Arya News - In Netflix`s latest `Ganito, Ganyan, Ganoon,` a family dishes out old hurts at the dinner table. Between awkward career updates and fab desserts, an absentee mother`s `grand homecoming` from the US eventually cracks open her tumultuous life – no thanks to her equally troubled son.
MANILA – In Filipino dramas, a reunion or any sort of gathering that forces everyone into one place is when you know things are about to go down. For what else could happen when people living separate—sometimes estranged—lives are brought together under the guise of catching up?
But if you have seen “Tanging Yaman,” “Filipinas,” or “Seven Sundays,” you know that all the small talk and merriment only last so long. Simple jokes and teasing start hitting a nerve, and before you know it, they have turned into full-blown confrontations that expose old hurts and resentments everyone had, at some point, agreed to pretend never happened—all for the sake of keeping the peace.
You can add “Ganito, Ganyan, Ganoon” to this list.
Grand homecoming
In this new Netflix film, Paz (Agot Isidro), an absentee mother who has been living in the US, makes a “grand homecoming” to the family she “did something to.” At the dinner table, there’s the nosy aunt, the politically incorrect tito, and the abandoned daughter. Between awkward career updates and fab desserts, Paz’s tumultuous life is cracked open like a party palayok, no thanks to her equally troubled son.
And then she makes an announcement: She has cancer and has come home to die. Only this time, she gets not a drumroll but—and this is a nice touch by screenwriter-director Cholo H. Laurel—a drunk reveler singing off-key at the karaoke. Because, of course.
Filipinos can be a talkative lot, but words often escape us when it comes to resolving conflict. And sometimes, we finally find them only when tensions have already reached a boiling point.
“When we don’t know what to say, or we don’t want to say what we really want to say, we find ourselves just saying, ‘Ganito… ganyan… ganoon.’ Hindi natin mailabas,” says Laurel, who was inspired by someone very close to him whose story taught him about healing and, in turn, healed him.
“When we don’t know what to say, or we don’t want to say what we really want to say, we find ourselves just saying, ‘Ganito… ganyan… ganoon.’ Hindi natin mailabas”
As such, the story prescribes nothing more than proper communication—“that you talk, yank the wounds open, and expose them so they can start healing.” And so often in these films, that only happens after the half-eaten dinner is cleared.
Like therapy sessions
The characters have complicated histories, and the actors had to spend just as much time understanding them as the characters themselves spend trying to understand each other. No wonder Jodi Sta. Maria likened their discussions with the director to “therapy sessions.”
“Ang daming nabubuksan sa ‘kin while talking about our scenes,” says Sta. Maria, who plays Joanne, a TV writer who has just gotten into a prestigious screenwriting fellowship in New York.
Growing up traumatized by her mother’s absence, Joanne is finally at a point where she feels she has it all together—only for Paz to barrel back into her life like a storm.
As someone who grew up not knowing her father, Sta. Maria finds her character all too familiar. “Joanne and I share the same thing, and that’s abandonment,” she says. “So ‘yong issues of rejection, ‘yong coping mechanisms niya—her being an overachiever and hyper independent—super gets ko.”
Her plans thrown off-course, now Joanne must reckon with this question: How does she live with a woman who’s her mother in name? As a mother herself, that’s something she struggled to answer.
“I tried to understand Paz—how do you reach a point where you would leave her child behind? Kasi iisipin ko na kung ako, ilalaban ko ang anak ko sa hirap at ginhawa,” she says. “May mga butas na kailangan kong tagpi-tagpiin.”
“I tried to understand Paz—how do you reach a point where you would leave her child behind? Kasi iisipin ko na kung ako, ilalaban ko ang anak ko sa hirap at ginhawa”
Chance at forgiveness
Still, Sta. Maria knew that being an effective actor meant reserving judgment on the character she played. “Otherwise, you do it with conviction,” she points out.
If all this is starting to sound a little too heavy, “Ganito, Ganyan, Ganoon” has moments of levity, too. Its setting, the island of Marinduque, offers a picturesque respite. “You have to balance things to better deliver your point,” Laurel says. “If it’s too heavy, magsasara sila.”
But perhaps, more importantly, there’s also a way toward forgiveness—and the apology doesn’t always have to come served on a plate. “Sometimes, we expect an apology before we can forgive,” Isidro says. “But healing and forgiveness happen within yourself. It’s inner work.”