There is an ancient Greek story about how each of us originally had a twin who was separated from us upon birth. We are then condemned to live our lives in search for that missing twin. Some people are lucky to be able to find their “other halves” and happily live with them.
Others encounter their eternal twin without really knowing it or they come to realize it but circumstances do not permit their reunion.
This creates a deep sense of longing and melancholia that haunts us in both our dreams and waking life.
It leaves an emptiness in our hearts that may not be filled. Existentialist philosophers call it angst or alienation and advise that we try to cope by living for the moment and not really expecting much from what the present or future offers.
Artists find temporary solace in beauty. The purpose of art, Nietzsche said, is to provide “metaphysical comfort” from life’s tragedies that otherwise could lead us to commit suicide.
For the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, “the aim of art is to prepare the person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good”.
Bagane Fiola’s “Sonata Maria”, a feature film from Davao which had its premiere in the recent Binisaya Film Festival held at the University of San Carlos College of Architecture and Fine Arts theater, tells the story of Ramon and Maria, two former bandmates who never got to fully express their love for each other, although they realized that their shared love for music (in particular, J.S. Bach) and poetry was enough proof that they could actually be soulmates.
Years after they disband, an opportunity to have a reunion comes when their colleague Erik is supposed to arrive from Manila and asks that they all meet at the karnabal. Only Ramon and Maria show up and both try to catch up with each other, trying to hide their longing for each other by talking mainly about music and poetry. But their joyful reunion ends after Ramon makes a rather prosaic comment about Maria’s marriage to a rich man, which makes the girl leave in disappointment.
The festive setting of the perya belies the melancholia of the film whose blurring of the line between dreaming, fantasy, and events in the waking life, makes its narrative recall Fellini’s “Eight and a Half”. As in Fellini’s film, whose ending was also set in a kind of circus, Bagane makes the suicide scene at the close of “Sonata Maria” unclear whether it actually happens or not. The filmmaker repeats the scene but this time, Ramon puts down the revolver he found in a toilet.
In another scene, he returns the pistol to the guard fearing that the guy could lose his job with the gun.
Narrating it as a dream set in a perya, the filmmaker made a style that tends to become a visual feast look natural. The kinetic rhythms of colors and light and the soft but playful music contrast with the sadness that pervades in the film.
Such deliberate use of irony only adds to the film’s expressiveness but also its understated power.
There are moments when the film becomes a bit too chatty, but its philosophical musings make it clear that this film is not really intended for the majority. It’s an honest film about an artist not feeling belongingness to a society that lures people into modern forms of slavery with promises of wealth and comfort.
But this rather somber film is not without its share of visual puns. Ramon, who claims to share the birthday of Andres Bonifacio, the Supremo of the Katipunan, tops his corporate attire with a Supreme baseball hat.
The mismatched street wear is Ramon’s banner of revolt against the corporate world. At one point, Ramon calls Maria from a payphone near a watch repair shop with a sign that says “We buy broken heart (sic) lost soul”.
That scene sums up the absurdity of the human condition.