Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Philippines, 2008 (113 min)
Tagalog | Visayan | Japanese (with English subtitles)
Direction/Screenplay: Paul Alexander Morales
Cast: Nonoy Froilan | Shamaine Centenera Buencamino | Merryl Soriano |
Ynna Asistio | Jay Aquitania
Cinematography: Regiben Romana
Music Score: Jed Balsamo
Music, friendship, loyalty, family and our shared humanity—these are themes that run through this movie directed and written by Paul Alexander Morales. “Concerto” tells the story of a family in Japanese-occupied Davao, based on the real-life diary of Lt. Col. Anastacio Campo as annotated by his granddaughter Virginia Yap Morales, the director’s mother.
The family, headed by Ricardo (Nonoy Froilan) and Julia (Shamaine Centenera Buencamino), and their six children have left their home in Davao City and are staying at the farm of a tenant. One might expect the story to fall into any one of the clichés of wartime cinema, but under Morales’ confident handling the movie is more interested in exploring how war, in all its dehumanizing horror, manages at the same time to strengthen and burnish one’s humanity. In the family, and in their varied ways of coping with the situation, one sees how, in rising above their difficulties, they manage to maintain the values that have kept them strong and united, surviving even the harshest of times. The piano works of Beethoven and Chopin, the masterpieces of the great Nicanor Abelardo, and renditions of well-known Visayan folk songs provide the film’s montage of sound.
- Appreciation to Rina Jimenez-David
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