PRESIDENT RODRIGO Duterte’s third State of the Nation Address (Sona) comes this on Monday, July 23, 2018.
It will be televised, it will be live, and it will be tense, knowing the Presidents’ style of cussing and long-winding ad-libs.
That is a challenge if you are behind the camera.
What do you bring focus on when a President starts mouthing curses and jokes and veers away off-script?
That challenge is now in the hands of movie director, Joyce Bernal, a head-scratching pick to direct the televised SONA, taking over indie-director Brillante Mendoza who directed the first two SONAs.
It’s a head-scratching choice, given Bernal’s repertoire of comedy and romantic-comedies. Kimmy Dora is a fun film, but SONA or Duterte, is no Kimmy, this is a challenging flick.
”What do you direct in a SONA?” Asks the Gawad Urian winner director Arnel Mardoquio.
All you need to do is to make the camera focus on the president, and let the president do the talking.
It is perhaps a case of politics mixed with showbiz. These “cinematic direction” try to make a difference.
In the past two SONA’s, the ones directed by Mendoza, he tries to make cinematic direction by focusing on the president’s gestures, face, hands and weird angles.
Viewers note these angles are for effect. But they say the SONA is about the substance rather than the form. No matter what angles you present, the message is what matters. That is what Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) spokesman Renato Reyes Jr. points out. He says, with due respect to the director, no cinematic direction would cover up the problems the people in this country is facing. We are hit hard by the TRAIN Law which affects prices of basic goods and fuel.
We have workers suffering from low wages that can barely support their families, and there is the fear that they will be out of their jobs with contractualization schemes still practiced by profiting companies.
In Mindanao, wounds are felt by the people in Marawi who still can’t return home. Even the Lumads from Talaingod, Kapalong and Lianga are still in evacuation centers.
It seems politics, like film, do need narratives. Maybe this SONA will do a narrative about change, like charter change to pave the way for a shift to federalism.
But as Reyes points out, no cinematic narrative will cover up the motives of charter change which seem to be focused on the interests of politicians who propose to postpone the 2019 local elections. Surveys also point out that a majority of the people do not approve of charter change.
It shows the change they want is something more basic, or even more personal, such as the change in economic and social reforms to improve their lives.
That’s the narrative that is lost in this government. Change, is it really coming? SONA, ano na?
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