Against the backdrop of the bourgeois splendor of the 2015 Cannes competition program, the "Special View" section has become an outpost of real art. The volens nolens collection of paintings created a sharp contrast with the body of contenders for the "Cannes gold". The grandiose, stylistically well-trained, narcissistic works of the "best authors of our time" were opposed by films that stripped off the gilding and exposed reality in its painful fractures. These pictures presented not ordinary fears, but the horrors of war and peace, not whimsical fairy tales of fairy tales, but surreal images generated by reality itself, not the existential crises of prosperous people, but the tears of the oppressed. And, most importantly, it was not formatted humanism that triumphed in them, but compassion that comes from the depths of the soul, which causes pain to the author, the viewer, acts without any anesthesia or consolation, but is adamant in its selfless truth-seeking.

It just so happens that two worlds collided in Cannes. Separated into sections by the now autocratic programmer Thierry Fremaux, the two systems of auteur cinema presented the glitz and poverty of Cannes selection throughout the parade. Films nominated for the Golden Award

"Trap"

Taklub

Written by Honilyn Joy Alipio

Directed by Brijante Mendoza

Cinematographer Odysseus Flores

Artist Harley Alcasid

Composer Diva de Leon

Starring: Nora Autor, Julio Diaz, Aaron Rivera, Shine Santos, Lou Veloso, Ruby Ruiz, Soliman Cruz, Glenda Kennedy and more

Centerstage Productions

Philippines

2015

the Palme d'or awards almost matched the prevailing tastes of bourgeois art consumers-these future "eloys", the moth-like people flitting through life from H. G. Wells 'novel"The Time Machine". The themes of these films, which are sure to fit into exquisitely beautiful shots, revolve around the main horrors of self-centered existence. These are the problems of inevitable old age, loneliness, incurable diseases (in this territory the narcissistic Italian trio Morreti - Garrone - Sorrentino, the pseudo-radical Michel Franco, the Frenchman Guillaume Niclou practiced), as well as questions of freedom and love under tender sauce (here the talented Todd Haynes, Yorgos Lanthimos and mediocrity in the face of French Amazons Maiwenn and Donzelli). The pain of the outside world for competitive paintings is rather an abstract concept. It is present in them as a historical memory (like the Holocaust in Hungary's Laszlo Nemes) or a distant mythical past (like in Macbeth or The Assassin), it exists far beyond the borders of Europe (in the exotic China of Jia Zhangke). As for the most socially competitive film, Stephane Briese's "Law of the Market, "we are also dealing with the most digestible form of" restless " cinema. His story about a morally perfect person appears to be a rehash of the Dardenne story, whose documentary method of presentation has not caused aesthetic rejection for a long time, and therefore does not require getting used to. It is significant that the authors of most competitive films deliberately built up a protective layer between reality and the intended audience. That is, they did not go in the vanguard, but on the occasion of well-formed, quite average intellectual requests. This protection from the pain impulses of reality

It manifested itself in annoying political correctness - French films will now certainly have an Arabic theme, and the main characters, following the example of the heroine of the film Maiwenn "My King", will make friends with ethnic youth from residential areas. This obtrusiveness and ostentatiousness showed itself in the voluntary transformation of a life story into a pure genre construct, as in the case of Jacques Audiard's "Dipan" - the most curious triumph of the Cannes Film Festival in its long history. And of course, a full arsenal of aesthetic tools becomes a reliable distraction in the great artist's quest to sweeten the pill. As a matter of fact, the very gift that, with the thinning of talent and content depth, can mercilessly exploit the "body" of the film and - at the same time - make an impression with its honed craft. Did the jury members fall victim to such a brilliant fraud when they included among the winners Michel Franco's obscenely pretentious drama "Chronique", where the bet on shock prevails over emotional impulse? In fact, the Cannes competition gathered the works of demiurges who tried to drive the element of life into the framework and make it work according to the canon, focused on the conjuncture of artistic demand.

