"Tinimbang" judged today

Noel Vera

(Please note: entire plot discussed in close detail)

"Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" (You Were Weighed and Found Wanting,
1974) was in many ways a seminal work in contemporary Philippine
cinema. It was one of the rare quality films of the '70s to enjoy
commercial success. It announced Lino Brocka, previously known as a
skillful commercial director, as a major Filipino artist. Few
realized the significance of this bright new voice, that it would be
the first of many--Mike de Leon, with "Itim" (Black, 1976); Mario
O'Hara with "Mortal" (1975); Brocka again, with "Maynila sa Mga Kuko
ng Liwanag" (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975), to name a few.
Contemporary and putative rival Ishmael Bernal had actually debuted
two years earlier with the masterfully assured "Pagdating sa Dulo"
(At the Top, 1972), but that film, despite its excellence, made
little impact on the industry. "Tinimbang" was like a rock flung
through a plate-glass window; the film was a herald call, officially
the first in what was to be called the '70s Golden Age of Philippine
Cinema.

"Tinimbang" tells the story of Junior (Christopher de Leon), son of
Cesar (Eddie Garcia), the richest man in town. Junior lives a
relatively happy life; he stays in a huge house, he's popular and
good-looking, his sweetheart Evangeline (Hilda Koronel) is the
prettiest girl in school. Then Junior's life unravels: his father
turns out to be an incurable lecher; his girlfriend is caught with
another boy and summarily married off; Junior himself is seduced by
Milagros (Laurice Guillen), the bastard child of the town mayor.
Junior is driven to find comfort among the town's outcasts--in Kuala,
a crazed homeless woman, and her lover, Berto the leper. He
eventually realizes that everyone around him--from the loutish youths
he calls his friends to the wizened old women he calls his aunts--are
ignoramuses, hypocrites, spiritual grotesques. The film ends with
Junior acting out the action described by the film's title--he stares
at every town folk in the eye, judges them, and finds them all
wanting.

It's a dramatic moment, and Brocka invests it with near-Biblical
significance, as if Junior were some young Christ delivering verdicts
right and left (it's hardly a coincidence that the title is taken
from the Old Testament's Book of Daniel). It helps enormously--lends
the film more heft and substance (not to mention a broader range of
targets for Junior to glare at)--that Brocka worked on a broad
canvas, one of the rare if not only moment in his career that he
would do so. Brocka was essentially telling his life's story,
drawing from his memories of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, and of the people
there. Junior WAS Brocka--the sensitive young man, disillusioned
with the status quo and yearning for something different, something
more; he was also Milagros, the politician's bastard (Brocka himself
was the illegitimate child of a political figure). You might say
that the secret behind Brocka's intensity, behind his close
identification with the outcast and oppressed, was that he himself
was an outcast--painful knowledge that would make him more open to
the plight of others, to fellow outcasts in life.

This intense identification he felt towards his characters is the
foremost virtue of his storytelling; at the same time, it was his
biggest vice. If he had a tendency to like certain characters--to
get under their skin and look through their eyes--he also had an
equal tendency to shut others out--to condemn and deny them their
full measure of understanding.

You could see this to a certain extent in Brocka's treatment of
Milagros. Guillen in an interview talked about how she would often
chafe under Brocka's detailed direction (Brocka in response would
call her his "Jeanne Moreau"--mysterious and neurotic). Milagros was
clearly conceived to be a wordly, sensual woman who would initiate
Junior into the mysteries of sex; Guillen (perhaps rebelling against
Brocka's rigid direction) adds a hint of empathy, a sense that she's
a hurt soul reaching out to a fellow hurt soul. It might have been
more complexity than Brocka bargained for, because after the
seduction scene Milagros essentially drops out of the picture. And
you miss her; you want to know what happened to her, how she
ultimately fared after her one-night stand with Junior.

An even graver sin is committed against an even more crucial
character--Cesar, Junior's father. As it turns out, Koala had once
been one of Cesar's many girlfriends; when she got pregnant Cesar had
her baby aborted, and the trauma drove her crazy--she's been
searching for her child ever since. Cesar, interestingly enough, is
not unaffected by the affair; certain moments, certain movements of
Koala's remind him of the beautiful girl he once knew. Eddie Garcia
plays Cesar beautifully, and his could have been a crucial role in
the film, the correlative to de Leon's Junior--where Junior is a
young innocent waking up to compassion, Cesar could have been an aged
hedonist haunted by it, mirror images lit from different angles.

But no; these flashes of remembrance and regret don't redeem Cesar in
Brocka's eyes, perhaps because the character is too far from Brocka's
own to understand, perhaps because he too closely resembles his
father (he was reportedly a kind man, but Brocka may not have
forgiven him for dying early). When the time comes, Junior judges
Cesar as harshly as the rest--even harsher, perhaps, since Cesar had
earlier warned Junior away from Kuala and Berto, and Junior holds
this against him. Milagros and to a greater extent Cesar represent a
wasted potential in Brocka's scheme for "Tinimbang," I think. They
fall on the borderline that separates those who deserve Brocka's
condemnation and those who deserve his compassion; they are either
swept to one side of the border or forgotten, and the film's
complexity suffers as a result.

But then Junior's story and climactic act of judgement--to my mind,
anyway--aren't the film's true point of interest. The character of
Junior, for one, is hardly original--he joins the protagonist in
Federico Fellini's "I Vitelloni" and Timothy Bottoms' character in
Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" as one in a gallery of
small-town youths who learn about disillusion and heartbreak.
Unlike the young heroes Fellini's and Bogdanovich's films, Junior is
something of a self-righteous prig--de Leon plays him as if he's too
good for the likes of his father and those hypocritical grannies.
It's a superior stance too easily assumed; you feel he hasn't quite
earned the right to do so.

The film's true power comes not from its foreground story but from
its marginalia, from its deadpan observation of the absurdity of
everyday small-town life, and from its excellent if flawed sketches
of Milagros and Cesar. Its power comes most of all from Kuala and
Berto, the town's most miserable inhabitants, and the intense yet
simply told story of love found at the bottom of the world. Cesar
feels unfinished and Junior feels downright thin (the flaw may be in
the filmmaker's approach than in the performances); Kuala and Berto
are fully realized characters (does it help that O'Hara, who plays
Berto, wrote the screenplay based on Brocka's outline?). They are
Brocka's version of Jose Rizal's "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch Me Not)
with Kuala as Sisa--remember that "Noli" is about yet another dull
young man who wakes up to reality, while in the novel's margins dance
the unforgettable figure of a madwoman in search of her child…

Lolita Rodriguez, who plays Kuala, captures the smallest, wince-
inducing detail about homeless lunatics, from scabied scalp to urine-
stained thighs. O'Hara plays Berto as a man made utterly alone by
his leprosy, perhaps not a little mad himself--when he first notices
Kuala, it is with the predatory hunger of someone deprived of sex for
a long, long time. Rodriguez and O'Hara make the relationship that
blossoms between them effortless, yet utterly real--Rodriguez as
Kuala responding to Berto's attentions hungrily, even greedily (the
way a child would); O'Hara as Berto suddenly finding himself
functioning as guardian and father as well as lover. The couple are
the most successful evocation of love in any of Brocka's films, I
think, and by far the most moving. A great film, possibly Brocka's
best except for one other--but that's the basis of yet another
article…

(The film can be seen on the Cinema One Channel, in Sky or Home Cable)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)