THE THIRD THING in the SUNDAY BEAUTY QUEEN
The film is a language and as language, it consists of form and structure that basically shapes the meaning of the movie. Film form is interconnected to the content or message of the movie. It produces meaning inside the text which can be analyzed through the use of shots and montage. The creative and proper use of a form may create a social meaning which can be used in fulfilling a consequential mission for the society. In this essay, the documentary movie entitled SUNDAY BEAUTY QUEEN, produced by TBA Studios and directed by Ms. Babyruth Villarama, will be the basis of the study in discussing key ideas in Sergei Eisenstein’s essay The Dialectical Approach of Film Form.
In discussing film form, as Eisenstein said that shot is an element of montage, this element is important in building meaningful contexts. The shot is equivalent to the object framed on the screen. The opening scene is a combination of different objects and characters that tells about the synopsis of the movie. One may look at it as an establishing shot of each character that will be shown along with the movie.
Happy faces, beautiful gowns, elegant Filipina contestants, and an excited crowd — these are some of the shots used in creating montage in the opening scene which indicates that the opening scene is about the pageant joined by some Filipinas in Hong Kong. The next scene tells about that these Filipinas are not princesses but a ‘Cinderella’ who are bound with contracts and restrictions because of their work.
In one scene of Sunday Beauty Queen, where one of the OFWs returned to her employer, there are combinations of the image of the character looking outside the train (medium shot and close-up) are used which indicates emotions. The shot of the train running and the tickling of the clock on the subway (wide shots) indicate that she is running out of time and she’s facing a crucial and tough situation. And when she arrived at her employer’s home, it was too late; she was fired by her boss. This scene may not be a huge shock for the spectator because the montage used in this scene indicates the passage of time and the effect of the previous scene that is the cause of her misfortune.
One may feel that the SUNDAY BEAUTY QUEEN is not just simply a narrative documentary that has a beginning, climax, and denouement. There are elements of framing and editing that use to create conflicting forms to discuss social issues like poverty and class struggles. For Eisenstein, these forms may have a cinematic equivalent in Karl Marx’s theory about dialectical materialism which refers to the third thing produced by the viewers of the media. One example is a movie that has a social meaning is when one Filipina narrates her story before deciding to work abroad. While narrating her story, a slow-motion shot is being shown to indicate that she is telling her back story. The use of long shots and wide is about the idea of sojourning to a foreign land for the sake of the family. The pattern of close-up and wide shot combination is one indication of learning the language of storytelling and understanding the meaning behind the story. For example, the character’s shot in a close up shows the emotion of what they are narrating, and the wide shot is used to describe the situation they are facing. In the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, it is the combination of the thesis and antithesis to create the synthesis of the meaning. The contradiction of some shots, like the relationship of employee and employer, being happy even she’s eating while standing inside the kitchen and the employer is in the dining area eating comfortably, shows that the class struggle is existing in the story. The idea in Sunday Beauty Queen, as the title itself suggests, is revolutionary thinking of the audience, creates a concept of a mission to change the lives of the domestic workers even just for a day. The same goes for other OFW struggling to make ends meet.
A movie is an art form that has a social mission to its viewers, a mission of empathy to help and to understand their needs. What the movie (Sunday Beauty Queen) wants to impart to the Filipino community is that OFWs need to be protected by the law, by the Philippine government because living in a foreign land is a huge sacrifice for the sake of their family. The Government should pay back our “Economic Heroes” by giving them a good quality of protection and guidance.