The "Special View" program is another matter. In her current collection, the world itself, vast and unfathomable, with all its internal and external dramas, was the center of the stories. And it was here that so many inconvenient truths came up that required us to have the courage to accept them. It was in this territory, challenging the imperfect world order, that real experiences took place. The real treasures of cinema were overshadowed by the crisis competition,

therefore, the Cannes Film Festival, which was declared almost the worst in history, still presented a number of beautiful paintings marked by genuine talent. "The Treasure" by Corneliu Porumboiu," Cemetery of Brilliance " by Aphichatphong Virasetakun," An " by Naomi Kawase," The Other Side " by Roberto Minervini, films by newcomers from India and Iran. And finally, another important artistic document from the Filipino enfan terrible Brijante Mendoza. It's time to talk about it as a unique phenomenon of art.

The wonderful Brijante Mendoza made the film "The Trap" out of noise and dust, rain, fire and mud. From disparate stories, as if arbitrarily plucked from the chaos of life, he put together a monumental epic of everyday life, created a film as a requiem for those who died as a result of the crushing typhoon Haiyan ("Petrel") that swept over the Philippines in November 2013. The hurricane almost completely destroyed the port city of Tacloban. What wasn't crushed by the wind was washed away by the storm surge. Thousands of dead, missing, tens of thousands homeless. The ravaged coast becomes the scene of the film, and its naturalistic canvas - typical of Mendoza - could be the starting point for a super-genre disaster film. Funded, among other things, by the Philippine government, the "Trap" could turn into a social chronicle, a political manifesto, or even a propaganda document. Meanwhile, Mendoza, maneuvering between three or more lights, shot a universal picture of the immutability of earthly existence. The heroes of The Trap are those who were destined to survive. Survive in order to continue to wage an endless struggle with the natural elements, bureaucracy, poverty, disenfranchisement, and death

and inner emptiness. The continuity of this process is related to the intensity of the intra-frame action. Enclosed within the screen frame, the world is in constant motion-the characters are moving, the camera is moving. Her indefatigable gaze picks up a thousand details-evidence of tormenting poverty-and continues to slide on without trying to focus on one thing. Everything flows and seems to get stuck, accumulates in piles of garbage and fragments of human dwellings. Heroes are constantly physically active-they fix the roof, cook food, move around the city, push the boat, rush into a fight, pull luggage. They are unceasing in their care and work, and they are echoed by the background-the wind blows, the rain pours, people are bustling. The space of the frame seems to be overexcited, oversaturated with noise and sounds. There is no end to this institution, and there is no way out of it, and therefore the life of this human anthill is like a trap, a series of endless ordeals, never interrupted, either before or after the cataclysm.

Mendoza puts three characters at the center of this life's dead end. At first glance, they are just one of many that have been plucked out of the crowd by chance. Later, this "documentalism" of choice will turn out to be a much more subtle thing. All three heroes form the sides of a symbolic family triangle destroyed by a typhoon (father - mother - child). Each of them individually lives out their own drama, each of them is a lost link in the life of the other: A man who has lost his wife , a Woman who is grieving for her children , a Young man who is experiencing the death of his parents.

The film originates in journalism, consists of fragmentary, torn fragments. However, with every minute of immersion

in the endless apocalypse, in the format of which the life of ordinary Filipinos takes place, the picture is saturated with artistic oxygen, as if newspaper prose suddenly found the breath of a novel, and then rose to poetry. The inspiration given to Mendoza is of a special nature. It is awakened by the breath of life, born out of a sense of resistance to reality, an active rejection of any injustice that cannot be dealt with rationally, but to which it is important not to give in.

In this pitch-black hell, where faith in God is already being questioned and the crucifixion of Christ is being buried, the great humanist takes over in radical Bryant Mendoza. He does not allow the characters to finally fall into despondency, keeps them craving for kindness and compassion. Small displays of naive feelings - admiring the moon through a hole in the roof or caring for a puppy-will be scattered throughout the film with the smallest beads. Each stroke of fate will have its own enlightened moment. And when the tension of life reaches its climax and there is nothing left for the characters-no hope, no God-the director will only need a short plan: the heroine (played flawlessly by Nora Aunor) looks out over the everyday mournful world, rising above the vanity of vanities and seeing the light.

In the finale, Brijante Mendoza's documentary story reaches biblical power. And it seems that in the history of cinema, the verses from Ecclesiastes have never sounded so organically, on the verge of spiritual shock.: "There is a time for all things, and a time for all things under heaven: a time to destroy, and a time to build; a time to lament, and a time to dance; a time to seek, and a time to lose." So an epitaph addressed to the dead turns into a hymn to the glory of the living.

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