tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

So? Who really cares about a film from a third-world country like the Phillipines? Oh, and before you asked me what that film is, it's called Kinatay from Filipino director Brilliante Mendoza. I know for a fact that there are a number of brilliant and critically-acclaimed movies from the Philippines and that some of them have been shown in international film festivals and received awards and acclaims.

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"Worst Film" Shown in Cannes Official Competition: Allison Willmore wrote on her blog and says:

Roger Ebert called "Kinatay" the new "worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival," succeeding the original cut of a certain road/blowjob feature. That's a bit strong. Director Brillante Mendoza is just convinced that ideas must equal difficulty -- and so, with last year's "Serbis," the theater itself had to be the main character, the teeming human dramas it sheltered deliberately, coyly captured only in oblique fragments. With "Kinatay," the problem is more that the ideas aren't that good, unless you want to take its protagonist, a callow kid who can't look away as things get more and more unpleasant, as a stand-in for the audience. In which case, maybe you're meant to do what he never manages to and walk away -- the film gives you plenty of opportunity to, and plenty of people did.

I agree that Ebert was quite cruel in his remarks and while no one can really force someone to like a movie, I still think the job of a critic is to review the merits of a film and not to insult the filmmaker and his work.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw has this to say:

The festival has traditionally had a fondness for cinéma du shock and there are a number of hardcore extreme items here. Perhaps the most gruesome is the Filipino director Brillante Mendoza's sickeningly horrible Kinatay, which means "butchery". A young cadet cop is asked if he wants to make some extra cash by taking part in an unofficial "job" some of the guys have got going. This means kidnapping a prostitute who has been failing to pay the cops their cut from her earnings - then raping her and dismembering her. Their motivation? To terrify the other prostitutes and out of sheer male hate.

However detestable, the film has some interesting points: namely the opening sequence where the young cop gets married; and the post-slaughter scene in which the same cop falls asleep in the taxi home, awakens when the car tyre blows out, and remembers that one of the others has given him a present to mark his grotesque new manhood: a gun. This is yet another example of "arthouse rape": male film directors subjecting female characters to sexual assault as a way of exerting dramatic power and establishing their realist credentials.

New York Times critic Manohla Dargis has posted the following:

The actual winner of the director award was Brillante Mendoza, from the Philippines, whose grisly, widely loathed shocker, “Kinatay” (“Slaughter”), hinges on a man who doesn’t prevent a murder.

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Video clip showing some scenes from Kinatay:

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You can also watch another video clip from Kinatay here.

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Positive Reviews: There are a number of film critics who responded positively to the movie. As sampling, I'll have to settle with two - Screen.com and The Hollywood Reporter.

Here is Mike Goodrich's review of Kinatay:

Showing the kidnap, beating, humiliation, rape, murder and dismemberment of a young prostitute, Brillante Mendoza's new film Kinatay (which means "butchered" in Tagalog) is a nerve-shredding exploration of crime which is both repellent and grimly compelling. Offering audiences no relief or redemption, it is perhaps most notable for its daring in attempting to capture the moment a young man crosses the line into irrevocable evil.

Well-made by Mendoza and more coherent than last year's Serbis, it will nevertheless be hard for even the most adventurous arthouse audiences to stomach. Somewhere in the indie shocker niche occupied by Irreversible or Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Kinatay should win a small following on the festival circuit and sales to edgy distributors who specialize in handling tough movies. Distribution opportunities in some territories will be hampered by the extreme nature of the material.

Maggie Lee's (The Hollywood Reporter) film review of Kinatay:

With the artistic choices he has made, Mendoza achieves a singularity of purpose in hammering home his message, and the experience compels one to watch even as one wishes to turn away. He deplores this human treachery with almost Old School, religious morality. He preaches it unequivocally -- at the climax of the slaughter, the subtitles "If you lose your integrity once, you lose it forever" appear. Laying on the Christian symbolism, the woman is called Madonna, while the camera occasionally cuts away to a picture of Jesus on the wall. She keeps screaming she has a child, which new father Peping is supposed to sympathize with.

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A Filipino Critic's response to Ebert: Noel Vera is a film critic and has written a book entitled Critic After Dark: A Review of Philippine Cinema. Vera has responded to Ebert and was quite brilliant in his response (or silly, depending on whether you agree with Ebert):

Roger Ebert, the gray eminence of Chicago film criticism, has weighed in on Kinatay (The Execution of P, 2009), Brillante Mendoza's latest work, presently in the Competition section of Cannes, and his verdict is not kind:

Here is a film that forces me to apologize to Vincent Gallo for calling "The Brown Bunny" the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.

Ah, but the episode with The Brown Bunny ended happily, didn't it? I remember Ebert calling that "the worst film in the history of Cannes" (Ebert shares this curious ability with George W. Bush of moving goalposts and standards upwards, downwards or sideways as it suits them) and of Vincent Gallo responding by putting a hex on his colon. Ebert (in a curious lapse of good taste) compared the experience of viewing Gallo's film to viewing his own colonoscopy (he favors the latter). Some judicious pruning of the running time (about twenty-six minutes' worth) and a few diplomatic exchanges later, the two kissed and made up.

I haven't seen Kinatay; I plan to, definitely; can't comment otherwise on the merits of Ebert's argument against the film. I think I can comment, however, on the merits of Ebert as a film critic--that he's the great champion of middlebrow taste, with a finger very much on the pulse of what mainstream America likes or dislikes. Far as I can see he's got the best track record of any celebrity film critic when it comes to predicting box-office hits; either that, or he's liked so many movies that a boxoffice hit would actually have to work very hard to escape his approval... [ read more ]

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Mendoza's Reaction to the Mixed Reviews: On Kinatay's premiere at the prestigious festival, Mendoza says:

To premiere there is something I can be really proud of...It's not easy to do these kinds of films in a third-world country. It's not easy to find a producer. You often feel alone. Sometimes I would go home after editing, at about two or three in the morning so tired and ask myself, 'Is this really what I want to do?' But then I can sleep and feel happy because I don't have any regret with my choices.

At the ceremony, Mendoza was awarded the Best Director prize. The trophy was given to the Filipino filmmaker by fellow director Terry Gilliam.

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Filipino Filmmakers: Now and Then - Brilliante Mendoza is apparently one of the Philippines foremost filmmakers, but his work and that of his contemporaries pale in comparison to the films of such auteurs as Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal and Mike de Leon.

Lino Brocka, who gained attention in the international film community for his films about the Marcos dictatorship, is most famous for the film Insiang which was well received in Cannes.

Ishmael Bernal, Brocka's contemporary, is the director of Himala, the movie that CNN recently recognized as All-Time Asian Best.

Mike de Leon, who was also highly regarded in the local movie industry, produced the thought-provoking Sister Stella L.

Brocka, Bernal and de Leon produced their best movies in the 1980s. Both Brocka and Bernal have passed away. [ correction from earlier post ]

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The Final Word: Getting a good sampling of both the negative and positive reviews for Mendoza's Kinatay, and your personal reaction to the movie upon watching it, do you think Kinatay is the worst film ever shown in competition @Cannes?