Unnecessary Fictions
posted on Thursday, November 05, 2009 in Movie Reviews
Estasyon wraps a lot of fiction around a kernel of truth. A small true story is made to be a platform for a larger commentary on devotion in this country, and a strained allegory referring to the Passion of Jesus Christ. Also, a few very true scenes shot in Quiapo during the feast of the Black Nazarene are enveloped in a fiction that doesn’t end up saying as much. Estasyon is a story of unnecessary fictions, of wonderful little bits of truth getting buried under a whole lot of excessive writing. Luckily enough, the truth does prevail.Martin (Mon Confiado) is shooting a documentary about the feast of the Black Nazarene, with the aim of exposing the practice as an exercise in religious futility, governed more by superstition than any concrete means of bettering one’s life. Along the way, he meets Christian (Christian Galindo), a young man from Laguna who wants to venture into the chaos of the procession to get a chance to touch the Black Nazarene and ask for a miracle to save his sick mother. Martin helps Christian to achieve his goal, and later goes to investigate his story, in the process making him examine his own life.
The movie is actually pretty ambitious, attempting to make parallels between the journey of Christian and the fourteen Stations of the Cross that depict the Passion of Jesus Christ. It’s a clever conceit, but it doesn’t quite work out for the film. At times, it makes the film feel inorganic, the script just stuffing in scenes to make parallels, rather than letting the story develop in a natural way. It makes the film feel a little padded, with much of the real action only really happening in the last act. The movie has a faux documentary conceit that’s a little hit or miss as well. It provides some terrific real life moments that blur the line between reality and fiction, but it also provides voiceover narration that tends to explain too much of what the film is trying to say. In general the film is a bit heavy handed and just a tad self-righteous.
But for all those flaws, the movie does end up working pretty well in the end, thanks to a rather spectacular sequence shot during the feast of the Black Nazarene itself. Most of the film has a staginess to it, a dire falseness that undermines its documentary motif. But in that one sequence, everything clicks for the movie. For a few brief moments, the film abandons all of its contrivances and starts being real, sending its main characters right into the maelstrom of religious activity as Christian goes to reach for the Black Nazarene. This one sequence is actually pretty phenomenal, and says so much more about the subject than any of the pontificating the characters do. In this sequence, the camerawork gains life, and everything just begins to click. It’s only part of what the movie is, but it really makes the film. The one consistently good aspect of the film is the score, which just does everything that it’s supposed to do in any given scene.
Christian Galindo is at his best when he’s not being told to act. He has this potent mix of charisma and vulnerability that really comes out when he’s made to just observe the world around him. It doesn’t quite work out when he’s playing his character. He plays it a little too broad, and the sincerity fades away. Mon Confiado is good enough as our erstwhile documentarian, but his voiceover narration does get overbearing. Klaudia Koronel rounds out the cast with a credible performance.
I didn’t think that most of Estasyon worked. The symbols were a little too obvious, the story just didn’t grow naturally, and its many gimmicks really just drew away from what it was trying to say. But the film makes you forget that as it really dives into its subject, abandoning all of its pretensions to simply capture a really strange moment in time, where fiction and reality meet inside a raging wave of devotion. We are always looking for truth in our movies, and for a few brief moments, this movie offered more truth than what’s usually possible. It doesn’t make up for everything, but it might just make it worth seeing.
My Rating:
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