Rakenrol will never die

It’s a weird experience, watching Quark Henares’ Rakenrol and realizing it’s wall to wall with people you’ve encountered in real life, however peripherally, on the music scene over the past 15 years. But it’s probably even weirder and more meta for somebody like Buddy Zabala and wife Earnest, who were in Eastwood Cinemas the same Sunday night, watching a few rows ahead of us. How strange is it seeing yourself in a cameo onscreen, or hearing your own bass lines burbling from the house speakers?

Insularity (I won’t say incestuousness) is part of the charm of the local music scene. In-jokes fly past at 250 kms per hour in Quark’s film, which entered the international film fest circuit to warm regard, though he’s hinted he doesn’t plan on directing again for a while. The faces of musicians you’ve seen many a time onstage, or perhaps eating dinner at your in-laws’ house, or indeed sitting in the same moviehouse as you makes Rakenrol feel very homegrown indeed.

This is its strength and one weakness. Of course, people are going to say that making elaborate puns in Tagalog (however carefully explained to non-Tagalog viewers) or having Ely Buendia wander in to offer a typically enigmatic pep talk to band leader Odie (Jason Abalos) could not possibly resonate with non-Filipino audiences the way it might to audiences here. Add to that the target demographic (let’s say below age 45) and you might say this film has a very limited focus group in mind. But Rakenrol, laden with details that are as real as any Mayric’s or Saguijo gig you recall attending, is a film that needed to be made. More: it’s a film that Quark Henares needed to make.

The plot is pretty rudimentary. Two close high school friends, Odie and Irene (Glaiza de Castro), transition to college together but never hook up or date; instead they form a band called Hapipaks (a hilarious discursion on the word’s Tagalog meaning ensues. Thank God my wife was beside me to translate) and enlist punk legend bassist Mo (Ketchup Eusebio) and manic drummer Junfour (Alwyn Uytingco). Odie digs Irene, but she never knows until it’s too late.

But mostly the love story is a pretext for screenwriters Quark and Sandwich guitarist Diego Castillo to explore the intricacies and details of the local rock scene. Everything from band names to rock video directors get a humorous turn, and at least to those of us on the periphery, it all seems fairly accurate. Quark and Diego know the turf, and you couldn’t ask for a scuzzier depiction of local dives, sleazy rock stars, crazy artists who roll around in poop or the art galleries that put them on their walls. In between charting the rise of Hapipaks, there are a good number of credible band songs (written by Mikey Amistoso, Castillo and Diego Mapa) as well as brief theme music. (Lesson: It helps to be surrounded by musician friends when it comes time to score your movie.) Cameos abound, from every STAR writer you care to name (Erwin Romulo, Audrey Carpio and RJ Ledesma are there in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments) to Diether Ocampo as self-obsessed rocker Jacci Rocha (Quark must have had a ball coming up with that name). But really, there aren’t any local rockers that self-involved, are there? (Wink, wink.)

Swan song?: Hapipaks rehearse in poster for Quark Henares’ Rakenrol.

Ocampo and Ramon Bautista (as martial arts huckster Flame Tigerbluden) provide the broader comedy, and there are plenty of signature Quark touches, such as the stylistic use of onscreen text to explain the onset of “emo” among rockers, or the Hapipaks’ guitarist “tryout” scene (everything from goth dude to classical picker to “Are you ready to rak?” metalhead). Quark’s flair for comedy works best when observing the tensions between characters, like Mo and his artist roommate (who sells Mo’s guitar behind his back “for art”). Indeed, if it weren’t for the art-obsessed in our midst, Filipinos wouldn’t have much of their own to see, hear or watch out there. This film is a kind of Pinoy trumpet blast for doing your own thing.

But this self-gazing tendency is also a weakness of Rakenrol. You could argue that it deliberately excludes foreigners from fully “getting” the movie’s humor or context — yet Quark has chosen to enter it mostly in Asian film fests where nobody seems to miss the nuances (it bagged the Audience Award at LA’s Asia-Pacific Film Festival). This leads us to a bigger philosophical question, i.e., is there a particular proclivity among Filipinos to insulate themselves from outside understanding? And if so, why? In fairness, I watched a non-subtitled version, though my wife Therese helped with most of the dialogue.

What did come across was that this is possibly Quark’s most heartfelt, self-expressive film. As light and comedic as Rakenrol is, there’s also this elegiac quality to it, especially the third act: it’s basically about things not lasting, whether it’s romance or friendship, a rock ‘n’ roll song or a rock ‘n’ roll band. There’s a wistful feel to the film, which makes perfect sense in light of NU107 closing its microphones last year, not to mention the closing of Quark’s Mag:Net Café, an erstwhile magnet for rock-minded people of every stripe. Things move on, and the feeling is best encapsulated in the final scene of Rakenrol, as the band performs one final time, a single tear pooling on Glaiza de Castro’s cheek, and the screen goes to black. It comes through in little touches in the script, and if I didn’t know Quark for the incorrigibly impish character that he is, I’d say it’s some kind of artistic growth. More likely though, it simply came straight from the heart.