Metro Manila – the film

 

AS A MANILENO BALIKBAYAN ...

I can’t wait to see British Director Sean Ellis’ crime thriller set against the harsh dramatic setting of modern Manila. There are over 12 million in the MM region and twice as many in the wider conurbation - with as sharp contrasts between wealth and desperate povery as are to be found anywhere in the world.

Steve Rose writes in his review in The Guardian, Thursday 19 September 2013:

‘Tales of country innocents corrupted by the big city have been a staple of cinema since the silent era, but the theme is bracingly updated here, in the colourful squalor of modern-day Manila. British film-maker Sean Ellis, clearly energised by a change of scene, plunges us into this chaotic world at street level, piling the hardships of urban life upon a hopeful young farmer and his wife from the moment they step off the bus.

Within the week they're broke slum-dwellers, struggling to feed their young kids and sliding into the poverty trap. The tide starts to turn when husband Oscar lands a job with a security-van company, a development that slowly, stealthily leads the story out of social drama territory and into a crime-thriller realm. You could complain that the characters are a little thin (perhaps owing to the language barrier), but it's a resourceful, distinctive film that builds to a satisfying crescendo’.

I lived in Manila for 7 years from 1984 – 1991 and must have spent another 12 months there subsequently working on consulting assignments for my old employer the Asian Development Bank. I've seen young labourers carried dead from building sites after they fell from multi-storey projects that had virtually no work safety provisions, and naked and deranged young women splaying themselves at the passing traffic, with blood oozing from their ear lobes whence their ear rings had been ripped.

 

For all that, Manila is a city that at first seduces and beguiles with its glamour and sophistication and then, when you come to your senses and are about to turn your back and walk away, flashes a half-innocent, half playful smile that leaves you even more hopelessly in love.

 

I’ll dig out one of my poems for old times’ sake:

 

MONDAY CROSSROADS

 

The car door closes,

I step back alone

To dirty streets

And dark shapes.

 

I make my way

Warily - as

EDSA roars above

The underpass.

 

The poor bring water

To sidewalk homes

In plastic buckets

Yoked or dragged.

 

Vendors roll their mats,

Set out their goods,

Cigarettes and gum -

Trifles and trivia.

 

On a concrete step,

A dark-haired child

In t-shirt and shorts

Sleeps fitfully.

 

As dawn is rising

In the viscous grey air,

The traffic crowds

To cacophony.

 

Reddening clouds -

In the steel grey dawn

Skyscrapers emerge

In serrated edge.

 

The hotel canopy

Takes me in

Cool marble and sweet air

‘Good morning, Sir’.

 

Entering my room

There is disorder

Sheets and pillows

Thrown aside.

 

And you have gone

And with you love.

Sweet-heart stay well

As day breaks hearts.