It was uncanny that another super typhoon hit Visayas and Mindanao before Christmas last year.
Providential is an understatement when Carlo Francisco Manatad’s Kun Maupay Man It Panahon (Waray for Whether the Weather is Fine) opened on Christmas Day eight years after Typhoon Yolanda.
As it turned out, the Manatad film is all about life in Tacloban after the 2009 super typhoon and the extent of storm wrath actually was more devastating than typhoon Odette.
It is more than déjà vu watching a film that recalled another disastrous natural calamity.
But as it turned out, the Manatad film — done in original Waray– was a quiet but jarring ode to the island’s devastated souls after the typhoon.
The narrative of Maupay is quiet but deeply lyrical and the characters almost stoic as they come. Mother and son (Charo Santos Concio and Daniel Padilla) go about picking up the pieces of their lives when they lost home and hearth. They all look devastated save for Daniel’s girl friend who is down but apparently has not given up on life.
But then, they only have a few choices. They can escape to another island or remain to pick up life anew.
But in the midst of tragedy where their lives are reduced to the realm of the existential, they hang on to hope and it is all they have.
Maupay ends as quietly as it begun.
Mother and son and his girl friend hang on to hope and acceptance. On this note, one must say that the director and leading performers all deserved their trophies – from Charo Santos Concio (Best Actress), Rans Rifol (Best Supporting Actress), Daniel Padilla (Special Jury Prize for best actor) for director Manatad who accepted the second-best picture citation and the Gatpuno Antonio Villegas Award.
Whether the Weather is Fine bagged the Cinema e Gioventù Prize at the 74th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland in August last year. It also made an impact at the Toronto and Hamburg film festivals.