Review: Imburnal (1/5)

This year’s big winner in the Digital Lokal Competition of Dekada Cinemanila proves to be a milestone… a milestone in disappointment.

Director Sherad Anthony Sanchez must be a dropout of Brillante Mendoza’s school of voyeuristic camerawork. Instead of following the characters as they go about their daily lives, the cinematography in “Imburnal” is painfully static. It is as if the cinematographer left the camera on a tripod for ten minutes to continuously shoot even if there isn’t anything happening on screen. It’s definitely a test of patience, and for once I have been patient enough to finish the whole film, waiting for it to redeem itself, but it never did. More than half of the audience left the movie house after its first hour. So MTV generation, may this serve as a warning.

Mendoza’s technique runs on real-time, thus immersing us into the intricate daily routines of the characters and making us empathize with their pleas (like in the case of “Foster Child”). But in Sanchez’s “Imburnal”, the time element is non-existent. The imageries are jumbled and the vignettes being shown are at its most random order. You’ll feel as if Sanchez doesn’t have a concrete story to tell but is merely confusing us with his peculiar brand of faux visual poetry.

Movies used to be fun to watch, why does it have to be a toilsome chore now?