The dangers of a linear structured film

Actor Dante Balboa (“Temtasyon,” “Kasiping,” “Karelasyon” etc.) has embarked on a new journey—film directing.

Dante has just wrapped the post-production phase of his directorial debut, “Graduation Day” and has started marketing it, initially in the form of a premiere night.

Balboa invited me to watch the first public screening recently of his masterpiece at Trinoma Cinema 6.

As the film rolled on, it was easy to say that his presentation was linear except for the opening credits that he chose the valedictory speech sequence in the participation of graduating student Simon de la Cruz (Jeric Gonzales) during the commencement exercises as a prelude to the whole tale.

Being an educator himself of arts and the humanities in real life, it was easy for Balboa to incorporate other structures in the entire narrative but he stuck to straightforward storytelling bereft of embellishments, literary devices and other stylistics.

It was a realist attack on filmmaking, to say the least.

In doing so, the following scenes were simple and direct.

The de la Cruz family tragedy was recurrently consistent from the childbirth death of Simon’s mother to the freak vehicle accident that terminated the life of his dad (Simon Ibarra) to the stabbed-to-death fate from the hands of hold uppers on his brother Paolo de la Cruz (Rico Barrera) to his own demise when he was hit by a stray bullet one day before his college graduation during an invisible deadly skirmish among criminals.

Not counted in, all along, was the growing up years into being a special child of his younger sister Theresa and the near-death of his grandmother (Elizabeth Oropesa) who suffered a stroke while sewing and the transfer of custody of Theresa to an orphanage through the social welfare department.

Before the final hour on earth of Simon, though, the movie was aimed as a feel-good one but still achieved it on the last scene when the son of Paolo–therefore his nephew, now full-grown and apparently well-off who exactly looked like him–visited, along with his mom, their lonesome grandma in a home care which made the day of the old woman.

The film to achieve a tearjerker status has to give the audience tears-inducing scenes which Balboa didn’t fail to deliver.

According to entertainment writer and editor Art Tapalla, “Graduation Day” is very depressing precisely because of its tragic elements in the life of the de la Cruzes.

It’s a dark movie, after all.

There’s no problem with linear storytelling but dimensions must suffice in the mise-en-scenes just as they are important to send messages as film language across which Balboa has supplied in an encompassing way.