Baler

Rating:	★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

Philippine Cinema's "Pearl Harbor"

Okay, so first off, I'm going to lay my cards on the table and say I'm potentially biased. Joem, Bok, AG and I were supposed to write the script for this movie, if it weren't for the demands of our day jobs. So, I could be kinda bitter. Although, I will say that, after seeing the movie tonight, I feel quite vindicated. We at Bodega would definitely have written a much better script than whatever that was.

But, the movie did win awards at the latest Metro Manila Film Fest, so it did have its merits.

First, the good stuff.

My salutations to the studio for finally thinking out of the collective local film industry's (very) small box. Instead of the incredibly formulaic romantic comedies (Desperadas 1 and 2), sex comedies (One Night Only, later installments of Mano Po) and product-placement only-for-morons comedies (Iskul Bukol, anything with Enteng Kabisote in it) that tend to glut the MMFF, Viva Films decided to go big, or go home. It took vision and ambition to go with a historical flick (and partly in Spanish, no less!), which takes more money and more skill to make. May other studios follow suit. Let's hope they all grow enough balls to think large, like that one local studio that attempted to make a Genghis Khan bio-pic. (Now that, my friends, takes massive balls.)

The makers of the film also wisely avoided turning the movie into a shining example of nationalistic xenophobia. (Filipinos= good, anybody foreign = bad) Dr. Dumol was given a copy of the script, and it was supposed to end with some "glory of the Philippines" bullshit. Director Mark Meily had enough sense and integrity to dump those parts. Since that screenplay guy has apparently won an award for it, he should be thanking Mr. Meily for his restraint. If he had gone the way of the script, it would have been a disaster on the scale of "Bagong Buwan".

It was also obvious that some care was taken for the film's production value. Despite the seemingly cardboard walls of the church (which shook in a way stone walls would never do), most of the sets and costumes look well-made. The attention to detail was there to some degree, despite a few goofs. For example, in the first battle of the siege, the Philippine forces had a rolling four-pounder cannon, which the real revolutionary forces at that time and in that place never had. They switched to the more accurate-looking crude cannons during the siege proper, and the four-pounder was never seen again. Also, according to the historical record, those cannons the revolutionary forces had fired only stone shot, and not proper ordnance like in the movie. Aguinaldo's army was not all that rich. But this is just an amateur historian nitpicking.

As for the acting, I really liked Michael de Mesa's friar priest. The actor playing the altar boy was not bad either. Old typecast standby Joel Torre was his usual self as he always is in historical set-piece dramas. Leo Martinez, another typecast "historical figure" actor, was surprisingly restrained as the commanding officer of the besieging forces. And, Philip Salvador had his moments as an anguished revolutionary, even if the script had him revert to old cliches from time to time. Can't be helped, I suppose.

And now, for the reasons behind the two star rating.

There was a great movie somewhere in "Baler". Unfortunately, they chose to shoot a side story instead. There's this song from Team America: World Police that went, "I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark in Pearl Harbor. I miss you more than that movie missed the point...." I think Mark Meily missed the point in "Baler". And that is behind everything that is wrong with the movie.

"Baler" is our "Pearl Harbor". And "Pearl Harbor" sucked mightily. Forget about using "Baler" as a history teaching aid. For all the touted research, "Baler" was as "historical" as Michael Bay's greatest embarrassment.

The stories behind "Pearl Habor" were already there for the taking. How would America react to being attacked on its own soil for the first time since 1812? How would people cope with impending war? What went on in the mind of the people responsible for going to war? Can a nation stricken pick itself up? But no, Michael Bay chose to expend all of the film's story capital on the riveting question of who gets to put his dick in Kate Beckinsale.

"Baler" has largely the same failures. The story here, as in any siege story, lie mainly with the suffering of the besieged. Why do they fight? What makes them hold on? Is honor worthy of death? Is disgrace worthy of life? Would we have done the same as them? Occasionally, you may veer out to the besiegers as well. Why do they fight? Are they willing to commit brutality in the name of their cause? Is their cause just? (Which can also be asked of the besieged.) But, no. All of these questions, all of this story capital, is just so much white noise in service of a cheesy love story. You'd think fanfic writer Stephanie Meyer wrote the script. Because of this, they commit numerous egregious errors.

