‘KUN Maupay Man It Panahon’ is the directorial debut of award-winning film editor and short film maker, Carlo Francisco Manatad, who won the Youth Jury Priza in the Locarno International Filmfest for this film. It’s based on his own experiences of going home to his native Tacloban after Yolanda to search for his family there because he could not reach them for days. He was stunned when he saw the devastation wrought by Yolanda.

“My hometown was beyond recognition,” he says. “All roads, structures and landmarks were demolished. Mountains of dead bodies were scattered everywhere.”

The horrible extent of the calamity is realistically portrayed all throughout the movie. Its P60 million budget can be easily seen in the production design that shows all the destruction created by the killer typhoon. The highly realistic staging of all the destruction should win the movie the best production design award in the Metro Manila Filmfest.

A passion project for Carlo, he is so lucky that 11 companies from five different countries pulled their resources to bankroll the big-budget film. Companies from the Philippines are Cinematografica, Planc, iWantTFC, Globe Studios, Black Sheep, Quantum Films and CMB Films.

Then there’s AAND Co. of Singapore, Kawan Kawan Media of Indonesia, Weydeman Bros. of Germany, with the sound engineering made in France. The film has traveled to 25 international filmfests in a span of five months. During that time, it also won Special Mention by the Jury at the Guanajuato International Film Festival in Mexico and Best Director at the London East Asia Film Festival in the UK.

Carlo is very fortunate in getting such big funding for his very first movie which truly looks expensive. The production values are so impressive, evident even in the use of hundreds of extras in several crowd scenes. But it looks like it’s made for foreign filmfest audiences.

We’re afraid the local masa viewer who’s just out for escapist entertainment won’t find it accessible.

The film is told with much whimsy, but without much of a story. In one scene outside the astrodome, Charo is seen with a crowd then, all of a sudden, everyone around her starts dancing, complete with a lion roaring on the roof of the astrodome. In another scene, the camera focuses on a decaying dead man who suddenly opens his eyes.

Another confounding sequence shows Rans Rifol walking on the beach. She sees a wounded dog, carries it, washes it then the crowd of people around her suddenly rejoice, crying she brought the dead back to life. They swarm around her and proclaim her a miracle healer. They all carry her like Christ on a cross in a procession the beach. For a while, we thought she’d shout: “Walang himala!”

Rans is featured in another musical number near the ending, singing and dancing on stage with her audience and then we also see Charo dancing while colorful fireworks are exploding all around them. The director leaves it all up to you to interpret what these startling sequences mean and how they’re connected to the destruction brought about by Yolanda.

No doubt Manatad knows his craft and visual language. The technical aspects of this film are way above average, including the cinematography, the sound and the musical score. The acting is also good, specially Charo Santos who does some things in this film that she has never done before in her entire career.

But we wish Carlo did something less ambitious and self-indulgent and chose to start his career as a filmmaker with a more commercial debut flick viewers can easily relate with.

National artists for film Ishmael Bernal and Lino Brocka started with very accessible, commercial works for their first movies, then when they have earned their dues and made a name for themselves, they went on to do their passion projects like “Nunal sa Tubig” and “Maynila: Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag”.

With its budget of P60 million and our limited viewers these days of the pandemic, we’re so afraid for the movie. We doubt if “Kun Maupay” could recover its enormous production cost. If he did a movie that aims more to please audiences than his own indulgence, then he’d have better chances with his producers’ getting their return of investment and him making up more follow up films.