Has Moodysson Been Bitten By The BABEL Bug?  First MAMMUT (MAMMOTH) Trailer Arrives.

Reader Comments

1. Kurt Halfyard 11/28/2008 @ 10:20pm

   Hmm, it looks like Moodyson has been watching Olivier Assayas films…

2. misteresh 11/29/2008 @ 4:27am

   I’m not digging it.

3. Simon Abrams 11/29/2008 @ 7:36am

   I quit before finishing watching CONTAINER so I don’t know what I’m missing but I like what I see and I certainly like the trailer’s use of Ladytron (was that a remix? I think so but dunno).

4. IEDParty 11/29/2008 @ 8:26pm

   ” Filipino Maid ” , eh !!
   Hooray ! Excellente ! Whoopie fucking do !!!
   Put in some blond-haired bitch-whore, poor-ass, faggot transvestite, and we’re all set - for the snotty, vapid Euro-trash art film shit !
   __
   Why not bring the Filipino Calhoun, Mammy Beulah and Uncle Tom to the table, too ?!? This stupid pandering movie couldn’t stink enough.

5. Swarez 11/29/2008 @ 8:33pm

   Wow. Guess he didn’t like the trailer.

6. pochiW 11/29/2008 @ 8:48pm

   looks more like babel + lost in translation - kind of a “heads-up” to first world upper/middle-class for lives outside their cocoons. i don’t think assayas targets that audience too explicitly?
   bernal has a hard time selling he’s not a club kid :D

7. Todd Brown 11/29/2008 @ 10:37pm

   IEDParty: like it or not, the Philipines is probably the world’s top exporter of ‘domestic help’. Walk into any upper class neighborhood here in Toronto during business hours and you’ll find a non-stop parade of blond children being pushed in strollers by Filipino women. It’s not pandering, it’s fact.

   That’s the first point. The second is that this is not the first time you’ve gone off on this sort of rant here. Keep it civil or get out.

8. IEDParty 11/30/2008 @ 12:13am

   Wow. Looks like I struck a nerve. Good.

   And I think I know where my country’s at , sir. Thank you very much.

   I do remember the Africans having been put through the same situation several hundreds of years ago. That does not excuse ’ Beulah ‘. Or, for the matter, any dumb shit that recklessly throws that ’ fact ’ around, much less, knowingly or unknowingly, reducing an entire race to nothing more than that. 

   Yes, it is a shit truth. It is abominable reality. And then some. 

   __
   We are undoing such hubris from here, so don’t you worry.

9. IEDParty 11/30/2008 @ 12:21am

   No, sir. I didn’t like it.

10. Todd Brown 11/30/2008 @ 8:31am

    IED:  You know that Moodysson is being “reckless” how, exactly?  You don’t know what he thinks of the situation.  You don’t know what he’s saying about it.  Maybe he hates it as much as you do.  You’re leaping to conclusions and in the procession spewing a lot of offensive venom in a whole lot of directions.

    And, frankly, whether you like it or not if Moodysson wants to make a realistic film about an upper class western family, realism pretty much demands that there be some sort of ‘domestic’ is the family unit and that means either a Filipino or Mexican.  It’s not arrogant to be accurate.  If he mishandles the material, sure, you’ll have a right to be offended but as it stands right now you’re basically throwing a fit because you don’t like the fact that women in your country travel abroad to work as nannies.  Either get over it or direct your anger at your own people rather than that “blond-haired bitch-whore, poor-ass, faggot transvestite”.

11. d4emend 12/01/2008 @ 10:29am

    Todd Brown, please check your facts, the Philippine is not the top exporter of maids, Indonesia and Cambodia are. Philippines export man power (doctors, engineers, nurses, IT professionals, teachers and not just maids). Not all Asian looking nannies are Filipinos. It is easy to cast a Filipino in that role because we speak good English though.

    Why is it so easy for you to generalize Filipinos and Mexicans? Mind you, not all Hispanics are Mexicans, and not all South East Asians are Filipinos.

12. Todd Brown 12/01/2008 @ 10:53am

    Depends what regions you’re talking about, d4emend.  In North America the huge majority of domestic help is either Filipino or Mexican.  Not all of them, but most.  I’m certainly not saying that’s ALL that Filipino’s do, nor do I think Moodysson is saying that’s all that they do.  Heck, the fact that he’s explicitly included a plot line to track the maid’s family back home in the Philipines says to me that he’s smarter than that and has more going on. 

