By AA Patawaran LOVE PINOY Some of my favorite films, clockwise from above: Mike de Leon's Batch '81, Jerrold Tarog's Heneral Luna, and de Leon's Kisapmata The latest I’ve seen was an entry in last year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), Ang Larawan by Lor Arcenas, which starred Joanna Ampil and Rachel Alejandro as the sisters Paula and Candida in Nick Joaquin’s Portrait of the Filipino as an Artist set to music for this acclaimed musical adaptation. I didn’t mind Julius Alfonso’s Deadma Walking, whose title I found quite clever, though I only remember it because, other than Ang Larawan, it was the only movie I caught at last year’s MMFF. The year before, 2016, was different. It was unfortunate that it failed to bring the audience into the MMFF and, as if burned, the MMFF went the complete opposite direction the following year. From a business standpoint, I understand. Has it been decades since commercial interests began to dominate the MMFF, or has it been commercial from the beginning? It doesn’t matter. The point is maybe Christmas time, a circus more commercial than any other occasion, except maybe Valentine, is no time for movies that make you think or feel deeply or confront difficult questions about the human condition, which is what the higher arts or attempts thereof are for. Meanwhile, there is also a time for movies that just make you laugh (and not from any deep, profound, or clever humor, though why not?), or escape to inanities, or just ogle at the big stars. Maybe MMFF is just that time. But in 2016, it was the first time in years that I watched all the MMFF entries, except for Alvin Yapan’s Oro, due to the controversy, which might or might not have been confirmed, over the sacrifice of a dog to drive home a cinematic point. I also didn’t watch the Nora Aunor-starrer Kabisera, co-directed by Arturo San Agustin and Real Florido, but only because I ran out of time. But everything else I was happy to have watched, especially Jun Lana’s Die Beautiful, Babyruth Villarama’s Sunday Beauty Queen, even Theodore Boborol’s Vince and Kath and James, yes, and Avid Liongoren’s Saving Sally. But more than the individual movies at MMFF 2016, what I loved the most about it was it took me back to when the MMFF was a trove of surprises, with gems you would not have associated with MMFF of late, although most of them were from those early years I was too young to watch movies on my own, gems like Lino Brocka’s Insiang, Mike de Leon’s Kisapmata and Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising, Marilou Diaz Abaya’s Brutal, Ishmael Bernal’s Himala, Eddie Romero’s Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?, and Celso Ad Castillo’s Burlesk Queen. All of these movies I saw much later, but I remember my elders raving about them and I remember watching many an MMFF awards night that would show snippets of the nominated performances and I would be transfixed, happily transported to the make-believe world of the movies. I try not to look back too much when thinking of Filipino movies. I know I’m stuck in eras long past, in the two golden ages of Philippine cinema, the first from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s and the second from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, or so said Teddy Co, head of the NCCA National Committee on Cinema, but there have been many recent ones over which I obsessed like Peque Gallaga’s Sonata starring Cherie Gil, Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna, and Chris Martinez’s 100. I didn’t exactly obsess over Matti’s OTJ, though I have a lot of respect for it. It was well-crafted, though in the review I posted on social media, I lamented that the cuss words that littered the movie, especially the mouth of Joey Marquez who played a cop, sounded unconvincing to me. Which, on the advice of a commenter, led me to Brillante Mendoza’s Kinatay. Wow! John Regala’s mouth was as loud and as foul as a rickety, old jeepney hightailing down F. B. Harrison. I use invectives very sparingly in my life, but I love them in my movies and, though Kinatay in many scenes can be too much of a torturous drag, like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oddyssey, it haunts me to this day. What a performance from the entire cast, especially Maria Isabel Lopez and, well, the indie-trained Coco Martin! I was in Tokyo recently and at one of the dinners I happened to sit beside young actor Rocco Nacino. Over sake and red wine, I raved to him about the movies I loved, such as Gallaga and Lore Reyes’s Oro Plata Mata, Mike de Leon’s Batch ‘81, even Danny Zialcita’s Gaano Kadalas ang Minsan?, and Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, also by Mike de Leon (though I think I only like this last one by virtue of its witty title). Rocco told me he was on the lookout for a vehicle in which to display his craft as a serious actor. He said maybe he should do more indie films. I said maybe not. It’s one thing to prove your mettle in an indie film, but to prove it in the mainstream is a much bigger deal, like Jericho Rosales winning the Best Actor Award in Dan Villegas’s romantic tragicomedy Walang Forever against John Lloyd Cruz in Erik Matti’s Honor Thy Father, a material so serious it could have been made to reap awards. Now I am a fan of Cruz, but I think Rosales’s award for his performance in Walang Forever was much deserved. I do hope we do not leave mainstream movies to their own commercial devices. With hope, we get out of this mindset that associates independent movies with quality and mainstream movies with crap. After all, if we must set goals for Philippine filmmaking, it is in a movie made for the masses that we can make the most difference—and that’s why we need the big producers on our side.