Green Bones, a Film About Trauma, Injustice, Change

I only get to see a film inside a commercial movie house or cinema during the yearly Christmas holiday Metro Manila Film Festival. Last year, my husband and I watched Firefly, for which I did a quick movie review in my column. It won, hands down, as the MMFF 2023 Best Picture. Firefly was shot entirely or much of it in Bicol, with Ticao Island in Masbate as the story locale. Long after we exited the cinema, my husband and I were still extracting the incredible lessons of a child’s innocence and love for magic and dreams.

This year, in the 2024 MMFF, the movie Green Bones, an intense one-hour drama depicting the excruciating saga for the truth of a convict wrongly accused with a justice system that some may describe as corrupt to the bones. The film romped off with the coveted Best Picture award, a brilliant feat for GMA Pictures, GMA Public Affairs, and filmmaker Zig Dulay, the same producers and filmmaker who bagged the Best Picture and many other awards in the 2023 MMFF.

Shot inside a simulated island Iwahig prison colony on the rustic beautiful island of Palawan where inmates engaged in farming and livelihood enterprises to earn. What seemed to be a peaceful recluse has a deep secret where cries from torture echo through its dark inner halls unknown to the world. The powerful syndicate cloaked in police uniforms held the key to every prisoner’s fate. The movie exposes this deep secret, but it is no secret after all. For Dom, everything around is good, cloaked with pretensions and fear. Once inside this haven, Dom began his inner saga to be free and seek quiet revenge on those who wronged his sister and niece.

In the end, he won. Like Firefly, Green Bones nurtured hope for change from trauma and injustice. I am happy; this ending in a movie would want us to see more of the world that is kinder to the poor and the powerless and inspires us to do better.

Green Bones is an honest, moving film for all who still believe that justice, human rights, and redemption should matter most in life. It spoke about PDL or people deprived of liberty, incarceration, crime and punishment, drugs and corruption, privilege, and marginalization, and imprisoned individuals wronged by a poor justice system where money and connections count more than our moral values as human beings. Do to others what we want others to do unto us. We all want a world where people -rich and poor - treat each other fairly and justly.

I was glad my cousin Ebong Lazaro goaded me to enjoy the senior citizens’ weekly free movie benefits if I had not done so yet; what an opportune time to do it than during the MMFF, where the country’s best films get selected to vie for quality and excellence. With my husband away for a quick reunion back home in Dagupan, my cousin and I quickly picked Green Bones to watch. I saw the film ad from director to screenwriter and cast; it was a powerhouse! I am a fan of the young Alessandra de Rossi, who also starred in the 2023 winner, Firefly, of Ricky Lee, the multi-awarded and GMA Public Affairs cinematic projects.

I left the cinema at SM Naga yesterday reflecting on how far the caliber of Filipino films has gone. It used to be just Lino Brocka, Joel Lamangan, Ishmael Bernal and Bonifacio Ilagan. Young and passionate directors of a new genre have emerged, equally bold and aggressive, to speak for a diverse world and seek change. Firefly and Green Bones stood out as critical standouts. Melodramatic, emotional, and tense, there were predictable moments, but overall, the latest standout, Green Bones, was one New Year blast.

Green Bones gave Dennis Trillo a Best Actor award, Ruru Madrid Best Supporting Actor, and Ricky Lee for Best Screenplay. I marveled at the contrasting personalities and confrontations of the angry Trillo, who played Domingo “Dom” Zamora, the convicted prisoner gone desperate yet hungry for justice and reunification with his murdered sister’s daughter, and Madrid, as a young rookie Prison guard, Xavier Gonzaga just out from criminology school. I would have wanted de Rossi to grab a supporting role award with those terse yet powerful scenes where she played the role of an NGO worker providing support and assistance to aggrieved victims of injustice. It struck me that I have a soft heart for volunteers who advocate for social change in words and action.

What made Green Bones outstanding?

The ad invited curiosity, triggering a kiliti to tickle the public’s imagination. At first, I thought the film was about cremation, forensics, and looking at who bore the green bones between Dom, the aggrieved prisoner, and Gonzaga, the vengeful guard played by Murido. My cousin quoted a Googled cultural belief that “green bones after cremation are the final gift of the deceased to their family and are a welcome sign.” That green bones appear only in “good people” during their lifetime. “We should not judge people by their outside features,” she repeated.

In Green Bones, the evil forces were the corrupt, powerful custodians of the prison colony, while the imprisoned mainly from the poor, silenced because of fear, and a justice system that needs a lot of fixing and reform, turned out to be the good forces that eventually turned victors because of their collective power to resist and speak out.

Life can be a prison, a microcosm of society. We can choose: change and be free or be kept in oblivion, silenced, and immobile.