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A review by aristosakaion
Nothing Deep by Richard Bolisay
4.0
i needed this book growing up.
a list of 14 intellectually (but not pretentiously) charged essays on filipino scriptwriters, directors, actors, and consumption culture, sir richard bolisay's essays are finely tuned and entertaining. bolisay writes as someone who knows the industry intimately, while sitting in front of the big screen or the lore behind them.
even the introduction of the book has me quite hooked: just like ocean vuong's interview in the new yorker, he has struggle balancing writing and teaching because when he does something, he says "i have to give it my 100 percent," and he gives a hundred of himself to the latter. bolisay knows how difficult, and consequently how rewarding, being a film critic is, and has let go of teaching to pursue his other interests.
but in the fourteen essays that follows, his "I" almost completely dissolves, humbly crumbles away for the sake of analysis (except maybe for one). in his passion-struck and affection-driven frenzy he (re)tells accounts of actors in the Filipino film industry like Joel Torre and Charo Santos, directors like Mihk vergara and Marilou Diaz-Abaya, recalling sweetly Lino Brocka and his influence on contemporary Filipino arthouse directors i.e Lav Diaz. but Bolisay, in his gesture for the masses, never completely dismisses media meant for larger consumption, like the often marketed together relationships such as AlDub, whose films Bolisay necessarily tears apart or deservingly praises when need be.
in his essay Why Ricky Lee? his love for Lee's corpus avalanches, as if writing down all of Lee's works and putting a heart in red ink next to them (fittingly, it was written two years before Lee grabs the title for National Artist of Film this year). Bolisay notes Lee's craft not just for its formalism but for how it depicts contemporary Filipinos, especially women. in the words of Chingbee, Bolisay, although not entirely, foregoes the question "why is an art good?" and switches over to a more important one: "what is the art good for?" in his mention of films he always swerves towards the latter.
but it's precisely the film's inherent quality of swimming its way back to its presentation that makes it such a difficult enterprise to critique, especially in a social sense. i recall sontag's essay on gordard's universally loved Vivre sa vie, when she says "in great art, it is form—or as i call it here, the desire to prove rather than the desire to analyze—that is ultimately sovereign." bolisay praises our contemporary Filipino film directors for almost always balancing the scales between social responsibility and art-making, and it's in these essays that highlights that while the production of film and its distribution is always political, a film, on its own, has to balance what it says by how it says it.
i jokingly said, on twitter, that this book might be my new slouching towards bethlehem, the perfect book that imbues the cultural artifacts of its time. i might not have been too far off. i m glad to have discovered a filipino writer so intellectually succint and generous to share their works, and to have such a large pool of films i have to watch.
a list of 14 intellectually (but not pretentiously) charged essays on filipino scriptwriters, directors, actors, and consumption culture, sir richard bolisay's essays are finely tuned and entertaining. bolisay writes as someone who knows the industry intimately, while sitting in front of the big screen or the lore behind them.
even the introduction of the book has me quite hooked: just like ocean vuong's interview in the new yorker, he has struggle balancing writing and teaching because when he does something, he says "i have to give it my 100 percent," and he gives a hundred of himself to the latter. bolisay knows how difficult, and consequently how rewarding, being a film critic is, and has let go of teaching to pursue his other interests.
but in the fourteen essays that follows, his "I" almost completely dissolves, humbly crumbles away for the sake of analysis (except maybe for one). in his passion-struck and affection-driven frenzy he (re)tells accounts of actors in the Filipino film industry like Joel Torre and Charo Santos, directors like Mihk vergara and Marilou Diaz-Abaya, recalling sweetly Lino Brocka and his influence on contemporary Filipino arthouse directors i.e Lav Diaz. but Bolisay, in his gesture for the masses, never completely dismisses media meant for larger consumption, like the often marketed together relationships such as AlDub, whose films Bolisay necessarily tears apart or deservingly praises when need be.
in his essay Why Ricky Lee? his love for Lee's corpus avalanches, as if writing down all of Lee's works and putting a heart in red ink next to them (fittingly, it was written two years before Lee grabs the title for National Artist of Film this year). Bolisay notes Lee's craft not just for its formalism but for how it depicts contemporary Filipinos, especially women. in the words of Chingbee, Bolisay, although not entirely, foregoes the question "why is an art good?" and switches over to a more important one: "what is the art good for?" in his mention of films he always swerves towards the latter.
but it's precisely the film's inherent quality of swimming its way back to its presentation that makes it such a difficult enterprise to critique, especially in a social sense. i recall sontag's essay on gordard's universally loved Vivre sa vie, when she says "in great art, it is form—or as i call it here, the desire to prove rather than the desire to analyze—that is ultimately sovereign." bolisay praises our contemporary Filipino film directors for almost always balancing the scales between social responsibility and art-making, and it's in these essays that highlights that while the production of film and its distribution is always political, a film, on its own, has to balance what it says by how it says it.
i jokingly said, on twitter, that this book might be my new slouching towards bethlehem, the perfect book that imbues the cultural artifacts of its time. i might not have been too far off. i m glad to have discovered a filipino writer so intellectually succint and generous to share their works, and to have such a large pool of films i have to watch.