We Just Have to Believe

This I have to admit: I find it hard to provide more than 10 Pinoy films which I assumed to have gone beyond cinematic excellence and thought-provoking storyline. In this age where movie outfits care for box office returns more than the challenge of producing quality films, the list of Philippine-made films that we can proudly call as our “jewel” is not that very long.

Movie outfits that make millions of money out from a single movie release should not be entirely blamed for the current state of Philippine Cinema. The lion’s share of this blame should go to us—the movie goers—who fell short in making our country’s top production outfits realize their full potential to produce an excellent film. When we continue to patronize spur-of-the-moment movies whose primary aim is just to raise money for the sake of raising money per se, these outfits continue to provide the silver screen with outputs with such cinematic mediocrity.

As of late, though, one film seems to be an exemption which broke my perception on how I view Philippine movies nowadays. Though not that very great, It Takes a Man and a Woman—which top-billed Sarah Geronimo and John Lloyd Cruz—is a surprising treat. Upon the insistence of a friend, my barkada happened to watch it last Saturday night, and I never had any regrets in spending (because wasting seems not to be the appropriate word) nearly two hours inside the cinema. Filipinos has this penchant for anything that revolves around the topic of love. Across generation, scores of songs, poems and movies has been devoted to love. All of those are sure hits.

It Takes a Man and a Woman is among these “creative” outputs but what makes it exceptional among the rest is that it doesn’t follow the usual formula. While the storyline mainly follows on the main topic of love, it creatively presented intertwining elements of struggles, of family and domestic issues, of one’s journey to succeed and the so-called Filipino Diaspora. In age where the masa audience seems to judge the movie (or make it profitable) based on how it makes them kilig or tawa, it’s nice to see a movie offering a new flavor and a movie done in such excellent and mature taste.

John Lloyd Cruz and Sarah Geronimo

As like Geronimo and Cruz, who did well in this film just like the two previous installments in this trilogy, the Philippines thrive with excellent actors. It’s just very unfortunate how the industry failed to utilize our raw talents, making them just plain second choices over those who can make people come to the cinema with just their beautiful, sometimes funny faces and formulaic punch lines. It’s also unfortunate how we as a society fail to give a platform for the rising Indie film to showcase their ingenuity in film-making.

The shape of this industry is, without a doubt, in such a bad shape. And it is declining. A report posted in abs-cbnnews.com reveals a sorry statistics. It stated: “The number of locally produced films increased slightly in 2011 but is still far below the output during the so-called second “golden age” of Filipino movies in the 1970s. Last year, 34 mainstream or studio-backed movies were released compared to only 28 in 2010, according to data from the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP). Including independently produced or “indie” films, a total of 78 Filipino movies came out in 2011, or five more than the 2010 output. In contrast, 151 foreign films were released last year, up from 140 movies in 2010.”

The thing is we deserve something better. And I know we can turn these statistics around.

The quality of our films—and its future—not just depends on the movie studios, nor the producers or the directors. The power to change this also depends on us, the moviegoers, who should demand better films from them. It’s about time we level up!

I am hopeful that in my lifetime I would it find hard to give a list of excellent Philippine Films, not because there are just few of them, but because there’s a lot of them that it won’t fit in one sheet of paper. This, too, I have to admit: Hope springs eternal. 

We're capable of greatness. We just have to believe.

Louie.