‘Isa Pang Bahaghari’ review: Drama overdose

Joel Lamangan’s Isa Pang Bahaghari cannot be accused of lacking in drama.

In fact, it overdoses in drama, treating its scenes of its pitiable characters are crying their eyes dry, screaming in unmitigated anger, or wallowing in inexplicable misery like crack. 

Laziness is the biggest problem

However, it isn’t the abundance of drama that is the biggest problem of Lamangan’s film.

It is laziness. 

If all the dramatic moments of Isa Pang Bahaghari are earned, it would have at least been a worthwhile melodrama. Sadly, Lamangan seems to be only interested in stuffing his film with shouting matches and tearful encounters, forgetting that for those scenes to have any semblance of impact, he should at least invest in involving his audience in the affairs of his film’s very many characters.

The film instead invests in its collection of skilled actors to do much of the lifting. 

There is just too little even the likes of Nora Aunor or Michael de Mesa can do if the material itself lacks the foundation to elicit any emotions from the audience. For instance, Aunor’s first dramatic scene where she first sees Philip Salvador, who plays her long lost husband, she expertly wails and methodically collapses while her children contribute their equally overwrought emotional responses feels flat, if not funny, which I hope is not its intended effect.

Shoddy exterior, miserablist excesses

This isn’t to say that Isa Pang Bahaghari is completely fruitless.

Beneath its shoddy exterior and its miserablist excesses is a straightforward tale of a repentant husband who does everything just to be forgiven by the family he has left behind. The simplicity and predictability of the narrative is somewhat comforting, most especially when it plays more like a parable than an overly crowded soap opera. 

The love triangle that involves the characters played by Aunor, Salvador, and De Mesa’s character adds an interesting dimension in the otherwise pedestrian family drama. This gives Lamangan the chance to pepper the film with his proclamations of the varied dimensions of love. While the film seems to be oblivious of the problematic repercussions of some of its plot revelations, such as when it questionably romanticizes a character taking advantage of a friend who was drunk, the film simply stubbornly commits to its cluelessness, railroading issues and conflicts with its desire to conclude all of the characters’ threads with an end that it perceives as poetic in its irony.

Did the ending work?

Unfortunately, no.  

More than unearned because the film lacks the finesse and rhythm to make such an ending as resounding as it should have, Lamangan treats the scene as a parade of the film’s supporting characters wailing and lamenting, squeezing whatever emotional response that could be garnered from such an inert visual, abandoning whatever lyricism was envisioned for the conclusion.

Mediocre work

Yes, Isa Pang Bahaghari is mediocre work.

There are saving graces, such as Zanjoe Marudo’s tolerably intense performance as opposed to the histrionics around him. However, the film is just too mechanical to really deliver any of its promised emotions. – Rappler.com