    What I AM saying is that IEDParty’s reaction was HUGELY over the top and uncalled for.  IEDParty has done this before and his goal is not to open a conversation but to be offensive and abrasive and that won’t be tolerated here.  If you want to talk, we’re all for talking.  If you want to scream and yell and rant and be as insulting as you can, then take that somewhere else, we don’t need it.

13. d4emend 12/01/2008 @ 12:40pm

    Oh, and they are not exported, they leave because of economic reasons.

14. Todd Brown 12/01/2008 @ 4:50pm

    Oh, look.  The guy who chose to open his comment with a straight-out insult has had his comment deleted.  Seriously, what part of ‘keep it civil’ did you have a hard time with?

    Seriously, people, do you not give any thought to how you’re coming across here?  So far we’ve had three Filipino’s come forward in a misguided - yes, misguided, more on that later - attempt to defend what they imagine is their nation’s slighted honor and two of them have done nothing but sling insults around.  Very honorable that, nice.  Dazzler25, in your list of Filipino accomplishments you somehow left out rudeness.  I’m not swearing at anybody here, I’m not calling you stupid, why are you doing it to me?  Get a grip.

    Now, why I say this is misguided.  You guys are freaking out because Lukas Moodysson made a movie that has a Filipino maid.  Period.  There’s no more to it than that.  All three of you guys have acknowledged that, yes, there are a LOT of Filipino maids and nannies out there and yet you somehow find anyone actually TALKING about that or REPRESENTING it to be offensive.  Why?  It makes no sense.

    Nobody has said that Filipinos are not hard working, intelligent people.  Nobody has said that those who work as maids are somehow representative of the entire nation.  Nobody has said that those who ARE maids are in any way inferior to their employers or, for that matter, to other Filipinos.  All that anybody has said is that some Filipinos are maids.  And nannies.  And somehow, in one person’s mind this justifies a rant about a “blond-haired bitch-whore, poor-ass, faggot transvestite”.  How is this an appropriate response?  If you’re this rude to people who dare reference the simple fact that there ARE Filipino maids out there how do you treat the women who travel overseas to do this work? 

    Let’s flip this around a little bit.  If Yam Laranas were to make a film here in Toronto that featured a white lower classed teenaged girl who had dropped out of high school and now worked as a daytime supermarket cashier - a situation that describes an abnormally high percentage of daytime cashiers here - would I be justified going on about “fucking slant-eyed third world trash”?  No, I would not.  And Yam, I apologize for that, your eyes are lovely.  Or if Alejandro Innaritu were to make a film that included a poor, white senior citizen forced to work the day shift at McDonald’s because their pension doesn’t cover their expenses, would it be okay for me to go on about those “wetback shitheads”?  No, it would not.  So why is it okay for you to go off on Moodysson for including a Filipino maid in HIS film?  As long as he treats the character with respect and tries to keep things realistic - and there’s no reason to think he hasn’t done exactly that - it’s a perfectly valid decision.

    And out of curiosity:  what do you think of the films of Brillante Mendoza?  If you consider the presence of a maid in a film to be some huge insult I shudder to think how you must react to HIS films, because he runs his characters through a huge range of much more difficult and “demeaning” situations.  Or is this really about the fact that Moodysson is a Swede and not Filipino himself?

15. Ichi-The-Killer 12/02/2008 @ 5:23am

    looks highly pretentious.

16. Todd Brown 12/02/2008 @ 10:00am

    You’re certainly not the first person to call Moodysson pretentios, Ichi, and you’ll be far from the last.  He really polarizes people and my opinions vary pretty wildly from film to film with him but when he’s on his game he’s capable of producing really good stuff.  In a lot of ways you could consider him a Swedish Von Trier ...

17. mdamm 12/03/2008 @ 12:34pm

    Hi Todd Brown,
    I am a Filipino, but I am totally on your side. What is the big fuss about a Filipino maid as a character in a movie? Big deal! It is a reality and I don’t see it as demeaning to Filipinos. I don’t see nothing wrong with your comments to provoke negative reactions. 

