7
7
I envy the likes of Song Verona who aren’t frightened when seeing a crucified manikin. So far, the sculpture was a far cry from Gibson’s version drawn to the brutal reality of the Pascal Mystery, where buckets of blood were used that could have drowned the person of Christ. Thanks to Kill Bill, Song had inured himself with movies that present bloody spectacle as an end in itself. Beating the Messianic, often romanticized, figure of the God-man in Jesus of Nazareth, King of Kings, or Flying House, The Passion of the Christ showcased more than realism, but naturalistic brutality of a race that utterly discarded Christ’s divinity for hours and hours of torturing Him like a common criminal. Jim Caviezel-who was too handsome to be Jesus-became the new prototype of the Passion-drenched in blood, his eye swelling, strands of flesh hanging from his flailed skin, flailed by a whip with jagged edges, a helmet and not just a crown of thorns, a broken arm-Song could feel the brutality once he started closing his eyes since he could not take it anymore. It digressed from the usually romantic-spiritual anguish shown in other films and focuses-to the point of exaggeration, possibly-in terms of physical agony to the extreme.
But Song could never forget the Pieta. Mary at the foot of the cross, cuddles the animalized body that used to be her son. She kisses His broken, bruised, brutalized, and bleeding face, staining her lips with blood. Then, without wiping out the blood from her face, she throws her gaze at the camera. Mary's gaze passes through it and out of the screen then pierces the eye of the viewer himself. The expressionless, blood-smeared face of the Mary speaks through telepathy, "All this because of you…"
Albeit a traumatic encounter with religion, I’ve been the Virgin Mary’s avid fan since I was a year old. In the bedroom, Marissa Oandasan saw me seated on the bed and looking at the wall. There hang a Madonna-and-child picture on a calendar, Our Lady of Perpetual Succor. I was so serious examining it. Then, as if a light bulb flashed on my head, I looked up, smiled, and jumped out of the bed, took a lampín from its basket, stood in front of the picture, and veiled the lampín on my head. At that very moment there seemed not one Madonna, but two. At the sight of this, Marissa Oandasan shuddered at the thought that I will never be her Ron Rico Oandasan again.
These I recalled while trodding my high heels, taking my UST-AB uniform for a walk in front of Isetann, along Recto Avenue, Quiapo.