Dansiella!

Horrible movie. Don’t waste your time. And for P150, go see a real movie instead. 

pelikula:

Dysfunctional Just Doesn’t Cut It
by Jansen Musico

Magkakapatid (2010)
D: Kim Homer Garcia
S: Julio Diaz, Ces Quesada, Nico Antonio

Magkakapatid is a story of a family brought together by a tragedy. Director Kim Homer Garcia penned the script after hearing of a heinous crime in rural Batangas—a brother killing his other brother over food. Through his own investigation, Garcia discovered that the murder coincided with a marriage ceremony and funeral. This soon fueled the many arcs of his story. The first is of a mother and daughter mourning the loss of a husband and father. The second is of a barangay chairman who is too preoccupied with work to think of his own daughter’s wedding. The final arc is of a mother and her son who kills his brother.

At first, the three arcs seem disjointed—progressing at the same time and divided by parallel cuts—before coming together at the middle. This makes the pacing alive and also gives room for foreshadowing. This is also the time when the prominent character really stands out, the chairman played by Julio Diaz. For someone who has been out of the acting spotlight, his performance is controlled and effective. His strength is followed closely by Ces Quesada, who plays the ailing and distraught mother of bickering sons Caloy (Nico Antonio) and Lino (Jerald Napoles). Diaz and Quesada were probably the only two elements that saved the movie from sinking into complete obscurity.

As much as I would have really loved to take the film seriously, it didn’t give me the chance. Its first flaw came with its glaring technical weaknesses. The color grading was lackluster and the audio was horrible. Perhaps it was the rendering of the film to DVD format. These errors could be quickly resolved through repeated editing and rendering… but how about the other problems?

There were several production elements that seemed quite off. Viewers with a trained eye for detail would quickly be able to spot inconsistencies and logical mistakes. In make-up and costume, for example, how long does blood stay in its liquid form? Caloy had already been captured several hours after the grisly murder and yet the blood was still fresh on his face. A shot of his dead brother also revealed no evident traces of slashes and holes on his clothes despite the numerous stabs he garnered during the assault.

Narrative-wise, the film was complex. In fact, it was probably too complex. The story was cluttered with so many frail subplots that could have been sacrificed to make the main plot solid. Garcia should have probably focused more on giving texture to the strongest characters so that their denouements didn’t seem as laughable as they eventually turned out. Speaking of laughable, the movie also featured two characters that brought comic relief: the nosy driver (Archie Adamos) and the chairman’s second-hand man (Soliman Cruz). They would have been fine only if their punch lines didn’t murder the momentum being set up in the strongly dramatic scenes. I really wanted to feel the drama so badly on the screen, but the misplaced gags made it impossible to empathize with the characters.

Another problematic character was Caloy. Nico Antonio is a good actor. There’s no doubt to that when he played the role of the good son. But once he dove into his character’s dark side, he went overboard, taking any sense of reality with him. The dialogue did not do the film any justice as well. It fed too much overt hints about the characters at the start of the film, reducing them to cardboard puppets stuck to a script. But the biggest slap in the face came with the film’s portrayal of the local Philippine police: unprepared, unethical, and ignorant. This is either Garcia’s social commentary on our uniformed officers or just an awful mistake.

There is much promise to Garcia’s work but unfortunately, Magkakapatid is a miss. It had a great cast and a good working premise. With a little more time to review and edit the film, and much exercise of creative temperance, it could have been excellent.