The Underrated Genius of Carlo J. Caparas

Carlo J. Caparas was the director who showed us a bustling Ayala Avenue (complete with Rustans and Twin Towers) and superimposed the title “Singapore” underneath. (Victim No. 1: Delia Maga [Jesus, Pray for Us]). Yes, the National Artist for Visual Arts and Film introduced massacre as a film genre, raised the bar for movie titling with The Maggie de la Riva Story (God...Why Me?), and gave us Tasya Fantasya. Mock you will, as I did when I used to watch his films to satiate my urge for cheap laughs.

Nonetheless, my favorite ever scene from a Carlo J. Caparas film is a daring bravura setpiece of intense psychological complexity hitherto unseen in Philippine cinema – rivaling the exquisite sophistication of Ophuls or the tolerant humanism of Renoir. It was gifted to us through The Marita Gonzaga Rape-Slay: In God We Trust!, a deceptive “massacre movie” starring Sunshine Dizon and future Senator Jinggoy Estrada.

The setup. The film begins with the ill-fated Marita Gonzaga (Sunshine Dizon) celebrating her 18th birthday with a decadent debut, complete with gowns and waltzing, which somehow fails to faze the saintly Sunshine. After the ceremonies, Marita, her father (Tommy Abuel), mother (Maggie de la Riva) and several older brothers take respite at the sala, where the center table hosts all of the debutante's birthday presents gift-wrapped in pink and laces. After a few pleasantries, the scene evolves into something like this:

Abuel: O hija, buksan mo na yung napaka-raming regalo ko.

Sunshine: (smiling demurely) Salamat itay, pero sa wari'y ko hindi ako nararapat tanggapin ang mga regalong iyan. (turning to her several elder brothers) Oh mga kuya, sa inyo na lang ang mga regalo ko.

Mga Kuya: Uy, tenk you!!

(The kuyas charge at the table and each grabs a gift for their own. Sunshine and her parents exchange meaningful looks and exchange hearty laughter.)

Years ago, I laughed at the seeming idiocy of this scene. Yet upon mature retrospect, the genius of the visionary overwhelms. One would expect the brothers to be repulsed by the thought of appropriating the presents gifted to their sister on their eighteenth birthday. A hack director would have played the scene that way. What the auteur Caparas does is to confound our gender-driven expectations, compelling us to question our tacit acceptance of the male-female role vis-a-vis birthday gifts which conservative society had imposed on us. And there is no more vital role for an artist than to challenge our own values system.

There is another way to analyze the scene, one which even more profoundly impresses. It is possible that the brothers themselves knew that the gift boxes actually contained gender-neutral presents. After all, Caparas cannily conceals from the audience what's inside the box. How do the brothers know this? Perhaps their parents had raised the brood under the tenets of progressive liberalism, instructing their kids on the ultimate futility of gender differentiation. The friends and the family would have known this, and accordingly selected only those gifts of democratic utility regardless of gender. That is why the brothers expressed no inhibition at claiming the gifts of their sister. By this episode, Caparas venerates the democratic utopia, thereby setting up the subsequent greater tragedy that a progressive and tolerant milieu will not shelter us from the random evil inflicted by the rugby-addicted killer-rapist. It is a cautionary tale not even Hitchcock ventured to tell.

One might retort that no, the scene was just really really stupid. Then again, someone centuries ago probably also said that of Shakespeare.