Fresh from film school, Gino M. Santos had its successful debut as a film-maker in the 8th Cinemalaya Film Festival last 2012 with his film ‘The Animals’ in the New Breed Films category which won that year’s Best Editing. Several recognitions were received by the film in the succeeding years including its nomination for Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Musical Score at the 36th Gawad Urian Award. Screenings of this film in some international film festival also followed that raised the reputation of the film maker in the Philippine film world.
The film is all about the lavish lives of three affluent high school kids, and the decadence of today’s youth in this age of convenience as well as the exclusivity these kids impose to themselves that sets them apart as a walled fraction of the society they are living in.
The film features three major characters portrayed by three newbies in the acting industry: a happy go lucky lad who cares about nothing but having a good time, a kleptomaniac insecure smart-ass girl who choose no victim just to have herself something more, and her brother who chose to undergo humiliation and violence being a neophyte to a fraternity he pledged to join with because he said ‘trip, trip, lang’. A representation of the upper class youth today, the film depicts a different side of the Philippine society in the eyes of the youth themselves, not from an outside observer. The film shows that with wealth, comes a lifestyle everybody dreams of, as dictated by the hegemonic mass media to the Filipino people who are mostly in the lower economic stratum, where guiltless and amoral decisions are easily made to satisfy their thirst for pleasure, whether it be physical, mental or pleasure of whatever kind. The deterioration of their morality and explicable personal nature were exhibited as a result of misguidance, extravagance, ignorance and insensitivity of their family and of themselves.
The story started with an aerial shot of a gated subdivision exposing wide roads and blocks of high-class residences. Trina was setting up her looks for school while her brother, Alex in the next room, taking a dose of his morning pot. As Alex breathes out smoke from his mouth, he utters words relevant to the group he wants himself to be part of. Jake was having breakfast with his politician Dad, talking about his dad’s new racket in the government and about the party he is hosting tonight. Their lives converged after the bell rung, having snacks in the school canteen except Alex who is being oriented by his master in the restroom. It was then followed by a series of sequences depicting upper class living employing their weird attitudes. But the party hosted by Jake and his friends by the end of that day seemed able to summarize the problematic lives of the upper class youth today and played a crucial part of the film.
The idea of paying for expensive tickets to go to a party, squeezing yourself in a crowd full of people, dancing and flirting with their fellow party-goers with beers, vodka, tequila spilling all over the place like their sweat, is so common nowadays in every urban cities in the Philippines. But it actually doesn’t occur in the context of the Philippine culture. Brought about by the foreign-embracing self-exploitive attitude of the Filipinos who subscribe to Western or first world media, these parties give them a feel of satisfaction for their insecurity to what the media portrays as ‘cool’. This neo-colonial mentality of the youth today is the legacy of the hegemonic treatment of the Westerners particularly the capitalists, to mass media. The utilization of mass media to shape their desired society through penetrating the consciousness of the people plays a big role in sky-rocketing profits for emerging markets. But the ignorance brought about by the Philippine mass media makes the people perceive society as if everything’s working fine and well. Our consciousness is poisoned that we embrace products or ideologies that exploits us more and more as we consume or even think of consuming them, even those beyond the context of the Philippine culture and society. This obsession of the Pinoys to self-destruction is the central dogma of this film.
The debauchery of the youth is clearly seen through their perspective over their addiction and senseless engagement to alcohol, drugs, puppy love, violence, greed, and all their ‘trips sa buhay’. The girl’s comfort room, indeed served as a room that brought comfort to drunk vomiting teenage girls throwing up around the messy tiled floor, a guy mixing drugs to his friend’s girlfriend for an opportunity to rape her, a photographer and his friend checking out a nip slip in his camera taken from a drunk girl who carelessly enjoys herself in the party, a group of frat men crashing the party instructing his neophyte to beat a random person in the party as a test of the latter’s bravery which started a commotion that killed, if not almost killed an innocent party-goer, the organizer bribing the security guards complaining about their annoying and disturbing noise, a guy cheating on her girlfriend that resulted to an angry dispute between them leaving the girl walking alone in the dark streets of the subdivision being trailed by an even worse tragedy. All these juvenile acts happened in a party hosted by the upper class for the upper class which is filled with insensitive ecstasy, exclusivity, anarchy – an image of decaying youth which are like untamed wild animals in the forest. The minds shaped by the western culture industry to gain more profit.
A major consequence of this tragic situation happening in a residence inside a gated bourgeoisie community, is the formation of a boundary dividing the different piles in the economic strata, each having their own self-formed exclusive culture, and each having different views on each layer. This film which revolved around the upper-class youngster depicted the economically-challenged as a cop-out in the society. The ending of the film shows that, after all those extravagant lifestyle these kids are experiencing within their exclusive world, a much dangerous world lies where the lower class dwells beyond their walls, as dangerous as a panther in the forest.
The animals which I referred to in this film continues to wander around the corners of our present world. The clustering of different social and economic classes is a result of the oligarchic system of governance in the Philippines, and also from the neo-colonial mentality of the Filipinos from western imperialism. This social disease continues to plague our mother country nowadays and only a radical shift in the Filipino consciousness, in the mind and actions of the Filipino as civilized human beings, I guess could somehow prevent the situation from worsening.
References:
- Dayao. WE ARE BEAUTIFUL WE ARE DOOMED. [ONLINE] Available at: http://pelikula.blogspot.com/2012/08/we-are-beautiful-we-are-doomed.html [Last Accessed 29 August 2014]
- Stelton. The Animals. [ONLINE] Available at: http://pinoyrebyu.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/the-animals-reviews/ [Last Accessed 29 August 2014]
- Cruz. Cinemalaya 2012 Review: Gino Santos’ THE ANIMALS. [ONLINE] Available at: http://twitchfilm.com/2012/07/cinemalaya-2012-review-gino-santos-the-animals.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+TwitchEverything+%2528Twitch%253A+Everything%2529 [Last Accessed 29 August 2014]
- Tolentino. Amoralidad ng burgis na mundo. [ONLINE] Available at: http://pinoyweekly.org/new/2012/07/20828/ [Last Accessed 29 August 2014]
- The Animals (film). [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animals_(film) [Last Accessed 29 August 2014]
- THE ANIMALS (Philippines, 2012). [ONLINE] Available at: http://subwaycinema.com/nyaff13/the-animals/ [Last Accessed 29 August 2014]
- THE ANIMALS. [ONLINE] Available at: http://cinemalaya.org/film_the-animals.htm [Last Accessed 29 August 2014]
[Film 12 FWX | 1st Sem | AY 2014-2015]
kawalan at kamalayan 