By Carmen Aquino Sarmiento

MOVIE REVIEW
Verdict
Directed by Raymund Ribay-Gutierrez

VERDICT, about the trial of a wife-beater, is the Philippines’ official entry to the 2020 Oscars for the Foreign Language Film Category. The shaky hand-held camera and harshly lit settings, give it the noisome, nitty-gritty feel of raw reality in the developing world. This has its charms for many of the culturati in the antiseptic First World film festival circuit. However, if you are prone to motion sickness, the prolonged exposure to so much juddering and bobbing up and down, or jerkily weaving left to right, may cause your gorge to rise.

Men’s violence against women is a universal problem which crosses boundaries of geography and social class. A UN study found that perpetrators are overwhelmingly male, so as Jackson Katz said in his TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue): society should pinpoint who’s responsible by always putting the word ‘men’s’ before the words ‘violence against women and children,’ as in MVAWC. In the Philippines, Philippine National Police data from January to June 2016 alone had 22,257 male perpetrators, mostly between 18-40 years old. Only around 1% or 244 cases of domestic violence complaints for that same period named female perpetrators, most of whom were over 40. Ribay-Gutierrez offers wry insights into the peculiar dynamics of Philippine society and culture, and especially of the family. When the barangay tanod (village police) enter Dante’s (Kristoffer King) house in order to arrest him, they deliberately ignore the small packets of shabu (crystal metamphetamine or poor man’s cocaine) lying around. It becomes clear why they went easy on Dante during a later scene where he visits his maternal uncle, who happens to be the Barangay Captain. The uncle’s barely disguised contempt for his ne’er-do-well nephew shows how the demands of family support and solidarity which our culture so values, only go so far. Dante has just about reached his quota for nepotistic privilege, although a tanod still grudgingly agrees to serve as a witness to his being an upright citizen.

Dante’s mother and older sister though, steadfastly stand by their bad boy. The mother in particular exhibits the codependent enabling behavior which keeps so many Filipino men in a state of arrested development — Pinoy Peter Pan’s who never mature beyond being self-centered, entitled, and petulant children. Dante doesn’t even have the sense to dress up for his court hearing and shows up in shorts. He is so full of himself, that he blames his lawyer for not warning him there was a dress code. It is left up to his mother to buy him a pair of long pants from a nearby ukay-ukay (second hand clothing stand) so that he might enter the courtroom.

On the other hand, the behavior of Joy’s (Maxine Eigenmann) parents is initially inconsistent with Filipino cultural mores. Fine that they immediately show up at the community hospital to pay their battered daughter’s medical bills. However, after this they leave her all by herself to tangle with the stress of filing a criminal complaint under R.A. 9262 against her abusive husband. The father uses his wife’s hypertension as an excuse for their both being unable to accompany their injured only daughter to the police station. Weirdly, they do not take their injured granddaughter home with them either. It would have been more in keeping with Filipino social conventions for the hypertensive grandmother to have gone home with her little grandchild so both could rest, while the able-bodied father accompanied Joy. But then she wouldn’t have looked as pathetic. And so, in the dead of night, Joy and her little Angel (Jordhen Suan) must tangle with the bureaucracy and tape as red as the blood seeping through the bandages over their freshly dressed wounds. This plot device makes her seem oddly friendless and isolated though — no extended family or posse of old classmates, kumares, or even neighbors to give her moral support during such a trying time. Thankfully, her mother does accompany her during the succeeding trial scenes.

Joy’s social isolation works against her when the female fiscal (Lourdes Javelosa Indunan, playing herself in an office where her case files are simply stacked high against a wall) tells her she needs witnesses to testify in her behalf. Apparently, her obvious injuries which were fully documented with photographs and a medical certificate aren’t enough to make her case. Joy does not call on the two neighbors who appeared at their window to complain about the noise in the opening scene where Dante is beating her up, to serve as her witnesses. Dante was not charged under said RA 9262 for also injuring his daughter Angel seriously enough for the child to also require treatment at their community hospital. Surely, that “C” at the end of MVAWC would have made Joy’s case stronger, but the cinematic intent seems to be to stack the deck against her. She must be as fully victimized as possible. Verdict is quite educational though about the steps one must take in pursuing a court case against MVAWC. No fixers appear.

Angel is called to give her testimony in the privacy of the judge’s chambers. The fiscal pointedly asks the little girl whether she realizes Jesus will get angry at her if she doesn’t tell the truth. This exchange highlights the inseparability of the Christian Church and the Philippine State, and the social acceptability of using Jesus as a threat against children. Although an earlier scene has Joy wondering at how she will coach her six-year-old daughter through the lengthy list of questions which the fiscal has prepared, it turns out that the child only has to deal with two rather lame questions. It seems a wasted opportunity to build up Joy’s case, but again the plot is set to show her as a hapless creature caught in the net of our inept system of justice which is enmeshed with the overpowering rule of patriarchy. No spoilers ahead on what the actual verdict is. The last scene which shows Joy’s files unceremoniously placed in a storage area that does not seem to have any coherent or logical filing system, is a damning indictment of the Philippine courts. It may not quite be hell, perhaps just endless limbo. But still be advised to abandon all hope, those who enter here.

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