Friday 5 February 2016

"Honour thy Father" from this person's view

"Honour thy Father" from this person's view

(or all after watching "Honour thy Father" 
and how this person sees it as a fitting tribute
For the writers Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Chekov)




At first, this person is ought to say that the movie "Honour thy Father" is a good work compared to those mainstream movies frequently shown in that controversial "Metro Manila Film Festival" happened last 2015.

It is deemed controversial, in a sense that the event is itself rigged, of having that film be disqualified as "best picture" despite its basis not to be given with, if not seeing the festival's officials favouring  "box-office hits" yet deemed nonsensical compared to this and other independent movies with good storyline, directing, or even screenplay end effects.

And although this person is ought to say that the film "Honour thy Father" seemed good to watch, it is not because of the artist, of the director, of the screenplay, but because it reflects the reality behind what this person, as well as others concerned stated: Of almost seeming to "declare how humanity is united not by its inherent goodness but its capacity for evil," as well as seeing the world "literally brimming with scumbags and hypocrites of almost every kind".





That in every scene lies a brewing thought of a person driven by desperacy to use illegal means such as resorting to becoming a member of Acetelyne Gang to steal money from a church known for its "prosperity gospel", enough to pay his wife a ransom, if not paying everyone who had been victimised by a ponzi scheme. Sounds true isn't it? Especially to those who are victimised by those schemes and series of swindle brought by con men using "business" if not "faith", of becoming "prosperous" in this earth if not having souls "entering paradise".

Actually, in those scenes shown in that movie, this person would say that it is more deserving of a written work (preferably a novel) prior to being shown as a film, of a Dostoevsky, Gogol, or Chekhov like masterpiece with some Nihilist perspective, of "a will to power" and "beyond good and evil" as the protagonist resorted to use illegal means to resolve the problem, of perhaps having a win-win solution. The protagonist had seen how people gone attracted at get-rich-quick schemes, of the prosperity gospel to save souls, but in the end he sought its limitations, what more of its degradations as people, including the protagonist himself has felt in it.

And perhaps concluding what Anton Chekhov said during his sojurn at Sakhalin:

"There were times I felt that I saw before me the extreme limits of man's degradation."

Well, perhaps, also in this person's view, that if given chance, the film fits to be remade as a "period film" situated in the mid-late 80s or 90s America, since it was also the era of "get rich quick" schemes and "prosperity gospel"; and in it also somehow mocks Ex-president Ronald Reagan's policy as well as those from the Christian Right, be it from  Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Pat Robertson whose programs in the television glorify free trade capitalism and the use of religion as a get-rich-quick scheme in the name of "saving souls" from damnation.

Sorry to say those words, for this person's observation on that movie somewhat corresponds to those times. Of scandals involving getting rich and saving damned souls only to see the inconvenient reality of how people getting desperate, that even until today these same people still facing same old scumbags, hypocrites, and its victims.


Pictures from the "Philippine Entertainment Portal" and "Holywood Reporter"