‘Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge’ REVIEW: Successful Reconstruction of its Own Accord
‘Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge’ REVIEW: Successful Reconstruction of its Own Accord
John Lloyd Cruz as Simoun Rizal in Makamisa / Still taken from Facebook via Achinette Villamor.
It is quite easy to gloss over Jose Rizal as merely a national hero whose crucial works during the Philippine revolution are confined to material studied sparingly in primary and secondary levels. After all, his highly regarded contributions could easily be dismissed as mere school requirements — an unfortunate consideration for a renaissance man who, despite being accorded a mandatory subject in college, faces countless reasons for why people might not delve beyond his two acclaimed books or the various quotable passages attributed to him. Effectively, as Khavn deems it, Rizal’s legacy comprises numerous fragments to decipher, understand, and magnify for a larger audience.
This is the stage upon which Khavn’s Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge is concerned. In 1992, Ambeth Ocampo published a book detailing his discovery and experience salvaging the third, unfinished novel of the national hero among a collection of papers mistakenly tagged as draft pages of Noli Me Tangere. The book itself is easy to find online, but upon reading it, one encounters a Rizal who is rejuvenated and deeply interested in satirizing the state and, more so, the church. Khavn’s attempted completion of the film is rather successful — not because it strives for a definitive conclusion, but because it is obsessed with reinterpreting fragments not as a cohesive piece of Rizal’s work, but as a collective expression.
Structurally, the film is silent throughout, with dialogue interspersed in title cards written in Baybayin. The details of the Philippines’ local film history, especially from the pre-war era, are notably absent, and Makamisa consciously binds itself to this reality to freely fill in the gaps. Characters are renamed quite differently from the source material, sometimes combining fictional and real-life identities (e.g., Lilith Strangenberg’s Sisa Bracken) rather than directly referencing the original. The film is even shot on expired film as an acknowledgment of the faded, collective memory that plagues pre-war Filipino film history.
As far as the film’s relationship with the source material, it is more inspired by than faithful to it. Khavn transforms a story primarily about the town of Pili and its life under the dictatorial yet revered parish priest, Padre Agaton, into a narrative that interweaves Rizal’s life with his own established characters, such as Sisa, Elias, and others. One audience member at the film’s QCinema screening described it as "incredibly weird," and rightfully so, as the film navigates this mishmash of realities and fiction to evoke a haunting, ghastly message.
It is precisely in this chaotic randomness that Makamisa works. It is fair to criticize how unregulated and polarizing Khavn can be (see: Orphea, Ruined Heart) in his creative expressions. However, in instances like Makamisa, Khavn’s reconstruction of history holds significant weight, as its chaos effectively expresses the yearning for a lost history.
This raises the question of whether the excessive use of phallic symbolism was necessary. It’s worth noting that Khavn has explored this motif in past works, such as 2010’s Mondomanila, where its use felt justified. Here, it seems to serve as a means of illustrating a more explicit sexual dimension, particularly in John Lloyd Cruz’s portrayal of Simoun Rizal. His romances and written letters to his wife, represented through Sisa Bracken, are relatively subdued by comparison. While the symbolism and other details elicit some discussion, they seem less relevant to the film’s larger themes.
Despite this, there is much to appreciate in the film from both technical and substantive perspectives. The stacked ensemble cast, headlined by John Lloyd Cruz and Lilith Strangenberg, fully embraces Khavn’s eccentricity, as does the film’s off-kilter editing. Even without significant dialogue, the film is carried by its elegant and haunting score, courtesy of The Kontra-Kino Orchestra, and its impressive costumes. Many scenes are creatively hand-painted, with the expired film stock enhanced by heavy doses of coloring. In the end, Khavn delivers an experimental triumph, especially for a project he’s been sitting on since chancing upon Ambeth Ocampo’s novel in the 1990s.
Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge was screened as part of QCinema 2024’s QCLokal lineup.
