would understand my films. These are the literate, the educated ones. What I am trying to do now is to bring my films to a certain group, like the students.”

And despite all the critics had to say, the director maintains that he is happy being at Cannes. “To premiere there is something I can be really proud of...It's not easy to do these kinds of films in a third-world country. It's not easy to find a producer. You often feel alone. Sometimes I would go home after editing, at about two or three in the morning so tired and ask myself, 'Is this really what I want to do?' But then I can sleep and feel happy because I don't have any regret with my choices.”


Photo taken from Something to Sing About .