FINALLY, A POWERFUL INDEPENDENT FILM ON MUSIC AND MUSICIANS

By Pablo A. Tariman

Once in a while, music lovers get lucky when film-makers dare do films on music and musicians which subject is always considered in the local film industry as a non- viable endeavor.

But the memorable ones from mainstream cinema are “The Pianist” which merited several Oscars for best actor (Adrien Brody) and best director (Roman Polanski) and “Shine” which also won the Oscar best actor award for Geoffrey Rush and best director trophy

for Scott Hicks.

The Pianist is based on the life of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a famous Polish Jewish pianist working for Warsaw radio, who sees his whole world collapse with the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Shine is a 1996 Australian film based on the life of pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions.The ups and downs of a musician’s life are chronicled with searing drama on these films.

(Many years back, a Filipino prizewinning director ventured to film a life of Filipino pianists and operatic singers but had to discontinue the landmark project because the producer, for one, found classical music a big anathema in the box office.)

What do we have on the local film scene of late?

It is one’s luck that last week, one was invited by the Marilou Diaz-Abaya Film Institute and Arts Center (MDAIAC) in Antipolo to a special screening of Mo Zee’s independent film, “Elegie” which stars Marc Abaya as the piano prodigy whose life wasn’t’ the same

again after he figured in a car accident.

In the film’s opening, we get to see a very supportive family dotting on their budding pianist (the young Marc Abaya was played by Gorio Buencamino,

son of Nonie and Sharmaine Buencamino) and cheering him in his first recitals. You can sense the family fixation on music because the other son ( the pop guitarist played by Jourdan Sebastian) is named Johann and the piano prodigy played by Abaya is named

Sebastian. Johann’s girl friend Helen who sings (played by Monica Llamas) get into the picture and here the film ties up a film narrative of an obsessed musician trying to live a “normal” life from the point of view of a concerned brother who – by unusual circumstance -- loses his girl friend from his music-obsessed brother.

The film shifts from recital halls to piano bars where the prodigy ended up trying to eke out a living after the car accident which saw him hospitalized for manic depression. But his kind of music is just too much for bar and resto customers whose idea of gigs couldn’t possibly come from sounds that resemble Bartok and Stravinsky. And so he lost his last chance to get a “normal” job and perhaps with that realization -- compounded by by his entrance into a menage a troise involving his brother and his girl friend – Sebastian quietly ends a tragic and lonely life.

The film uses Bach and Chopin music in the prodigy phase of the pianist and shifts to pop in the latter part of the film when the pianist turns obsessed composer. The music being hummed by Llamas in the bathroom shower scene and heard by the prodigy metamorphose into a poignant piano piece in the hands of film scorer Buencamino who added a few but outstanding original piano music in the film.

Marc Abaya as Sebastian -- the grown up piano prodigy – gave a consistently sensitive performance and his brother played by Jourdan Sebastian matched his quiet pathos. Monica Llamas who ended up as the “common” girl friend of the musical brothers was a welcome foil and hers was a natural acting that didn’t call attention to itself.. The script by Christian Vallez (co-written with the director) matched the director’s creativity and the superb musical scoring of Nonong Buencamino is another big reason to celebrate this well-made independent film.

The film was produced and directed by Mo Zee who also did the excellent sound design and the brilliant cinematography.

On the whole, Mo Zee’s “Elegie” can be viewed in many levels as a composite portrait of the Filipino artists as The Outsider in a millieu which has very little use for classical musicians. Like it or not, the film is their generation’s answer to “The Pianist” and “Shine.” Zee and Vallez have in fact given it a contemporary Philippine setting where the young can hopefully connect.

Mo Zee is a noteworthy addition to the present crop of emerging young filmmakers who can tackle the subject of the arts on film with dazzling cinematic brilliance.

In the open forum that followed the screening, director Zee and scriptwriter Vallez admitted there was large chunk of the music lover in them in this film. Initially, the film was supposed to focus on a trumpet player but their subsequent exposures to the Cecile Licad concerts in Manila made them decide in favor of a pianist. The director, by coincidence, took up both violin and piano lessons even before he ventured into films.

Director Abaya sums up the vision of her film school thus: “Consistent with our advocacy for quality film education, and, in particular, from an Asian perspective, the new Institute is established to empower new filmmakers to meet the demands of new times. That cinema is better learned and taught in the greater context of the arts and humanities is the concept upon which we anchor our core curriculum. Thus, we offer a well-rounded program to obtain for our students a deeper understanding of the dynamic rapport between cinema and life. “