Life, according to Tony de Guzman, is short, harsh and uncertain. Grab what you can when you can. Settle scores. Be randy. Defy the rules. Cheat the system. Tough it out. Don’t let the good stuff blind you to the bitter truth. Life is war and war is hell.

The film is nihilist. And Tony is an anti-hero. But then, society is absurd, and he doesn’t believe in heroes. The real heroes are the small people who struggle daily for survival.

Tony’s had tough times living in the slums, being jobless and going hungry. The society and government are hopeless. Tony is big on family.

Based on Norman Wilwayco’s Palanca-winning novel of the same title, “Mondomanila” deals with a young man’s strange search for his place under the sun, through countless trials of pain, loss, isolation, hopelessness, and rejection, amidst the stark reality of death and poverty. Tony, the 3rd world anti-hero for these postmodern times, is against everything and everyone.

In a world where cargo-boxes are houses and a full meal a day is a feast, Tony de Guzman subsists as a sophist but with plans to avenge his oppression. He begins his journey as the neighborhood water-carrier, cursing his estranged father for being a financial detriment with a pompous vision of education for his sons.

Tony’s life is bridled by a string of endless acquaintances and relations dating back to his childhood. From his matchbox home of a nagging mother with dreams of romance and a kid brother sexually assaulted by an American pedophile, Tony takes minuscule steps along a narrow path of grime that is his community and elbows his way out of a putrid company of neighbors: Almang Paybsiks, the town gossip; Pablong Shoeshine, the arsonist Casanova; Mutya, the dilettante gangster; Sgt. Pepper, the perpetual macho with a gay son; and Domeng, the avuncular pimp.

When Tony is given the unique chance to become a scholar in the state university and later, to be employed as a prestigious computer engineer, his environment rise from the slums only to encounter worse depravity in fair skins and fragrant garments. Tony’s appetite for escape then becomes insatiable.

“Mondomanila” portrays the life of Tony de Guzman— a cynical asshole and hedonist whose unawareness of his unflinching hope is even endearing.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Human drama, when wielded by those who have glimpsed nothing more than a sliver of light behind the curtain, become nothing more than tragedy. In the hands of the uninitiated (the young, the sheltered, the denial kings and queens of the world), relationships become caricatures, lessons stripped down to its barest form, sheer emotion, between point A and point B, the straight line towards the universals.

Then there is the kind of human drama that extends beyond tragedy and plants its feet firmly in the territories of madness. In “Mondomanila,” the truth is still present, still gleaned from the cracks in the celluloid curtain, but it is not “out there,” as pundits from the outer realm put it, but in your own backyard.

And make no mistake about it, backyards can shock, specially if one doesn’t go out much. “Mondomanila” offers one of the most horrifying backyards this side of Lino Brocka. Taking off from the much-criticized quote of Manila by Hollywood’s My-So-Called Juliet, Ms. Claire Danes, the movie settles comfortably in the slums, a veritable Third World ghetto, and presents viewers with a madness so realistically presented it seems presentably unreal.

To put it another way, if Brocka’s films a decade ago talked about the wounds of Manila, “Mondomanila” belongs to new breed of storytelling that makes one feel as if one has actually touched that wound, a close-up view of all that gangrene and pus.

“Mondomanila” is inhabited by scum. In the center stand The Paranoid Squad, a group of rat-munching, shabu-sniffing, opportunistic, homophobic bums led by Tony and Elmer. The two rogues are surrounded by the usual denizens of the underworld, the crippled pimp, the lonely housewife, the innocent kid whose world view is shattered at an early age, the neighborhood gay and his macho father, the prostitutes, the smalltime politician, the Yankee pedophile.

As Tony puts it, “They think we’re all worthless pieces of shit. No ambition. No plans. Irresponsible, horny bastards, war freaks, addicts, thieves. Genuine motherfuckers. Devils. But we’re happy.”

“Mondomanila,” however, is not about a celebration of self-destruction. Far from it. Decadence, after all, is the language of the privileged. Decadence is that which escapes from the clutches of bourgeois order. But what if there is no order at all? That the chaos stemming from poverty is in itself a contingent form of order?

In “Mondomanila,” there are no happy endings and Death awaits in ambush at every corner. Still, “Mondomanila” evades a kind of defeatist attitude prevalent in most films which tackle heavy handed “social shit.” Tragedy lies not at the end but is a given situation.

Ultimately, it is not the usual “story that needs to be told” but is, in all accounts, simply a backyard full of lovable fuckers.

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