Christian Jil R. Benitez
Halfway through Gutierrez Mangansakan II’s Topografia (2022), the movie quietly bares itself for what it is, cunnningly instructing the audience how to look at its unfolding. In a street in urban Mindanao, washing their fingers over the husks of durians they just finished, Marco (Jess Mendoza) and his editor (Perry Dizon) suddenly begins to talk about cinema. After being prodded by the editor whether he really wants to become a news reporter, and after trying to elude the question by saying that he generally likes to tell stories anyway, Marco admits that he actually dreams of becoming a filmmaker and of writing scripts for movies. In fact, he even completed an entire manuscript for what could be his first full-length feature. But nevermind, his tone suggests, as he thinks that the script is still amateurish in its attempt. And so, Marco wondered out loud, smiling sheepishly now, should he attend one of those scriptwriting workshops taught by Ricky Lee? Or perhaps by Moira Lang? His editor, however, simply dismisses his diffidence, offering instead a crucial reminder to Marco, and inevitably, to the one beholding the film: Walang katotohanan ang pelikula. Iyan ay kathang-isip lang. Escape kumbaga. Marco could then only agree: stories, after all, are all the same. Who could even say that truth, in and of itself, is not a story of its own?
This critical moment occurs as a flashback; presently, Marco sits shotgun with his friend Daud driving, after the latter asked him to go on a short roadtrip. It is the day before the inauguration of the transitional Bangsamoro Parliament, and Daud—being the son of his congressman father who plans to further the political influence of their family by obliging him to take a seat in the new government—needs the quick getaway; Marco, meanwhile, trying hard to make a name for himself as a journalist, just wants to find a new story to write. They only have that one last day, Daud pleads, before all the pretension starts. The film then sees the brief escape of the two, driving away from the urban center to eventually arrive to the sea, passing in between fields, mountains, and even an unfinished structure initially planned by Daud’s father to become an orphanage (a scandal that is worth reporting, Daud notes casually). And as they chart through the topography of Maguindanao, Marco and Daud reminisce about their time back in college as activists, being both part of the Student Editors Guild. The ultimate tension, however, as the film ultimately reveals, is not necessarily hinged on the evident class disparity between the two; instead, it is premised, of course, on the unrequited love of one to the other.
And yet, despite this seemingly tender core, Topografia also reminds its audience to be always critical, or at least wary of what is beheld. For indeed, as declared halfway through the film, nothing in cinema is true, as everything here is make-believe. In hindsight, such an argument has already been suggested as early as the first five minutes of the film, right before the appearance of its title card: as Marco’s character is being introduced, he is portrayed as someone who aspires to become a filmmaker just like his idol Lav Diaz, whose films is also described to be of exceptional aesthetics and deep ruminations on art and life. It is crucial to note that these descriptions are articulated by a “radio-station-like voiceover” that recurs throughout the film, which does not simply “fills in the gaps of the characters’ histories,” according to one review; but more importantly reminds us of the fictionality of what is being seen and heard. In other words, this device is not a mere “conceit about stories and the choice of our narratives”—certainly the central concern of the film—but an actual performance of storytelling: in watching Topografia, we are in an instance of such, and thus located in a position, however momentarily, to question truth.
In this sense, the mention of Diaz in the film can then be read as a plain praise to the foremost Filipino auteur—and, at the same time, a distrust on it. This suspiscion toward cinema, with its entire economy, is also hinted right after Marco and his editor’s agreement regarding the fictionality of the medium: when the editor mentioned that he once had as his students in a cinematography class the filmmakers John Torres and Khavn Dela Cruz, Marco can only say no, he has not really seen any of their works, but yes, the name Khavn does ring a bell; his faint attempt to remember—a moment of acting too, in and of itself—borders to the question, “Who?” And so, in recognizing the metafilmic tendency of Topografia, other comparisons can then be drawn: for one, the very premise of the film—namely, a one-last roadtrip and unrequited love—reminds one of JP Habac’s I’m Drunk, I Love You (2017), where the characters also move from the urban center (Quezon City) and toward the sea (the gentrified beach of La Union). In another scene, in the abandoned building, as Daud looks out from the metal fence while Marco, from a little distance, looks at him from behind, the desolate space appears similar to the school backyard in Petersen Vargas’s short film Lisyun Qng Geografia (2014), only without the pretense of color and hipster music. And even the mere appearance of Felix Roco, especially with his character of an English-speaking romantic, easily brings to mind Marie Jamora’s Ang Nawawala (2012), which also features Felix and his twin Dominic.
In drawing these comparisons, however, instead of deducing that the film simply replicates tendencies in Philippine independent cinema, what must be underscored is the potency of the positionality of Topografia: as a film that particularly hails from Mindanao, such a transposition of Manilan cinematic pretenses to a Maguindanao locale becomes a crucial criticism, not only to cinema as a medium, but as well as to prevalent cinematic imaginations of love as well as politics. If, following the common complaints on the film in Letterboxd, there seems to be “plenty of offhanded comments about Marxist ideology and the revolutionary movement,” it might as well be to point at the absurdities, too, of how activism is being currently conceived in the country, including its representations on films. In this sense, in a way that is much more coy and clever than, say, Martika Ramirez Escobar’s on-the-nose Leonor Will Never Die (2022) or even Lav Diaz’s more recent and often redundant films, Topografia demands from its audience a kind of viewing that simultaneously sees past what it simply shows on screen—a vision that also sees what it does not see, or at least, not right away. Ironically then, the pretense in Topografia becomes a vital point of entry to critique, which is not always—or, in fact, mostly not—the case in the discursive field that is the Philippines. No wonder then that the film flew over the heads of many of its audience. To say this is, of course, not to be a mere cultural snob; only that a film such as this, “from the regions”—whatever this means—warrants a gaze that is no less astute, no less attentive.
Indeed, all these insights about Philippine cinema writ large—and, of course, perhaps not: for if there is no truth in cinema, even this reading of Topografia might as well not be one. After all, Mangansakan seems to poke fun even at himself: at the end of the film, after separating ways with Daud, Marco finally becomes a filmmaker, now shooting his own work. The scene—a white man in uniform aiming a shotgun to a boy in supposedly native’s clothes—is familiar: Mangansakan’s own Masla A Papanok (2018). In a way then, just as the meme goes—nasaktan, nagpelikula: one got hurt, so one became a filmmaker. Ang alamat ng mga namemelikula. As simple as simple goes.
Young Critics Circle Film Desk 