…gaya ng mga alaala na patuloy kong ku-kwestyunin habang nabubuhay pa – kung nangyari ba ang isang bagay o pinaniwala lang ako ng aking pantasya – at ako lang ang makakapagpatunay kasi ako lang ang nakakita. Ako lang ang nakaranas. Ako lang din ang maniniwala.
(…just like the memories I’d constantly question as I live – did it really happen or was I fooled by my own fantasy? And I am only the witness for I am the only one who saw, the only one who experienced, and the only one who believed.)
Lift such tale and detach it from the material – you’ll have an attribute of postmodernism. In a time where “constructs” are deconstructed by a contemporary philosophy that has divided thinkers of the century, a narrative now offers multiple “identities” to its readers, created by its readers.
But overlay that audio with this visual:
What a curious superimposition. What a curious subtlety. In a time where martial law narratives are treated as mere constructs – subject for debate, almost being void of validity and truth – what reality do we have now? What history are we going to defend when one can conveniently believe their own construct – as easy as dismissing thousands of constructs that share the same narrative?
Now I remember a recent lecture in one of my class. The professor previewed a scene from a classic film, a canon of course, and he illustrated a visual and semiotic analysis of a frame – a sophisticated one. An overreading, he would mock himself. Yet he’s able to convince us; the analysis holds water after all.
Did the author intend to imply that? Maybe yes. Perhaps not.
But who’s the author now?
The reader is the new author, or they reserve the right to be. But this claim can be countered, as it should be, as in postmodernist fashion.
—
A personal sentiment as a premise of a story should produce a sincere film. A personal sentiment apparently common to people should resonate immensely when translated into a film and watched by said people. A personal sentiment told visually in a film should deliver the same emotion as its corresponding spoken words – or even transcend them – as to remain faithful. But a personal sentiment expressed auditorily and visually at the same time, as in cinema, might result to over articulation – which can cancel what ought to be delivered. This is presciptive and problematic remarks and problematic prescriptions are not always followed hence opposed, or are they?
As in postmodernist approach, I will further this relativism and claim that the over articulation – despite the cinematic limitations evidently affected the creation – is appropriated by As If Nothing Happened. The literal association of words and images may affirm the storytelling, sure, but the abstraction of these representations is what transcends the personal. The fireworks and orgasm. The emptiness and silence. The smoke and nothingness. The recall and streetlights. The moving cars and nightlife. The longing and street protests. The strangers. The city. The oblivion and home. These explicit and implicit elements form the film’s poetic representation of a personal heartache and attachment to a world of fleeting memories and experiences (both personal and political). But frankly, how can I articulate further what is amply communicated visually? I cannot. I can only try writing about them, destroy or extend them – especially when an image can conjure unspeakable emotions and a set of phrases can essentially speak your history.
As If Nothing Happened speaks the distance of and yearning for intimacy nowadays. But it also speaks, through its images, the current situation experienced in the urban life – yet not so detached from what is narrated, from the self, the romantic, the political, and the fantastical. We can only dream for a truer and better story, but such cannot exist without a battle. A battle for validation. A battle for reform. A battle for lasting emotions not challenged by a missing memory.
This is a postmodernist review I remember; let me honor it and not linger with the erotics.
The film has four characters, I’d claim but please be skeptic as you should be; Kyle, Max, the strangers, and the city. Who are they? What role do they signify? They aren’t characters for no one talked or nothing was developed, if that’s how character ought to do and be; but nonetheless, they are all constructs with respective narratives of their own. What narratives? We can only guess or we can care less as the film only provides one of the possible constructs; that is the film is just a projection of the status quo. But what is the status quo? The voice narrates the helplessness as the visual displays the longingness. Helpless from our past experiences – as we got our heart broken by someone or something too good to be true – and helpless due to the current situation of being apart and away from what was once real and true. Finally, longing the familiar sound and smell of the streets, the sight of the people we mindlessly cross, and the feeling we dearly miss before this dystopia.
The story of Kyle and Max was laid over the city, with the strangers whose stories might be the same as the two… or not. Nonetheless we see images of the city in a manner of visual abstraction and manipulation. It isn’t the city I knew before, or is it? Is it the same city I lived through? It’s blurry, how can I tell? How can I tell when I’m only mentally present around the calls of the masses? I realized what the city looked before and what it looks like now. The film made me realize these changes. The film holds a story stretching even before the quarantine until its indefiniteness. And the perceived story becomes prevalent and more intimately pervasive under this setup of isolation and deprivation. And so, we relate ourselves. This is the status quo, certainly, yet again only one of the “constructs” in the metanarrative of the state and nation.
We are zombies with feelings yet too numb to understand them. We were sane. We pretended to be sane and human – only to deceive ourselves again with a virtual idea of control and affection. What have we become?
Do we play god and pretend to see the entirety? Or do we stay at the (dis)comfort of our homes as we imagine the city outside? Will we wake up tomorrow and assume it’s a different day and another story? Or do we keep pretending as if nothing wrong and bad happened and move forward just like yesterday?
—
Para kay Kyle at sa bawat estrangherong nakakasalubong sa lungsod; ang pelikula ay mula kay Max. Hindi ko sila kilala pero ang kwento nila ay maaaring kwento ko rin. Salamat.
(To Kyle and to every stranger we cross by in the city; the film was from Max. I don’t know them, but their story might be my story as well. Thank you.)
As If Nothing Happened, a film by JT Trinidad and produced by Freecut Productions.
Other contextual points to further: aesthetics and form, mobile cinema, mode of distribution and marketing, pandemic cinema, and city symphony. Despite being the title, this essay did not explicitly illustrate the attributes of a city symphony and pandemic cinema – perhaps some understood without explanation, perhaps others disagree. It’s alright otherwise.
SineSalita 
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