SON OF GOD Review
An aerial view of
However, Khavn and Noer, a
Danish filmmaker, instead of similarly dwelling in the hopelessness of the
severely impoverished, focuses on their crazed hopefulness. From the high
heavens, they bring down their vision to an annual event, the Feast of the
Black Nazarene, where the most faithful, who are also arguably the poorest, in
Manila converge in the grounds of the Quiapo Church to relay their innermost
desires and needs to a supposedly ancient replica of Jesus Christ, darkened by
time and circumstance.
To call this disorganized
gathering of the cluelessly good, the predatory bad, and the inexplicably ugly carnivalesque
is an understatement. Son of God, carried in an ornate throne, is paraded into
the Feast grounds by two bulky men wearing ceremonial masks. The image is too
ridiculous to be believed, but in a buffet table of Jesus-wannabes presented to
desperate men and women whose hunger for miracles can only be matched by their
hunger for actual food, he fits right in, gaining for himself a bevy of
followers.
He has also gained a critic,
a documentary filmmaker (superbly played by Noer) whose disbelief prompts him
to follow the self-proclaimed miracle worker to ultimately reveal the fraud he
thinks is happening. He asks Son of God questions; all leading to the answer he
is looking for, that Son of God is doing his act for money. Yet Son of God
answers them with creepy reverence, dodging any implication of ill motive. He
documents the miracles that occur too. A mother presents her unconscious sick
baby. The moment Son of God touches the baby, the baby bursts in motion. The
lines are blurred. Faith on faithlessness is tested. Is Son of God the son of
God?
That question is of course
only a dilemma to the faithless filmmaker. Khavn and Noer's viewers are saved
from deliberating on the merits of Son of God. He is fake, an actor plucked
from somewhere in the city to be part of one of the biggest pranks in
Philippine Cinema. Khavn and Noer emphasizes the word "mock" in mock-umentary,
and colors the film, from start to finish, with an impish attitude, a discernible
notion that the entire film is fueled not by a desire to be seriously
sacrilegious but by a desire to have fun in poking holes at both the faithful
and the faithless.
The film is actually favored
by the overt bad taste that functions as its cornerstones. The film's most
hilarious moments occur when all pretenses of approximating truth and reality
are thrown out the window, such as when an actual heart a glass jar inside is
brought to Son of God's attention to have him question his own faith, leading him
on a quest, where he dons robes that could have been a costume in George Lucas'
Star Wars, to climb a mountain to
regain both his faith and his healing powers. Shot in the same style as
Brillante Mendoza's real-time dramas, the images gain further comedic
prominence, the same way Terry Gilliam's Life
of Brian was utterly funny not just because of the jokes played but also
because it was shot and executed like an extravagant Zifferelli Christ-pageant.
Son of God,
more than just functioning as a humorous yet shallow satire on the
ludicrousness of being overly faithful, proposes the mechanics why poor
Filipinos and faith are not strange bedfellows. Faith exists here because there
is a need for it in the absence of everything else. Faith equates to hope and hope
equates to happiness despite having nothing. In the eyes of a foreigner
filmmaker who has everything, this immense faith is strange especially when
there is no showing for its presence. What else is faith for then when the
world provides in abundance? The miracle of the film is that in their exercise
of mockery of the faith, Khavn and Noer, whether intentionally or not, has
preached truth.
(Cross-published in Lessons from the School of Inattention. First published in Philippine Free Press.)