Ang Larawan (2017)
May. 20th, 2024 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shrimpchipsssI am behind, this was meant to be April’s musical. This was sick.
Ang Larawan takes place in Manila in 1941 with WWII and the Japanese invasion looming and centers around the struggle to hold onto a grand house that used to host soirees. The sisters Paula and Candida struggle to pay the bills and care for their father, a renowned painter who has been confined to his room after an accident.
They are haunted by a famous painting their father made for them titled A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino which depicts an old man on a young man’s back with a city burning in the background (Aeneas carrying his father Anchises as Troy burns). Reporters and gawkers flock to the house to see the painting but the sisters cannot bear to sell it even though that would help them secure their futures.
The music is haunting, sweeping, soaring and the conflict between Paula and Candida as they try to figure out what to do to survive is awesome to watch.
Some things:
pineapplekita for the recommendation!
Ang Larawan takes place in Manila in 1941 with WWII and the Japanese invasion looming and centers around the struggle to hold onto a grand house that used to host soirees. The sisters Paula and Candida struggle to pay the bills and care for their father, a renowned painter who has been confined to his room after an accident.
They are haunted by a famous painting their father made for them titled A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino which depicts an old man on a young man’s back with a city burning in the background (Aeneas carrying his father Anchises as Troy burns). Reporters and gawkers flock to the house to see the painting but the sisters cannot bear to sell it even though that would help them secure their futures.
The music is haunting, sweeping, soaring and the conflict between Paula and Candida as they try to figure out what to do to survive is awesome to watch.
Some things:
- A poet who has become a politician
- A crowd of socialites shows up to gawk at the painting and when asked to interpret it, a woman who has lived in new york city offers no interpretation and jumps straight to how the painting can be turned into merch (an evening gown). Fucking typical!!
- The older siblings are eager to sell the house and walk around making claims on the furniture and dishes and also on Paula and Candida who can come be their live-in maids :’(
- The sense of scale of the Philippine peso in comparison to the American dollar as various siblings and friends flaunt (always foreign! always some American!) buyers for the house and the painting. I was almost rooting for them to sell it to the politician just because of the tragedy that all of their father's paintings were in Spain and Italy, but that wouldn't have felt right either
- Throwing a grand party and filling the grand old house with people and music again as war looms, very Sound of Music, is this just what people do when it feels like you’re going to lose everything, like how neoclassicism gets a revival every time people get anxious about cultures of excess?
- I'm just thinking about the opening of the movie again which starts with a crackly, static-y song, Intramuros, and black and white footage which bursts into color, and the crackle and static pulling back into clarity. There was a feeling of being transported through time and it made me think of how black and white photographs of the Civil Rights movement make us think that those events happened long ago when it was only some decades past
- I have noticed that specifically with music that is in languages I don't know, I keep forgetting that I don't know what the characters are saying and neglecting to read the subtitles so that I can watch their faces. I never get confused like this with dialogue! Only with singing!
pineapplekita for the recommendation!
