Summary
The Filipino drama film “Tahong” directed by Christopher Novabos and going to be released in 2024, is set in a coastal small town whose economy revolves around mussel farming. “Tahong” is a Filipino word for mussels, and is both literally and symbolically a central element of the movie. The tale revolves around a young woman trying to protect her family and their way of living, but in reality the story is about the broader issues of poverty, dignity, and moral compromise.
The prime character of the movie is Mira. A woman who is strong, but deeply troubled, and lives with her elderly father who works in the mussel farming tahong. Life for her is simple and connected to the tides, with daily rituals of her and her father venturing into the brackish waters for mussel harvesting and selling them in the local market. Though their pay is humble, it is consistent and allows them to scrape by.
A balance in this life is reached until a local coastal reclamation project backed by powerful business interests encroaches on the waters. The mussel farms are in danger, and fishermen are warned that their time is over—once the sea is theirs, now it’s in the hands of developers.
Mira is forced to consider desperate options to make ends meet with her father sick and with no money coming in. The film focuses on her journey through an unforgiving world, whether it is losing her innocence, pride, or values.
Mira does not take up the offers of the men who see her as an object to be traded with, but her resolve breaks as poverty sets in. Watching her father wither away only adds to her burden. The emotional injury wrought by the metamorphosis is unbearably slow: battered and cold under the cost of survival, “a once defiant daughter”, “now turned to reluctant victim”.
Life once marked the sea as sustenance, but now withered landscapes symbolize erosion and loss. The tahong beds smothered by concrete represent Mira’s dreams, and the never-ending burdens that anchor her grow deeper beneath the weight of her unasked responsibilities.
Mira is destined to feel empty by the end. Despite being able to financially care for her father, she is stripped away of her identity. Hope is the quieted price of existence. The journey is destined to strip the last remnants of her core.
Cast & Characters
Candy Veloso portrays Mira, the main character. Her performance is driven by emotional currents, a blend of vulnerability and quiet resolve. Through Mira, she personifies the Filipina dilemma of having to balance self-care and to a certain extent moral boundaries.
Salome Salvi portrays Talia, Mira’s closest confidante. Talia serves as a friend and a reflective surface to Mira as someone who, under certain circumstances, can perish from too soon of a surrender. Her character has a wholesome and balancing influence to Mira’s fierce internal struggles.
Marlon Marcia plays Goyo, a local fisherman who is sympathetic to Mira’s plight. While he is sympathetic to Mira, he is tragic and passive because he is unable to decisively resolve his feelings for her.
Emil Sandoval plays Kap Douglas, the village’s barangay captain. He as local figure represents the authority who is held hostage by enormous capitalism and chooses silence and self-preservation for the greater cost to the community.
James Lomahan plays Moises, one of the developers’ agents. He is a cold and calculating figure, the face of corporate exploitation in the story. His interactions with Mira become increasingly predatory as the film progresses.
Direction & Production
The film is directed by Christopher Novabos, who takes an intense, minimalistic approach to storytelling. Most of Novabos’s films focus on realism, with little to no drama, elaborate cinematography, or flashy effects. The story unfolds leisurely, which mirrors the quiet, desperate pace of life in rural areas.
In terms of visuals, Tahong deals with the landscape effectively as the ocean, muddy shorelines, and even markets are overcrowded and contribute to the suffocation. The director employs the use of natural lighting, long silences, and stationary camera angles to breathe emotional stillness.
In terms of dialogue, the film has very little of it. Expressions carry more weight than the words spoken. While the film may feel slow to some, it adds to the haunting realism.
Waves, wind, and even quiet whispers are the primary sounds heard, with music taking the backseat. The film’s choice to refrain from music reinforces the weight of silence, particularly in scenes where Mira is pondering her choices.
Themes & Symbolism
Where else would this story be set other than in a place that literally grows tahong? As in nearby farms near the beach that also have a deep literal meaning. Mira is also shaped into a giant glue.”
“Greed and capitalism is like a giant a mask that is always in constant pursuit of should capturing and sucking the life out of the most simple and pure of beings.”
“Everywhere in the earth one can feel the constant relentless push and weight of deteriorating living conditions no matter where in the earth one is. Mira and her father have no place in the real shrine of life called the modern day Metropolis. In this shrine of life, one can have anything done in a matter of minutes. you want food? poof! It’s done. You want a bed? bought in seconds through the ease of a click. There you have it, through the ease of a click you can have anything including even the most ghel. In the rest shrine of a modern life, life is full of a gigantic balanced world of chaos, it doesn’t matter who crosses this shrine of modern life. Even the simple coastal town like defini can become full of modern life.”
Critical Reception
As the rest of this analyze Mira is also a representation of taed in areas where no one can ever in the spirit of taed. Dress while being in the rest modern shrine. Climate Change in modern areas can easily drown any place in a giant mask of unrelenting chaos and the beautiful green life. There is no sin plenty of coming my world like how in areas where one can easily. For this theme rest of the shrine and the mask of the modern world will be full of drown in chaos.
Performances received notice for vigorous intensity, but some drifted into the realm of melodrama. As critics stated, the film’s attempts to foster empathy and social awareness often relied on the bare bones of cliché, treating genuine suffering as a freak show instead of a gateway to insight.
On the other hand, the film also received criticism for failing to go deeper into the social themes it presented. For example, the environmental reclamation theme was nearly irrelevant and it never became an actual conflict. Also, the attempt to symbolize “tahong” lacked focus as it was primarily used to draw attention instead of used artistically.
Conclusion
The Filipino film Tahong is a bold, yet flawed attempt at addressing rural displacement, poverty, and the sacrifices of women. It has an unsettling atmosphere and a captivating lead performance, however, the film is unable to convey the message in full due to poor narrative and pacing choices.
Nonetheless, the movie serves as a painful wake-up call to the invisible disasters occurring in the coastal towns throughout the Philippines. It pushes the audience to ponder: what is the price of merely existing, and who bears the often invisible burden of paying the price when development arrives?
For those who want to grapple with their discomfort, Tahong plunges into profound and harrowing topics, and though it is not flawless, it is unforgettable.
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