For want of ‘2 Valid IDs’

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

It is one of those movies that leave you cursing the state of things and the powers-that-be.

This year’s Cinemalaya has had a good run of films; true to its form and flair for independent filmmaking, it covers territories where mainstream cinema is reluctant to stray. Still, Ma-an Asuncion-Dagñalan’s ‘2 Valid IDs’ made the rounds of screenings into the big theaters the past week. We might attribute this welcome incursion to the initial reviews and reactions to the film. For one, the critics and the general audience are in accord: the film is painfully relevant. Yet, to say that the film was received positively would be a gross misjudgment. On the contrary, you exit the movie theater in disgust and outrage. One does so, because what was shown onscreen is only too deeply experienced in real life: we admire the film for how hatefully and faithfully it retells our realities.

The plot’s premise is rather simple: a sick man confined to a squalid hospital ward, together with his long-suffering and belabored wife, struggle with futile tenacity against a system strangled by bureaucratic paperwork and minutiae. This system is a leviathan: it entwines itself in every aspect of life. Their key out of this labyrinthine mess would have been two identification cards, for them to claim a hefty amount sent by a relative to cover expenses. The rest of the dramatis personae appear to be collateral damage: they play their parts, and for all of their stubborn grip on life and love, there is no redemption for them. One way or another, the system devours all of them eventually.

Unreservedly, the cast is pitiable at the very least, which in this case speaks of the gravity of their performance. Joey Marquez, as debilitated Ramon, spends most of the film in bed, a tube perpetually connecting his nostrils to an oxygen tank, his lines punctuated by coughing and wheezing loud enough to knock on the gates of kingdom come. Comedienne Pokwang is not her usual screen-self; the film credits uses her real name, Marietta Subong (as wife Sylvia), as if to underline the worrisome spite and drudgery she undergoes to procure two valid IDs, just for her to claim the money. Meryll Soriano and Zaijan Jaranilla play well-meaning characters but they too are helplessly caught in the mesh of survival. Strung across the plot, they resemble flies caught in a bureaucratic web where a person’s life (if one can still decently call it ‘life’) consists of merely surviving the day and cheating death by day’s end, at whatever cost.

From a purely critical perspective, it is a twisted theater of the absurd. An irrational apathy exudes from the idea that documentation defines existence, and yet we know too well what piles of paperwork are demanded when one applies for a job, for a medical leave, for any transaction, for that matter. We have gnashed our teeth too many times at the long queues in stifling corridors; we have lividly glared at many an entitled line-skipper and beneficiary of the palakasan system.

Blunt as these descriptions may be, these are precisely what the film intends. There is not much to extricate metaphorically from it; dull and lazy as it sounds, it is what it is — and if watching it has made us knit our eyebrows in revulsion and ire, then it has made its point. The film is unapologetic with its depiction of the sordid state of this country’s public health, of the rabid graft and red tape that milk the common tao of resources, time, and energy, or of the turbid kowtowing to public servants for a beggar’s dole of medical assistance. This much is clear about its commentary on the Filipino experience: that human tragedy is a consequence of tragically inhumane bureaucracies, sustained by certain personalities who damnably nurture, encourage, and perpetuate these.

‘2 Valid IDs’ is the type of film that makes you regret being a Filipino: alas, you are born in a country where you are treated as a second class citizen, and the best that your government can offer as placebo to survive the times would be a stale tourism slogan, flood control projects that let in floods, corrupt officials who brazenly insist their innocence in front of incriminating receipts, and inventive ways on how to manually harvest drinking water from rain using plastic buckets — and when you fall sick, devil take the hindmost.

Watch the film, urgently and by all means. Cry if you must at the human tragedy but rage against the social tragedy. When you have left the cinema, think about your next transaction, and all the paperwork you have to accomplish and the time you will be wasting. But what does one do when the thin line between life and despair sits precariously on the dull edges of documentation? Through what hell and death should the Filipino go through for want of two valid IDs?

(The writer is a humanities teacher in one of the private schools of the city. The film poster is from Cinemalaya.)