By far, the saga's most interesting character is Lt. Saturnino Martin-Cerezo, the Spanish lieutenant who held his unit together for almost a year in the face of increasing attrition and insurmountable odds. It is his account that tells the story of the siege of Baler in the most intimate and personal manner. He or someone close to him should be the hero. Instead, because he is Spanish, his role is cast in the background. Worse, the character is horribly miscast, with typecast one-trick-pony movie thug Ryan Eigenmann portraying the man who was arguably the most literate and compelling personality in his entire unit. Captain Las Morenas is better portrayed, in that he is limited to shouting slogans and being the token compassionate Spaniard instead of having his character ass-raped. Although, Baron Geisler speaks and looks like a Japanese officer rather than a Spanish one. He probably only got the role because his name sounds vaguely German. Lt. Juan Alonso Zayas (sp?), the gallant Puerto Rican officer, has an built-in story line that could drive an entire movie. Instead, his only personal line was "let's use the boy as a human shield".

So it boils down to Jericho Rosales' indio soldier, Celso Resurrecion, and his Kapampangan friends to carry the besieged side of the story, despite the fact that almost all the natural-born soldiers had already deserted the unit by the time they took refuge in the church. So, to deal with this conundrum of coming up with storylines for non-existent soldiers, they decided to focus on the love story.

Jericho Rosales is a dependable lead, though he is slowed down by his rather painful attempts at Spanish. Guess the accents of the other Spanish speakers. Geisler's is the funniest, followed by Eigenmann's. They all speak haltingly, like its their first month out of Instituto Cervantes, and Rosales is no different. As for Anne Curtis, the female lead and love interest, she seems awfully Spanish for a Tagalog. And, her acting performance was about as good as Pinocchio on Valium...wooden as hell, without the charm. She supposedly won as "Best Actress", which probably means that the other contenders must have really, really sucked. She couldn't even make already melodramatic lines sound remotely dramatic. That's like a spoon-fed person missing the spoon. (For more comic fun, watch her ostensibly brown baby pop up a mestizo in the epilogue.)

So, in essence, you are expecting one dependable actor and one horribly over-matched actress attempt to carry a stupid storyline above other more compelling storylines happening about them. It was brutal to watch. And because they overlooked the better storylines lurking in the background, when those storylines exerted themselves, the film looked all sorts of stupid.

For example, when Lt. Martin-Cerezo continually defies all attempts at making him surrender, including throwing out a Spanish delegation, you have no inkling as to why he's so stiffly holding on to the defense of the church. The impression you get is that Lt. Martin-Cerezo is just being an ass about things, which is all the script and the underwhelming actor allow you to think. The best character in the entire story is given almost no empathy. Even the wonderful scene of the priest saying Mass for the townspeople in the midst of conflict is ruined by the lack of build up. The tensions between the townspeople and the army ostensibly out to kill every Spaniard, including a beloved priest, is seen only in small snatches. The shooting of the carabao and the fire-raid were also minimized for the sake of the absurd primary story, ruining the chance for some much-needed action to break the tedium of siege life. The American attempt to get the Spanish to surrender comes off as comic relief rather than a point of tension. The silliness of the entire movie, all due to that very fundamental mistake of supplanting the story already there with something infinitely more superficial, looms large by the time you see a puppy provide as much meat as an adult dog, or see the aforementioned suddenly mestizo child.

I really wanted to like this movie, if only to remove the bitterness of not having wrote it. But, I just can't. I hated "Pearl Harbor". There's just no way I'm not going to hate "Baler" now that I've seen it.

I just hope that the next time the local film industry attempts something potentially epic, they recognize the epic and not cram it in such a small box as a frickin' love story.

** / *****