    I am quite sure that this movie does not paint a negative image of the Filipino domestic helper. In fact I feel that this film humanizes this Filipino character. Well…

18. mdamm 12/03/2008 @ 12:37pm

    ooppsss.. i meant “anything wrong”, not nothing wrong.

19. arnie 12/23/2008 @ 3:13am

    It’s embarrassing how some fellow Filipinos overreact and feel slighted over things like Filipinas being portrayed as nannies in movies. They see this as a racial insult and become blinded to the fact that there are thousands of Filipinos working as maids everywhere in the world. But this is nothing to be embarrassed about because it is fact.

    The overreaction of some Filipinos (not all because I am also Filipino) only reveals their class biases—they think it is demeaning to be working as maids in foreign countries. Frankly, what is more embarrassing is not the choice of these Filipinos to work as nannies, but the Philippine government’s failure to provide livelihood for these women that would give them enough money to sustain their families without having to work as servants elsewhere. This is where d4emend and IEDParty should be directing their ire against and not against filmmakers who portray this reality.

    From what I saw in the trailer (of course I have see the whole film first), I think Moodysson shows a lot of sensitivity (even empathy) towards the Filipina maid.

    To these Filipinos who have practice a misplaced sense of nationalism, lighten up. We don’t hear Thais complaining about the sex worker being portrayed in the film.

20. arnie 12/23/2008 @ 3:15am

    To these Filipinos who practice a misplaced sense of nationalism, lighten up. We don’t hear Thais complaining about the sex worker being portrayed in the film.

21. Ichi-The-Killer 12/23/2008 @ 11:33am

    I’m Thai and i could care less.

22. arnie 12/24/2008 @ 6:38am

    Ichi-The-Killer, precisely my point. Some Filipinos have a lot to learn from you. By the way, I am excited to see the film.

23. lala 01/01/2009 @ 2:58am

    i agree with arnie.aside from it is a fact, there’s nothing to be ashamed being housemaid as long as its legal,decent,can send their children in the school to improve lives.i will watch it too.

24. sluh69 01/28/2009 @ 4:46pm

    What’s up with these angry pinoys, relax guys. I’m a filipino nurse and I’ve been working here in USA since 95 and I’m excited about the fact that a filipino talent is part of this movie. I hope more pinoy talents will be given a chance to be part of international productions such as this movie. By the way, Filipino Indie movies are well respected in International Film Festivals.

25. Simon Abrams 01/28/2009 @ 6:59pm

    Speaking of well-respected pinoys, check out my review of Brillante Mendoza’s SERBIS here: http://nypress.com/article-19330-compassionate-spectacle-serbis.html

26. Sultan of Boracay 03/23/2009 @ 8:27pm

    It’s unfair to dismiss a movie right away without seeing it in full. This “misguided” sense of nationalism dates back to that post-Marcos era when Filipinos wanted to repair its damaged identity after some fallen guy’s misrule. “My fellow Filipinos” (in Tita Cory’s deadpan accent), get a grip, a life! It’s the 21st century!

27. Sultan of Boracay 03/23/2009 @ 8:32pm

    It’s unfair to dismiss a movie right away without seeing it in full. This “misguided” sense of nationalism dates back to that post-Marcos era when Filipinos wanted to repair their damaged identity after some fallen guy’s misrule. “My fellow Filipinos” (in Tita Cory’s deadpan accent), get a grip, a life! It’s the 21st century!

28. noypi 03/28/2009 @ 7:24pm

    i’m a filipino and excited to watch the movie.  the fact that a filipino talent is part of this movie is already and achievement regardless of the character she portrays. it’s just a movie and she will be judged how well she has done her part in the movie, not as a filipino. 

    Filipinos are talented that’s why they are all over the globe! Cheers!

29. Bado 04/01/2009 @ 5:14pm

    As a Filipino, I should feel proud that a fellow Filipino was chosen to play an important role in a major international film like Mammut. Frankly, however, I feel shame rather than pride because her role only re-enforces the world-wide perception that the Philippines is indeed a country of domestic helpers whom Chip Tsao, a Hong Kong journalist, has recently written a disparaging article about.

Post Your Comments

• Next Entry
• Previous Entry