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The title refers to Randy (Allen Dizon), a single dad who lives in a small shack with his 8-year old daughter, Angeline (Felixia Dizon, Allen’s real life daughter). Set in the town of Sto. Tomas, considered as the capital of coffin making in the country, Allen works as a coffin maker who earns less than P300 a day. When his daughter gets sick, he self-medicates her, not knowing she’s allergic to the antibiotics he gave her.
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He takes the girl to a hospital, but the doctor fails to revive her. He doesn’t have money to pay for the medical expenses and someone refers him to funeral parlor owner who tries to convince him to just sell his daughters remains to medical students. He seeks help from Angeline’s mom, Mabel (Gladys Reyes), who left them to marry a rich American in Angeles. We don’t want to reveal any more details about the story. Suffice it to say that the final sequence where Allen finally gets to give his daughter a proper burial is so heart rending. We find this concluding shot and the lonely image of the grieving Allen biking on top of Pampanga’s mega dike carrying the girl’s corpse quite haunting.
As we’ve said, the film works because it doesn’t deliberately manipulate our emotions. All throughout the hospital scene, after he learns that his daughter is already dead, Allen just remains silent, even if you could see that his face is a relief map of unexpressed emotions. And to think he is so sleep deprived at that point after rushing some coffins for flood victims in Quezon Province. We only see him finally shedding tears when he gets home and tries to retrieve their wooden banca in the river. He fails to get hold of it and, instead, he falls into the water.
All his frustration and sorrow finally burst like a dam and he sobs while holding on to the side of the boat. The next time he cries is in scene of the dead girl talking and that is even more effective. For this alone, we can already understand why Allen already won two best actor international awards, Harlem and Hanoi. We can really feel compassion for his isolation after his daughter died, the girl’s mom having a new family and his younger girlfriend (Chanel Latorre) to whom he gives cellphone load being unfaithful to him. We won’t be surprised if he’d also win more trophies from local award-giving derbies, including in the Metro-Manila Filmfest New Wave Section, where “Magkakabaung” is currently an entry.
Congratulations to Jason Paul Laxamana for coming up with a quiet but a genuinely moving film that avoid melodramatic twists and turns but is just a simple story of loss, guilt and pain. It also manages to touch on corruption, the high cost of dying for the impoverished and one’s views about life and death. We are happy to see his works progress from the confused “Astro Mayabang”, the fairly good “Babagwa” and now, the well crafted “Magkakabaung”.
Filmed mostly in Kapampangan (which sounds more pleasant to the ear than other regional dialects), he uses just one handheld camera in all his shots executed “tuhog” style. Kudos to cinematographer Rain Yamson for giving the film a palpable sense of reality and immediacy. We also want to commend the musical score of Diwa de Leon, so spare but so engagingly affecting. Most of the supporting roles are played by non-actors (the pharmacist, the doctor, the nurse, etc.) but they do deliver competent performances. “Magkakabaung” surely puts to shame most of the escapist trash spewed out by most mainstream filmmakers. How we wish those who complain about the lack of good local films will support this one.
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