Like a Boss

I picked up Lars Von Trier’s The Boss of it All from a pirated-DVD shopping spree around 4 years ago. That was a time when the pirates seemed to have better taste, because “indie,” art house, or foreign films were also boot-legged. I remember that it was on the “sale” or “bargain” rack, which suggests that it might be damaged. But I remember getting Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai on the very same rack and it worked fine.

The disc played okay, but my mistake was I thought it didn’t have subtitles or audio dubbing. For years, it was just tucked away in the shelf.

In these four years or so, parenting and other good things proved time to be luxurious. Even if we stopped watching Cable TV, we really just didn’t have that much time to spare. D. and I had to give up frequenting the foreign film festivals. I bought a copy of Run Lola Run for posterity because I saw it with her on a German Film Festival. On one of our dates, she kept gushing about her German silent film experience. We were still regularly hanging out with friends when we went to our last Spanish film festival. And we still get excited over the thought of Eiga Sai or French Spring Manila.

Nowadays, we watch an enormous amount of cartoons and Disney movies. Our little one is also a film buff in his own right. He has been very fond of having Toy Story Trilogy marathons. I must have seen the Toy Story trilogy ten times more than the Godfather Trilogy or twenty time more compared to Kieslowski’s Tres Colores.

We still see a fair amount of DVDs, but we miss foreign films and festivals probably not just because we had excellent dates or great company when we saw them. There is also a subliminal relief in going through a communal experience in a theatre, and a worldwide curiosity in cultures and a shared experience. We blur the barriers of language with delight and understanding at least while the reel projects a collective take on human drama. It binds stories, colors, action, imagination and sentiment to liberate us from a totalizing aloneness.

One July Sunday night, when the little one was asleep, we jump on the chance to have our own date in our room. We were aching to see anything that wasn’t made in Hollywood, and we were actually willing to watch something we’ve already seen from the DVD shelf.

That’s when I tried Lars Von Trier’s The Boss of it All. It had subtitles, after all. May the Nazareno bless the pirates and peddlers in Quiapo.

It also turned out that The Boss of it All was a comedy. We laughed away even we know that for the life of us we know we’ll probably never speak Dansk. As the Danish quietly language bounced off the room’s walls, there’s a film festival feel that nudged the darkness into life.

Three Series

Homeland

Described by the (the New Yorker or New York Magazine, I forget) as "24 for adults." Clare Danes may have described the Philippines as a country of cockoroaches but she sure does well as a paranoid, looney CIA agent. I forgive her. This one may really show who the real enemies are.

Suits

Don Draper has Doogie Howser as his sidecick. They all work in Ally Mcbeal's office. Another response to all the mud slinging against lawyers, or an attempt to show that not all of them are sharks in suits.

Boardwalk Empire (Season 2)

Shows about prohibition are always perfect with beer. The challenge of writers and producers is that audiences can predict plots. This season makes sacrifices to keep us surprised. It kills its own main characters, or commits transgressions against itself - that in the end seem not only believable, but logical.

Mario O'Hara has the Last Clap

We saw Mario O'Hara in Tanghalang Pilipino's The Whore of Ohio and Orpheus Descending. On front row seats, his voice was booming with cuss words. His saliva rainbowed with the halogen lights. He fleshed out his characters and they became larger than life. That's how I remember him. Mario O'Hara succumbed to complications of lukemia and passed away week ago.

I start to discover who he really was. How grand he is in real life as a film maker, actor and director who evaded fame and wrapped himself in a truly humble mystique. He won awards that he didn't accept himself, and opened the gates for Filipinos to the Cannes Film Festival. More importantly, he was a genuine advocate of social change and uncompromised, uncommercialized art while remaining among the ranks of artists/directors/filmmakers recognized only by a more enlightened, more tasteful few, myself excluded.

In the same way he declined interviews and accepting awards, maybe he would have frowned upon it now. How all the phonies, hipsters, and all the people like me who never really knew him would sympathize and pay him tribute.

But he has to understand, we are bound to give him this honor.

Days after his death, and I've been thirsting for information on what he was like in real life. I searh the net, and the accolades kept on running but never got anything he said himself. It is as though in real life, he is as plain or as unrecognized as all of us.

I wish he was on stage again, and I can be that usher who walks to him to give him flowers after curtain call. How I wish, I could recognize.