Review: ‘Green Bones’ Prescribes a Better Way to See The World

(SPOT.ph) Green Bones casts Ruru Madrid as Xavier Gonzaga, a corrections officer newly arrived at San Fabian, a prison facility outside of Metro Manila where inmates are given work and a better pathway to parole. There he encounters Dom Zamora (Dennis Trillo), who is in prison for the murder of his own sister. Zamora, by all appearances, is a Model prisoner, and is up for release pretty soon. But Gonzaga, who bears the trauma of a murdered sister, doesn't trust the criminal, and keeps a close eye on all his actions.

The question at the heart of the movie is whether people are capable of change. This is itself the question at the heart of all corrections: are we keeping people behind bars just to hold them there, or do we actually believe in rehabilitation. The movie puts us in the head of Gonzaga, and thus lets us see the world through the lens of someone who believes that once someone has done wrong, they are unable to set themselves straight.

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Green Bones relies on classic human drama

What plays out is pretty simple, actually. There aren't very many surprises along the way, in spite of a structure that suggests twists and turns. It instead relies on classic human drama; the kind that puts stock in hope and kindness, and presents a view of the world that defies the cynicism that day to day life in the Philippines can engender.

That's all there is to it, really. The movie studies a character whose worldview has been shaped by his trauma. And so, he goes out of his way to see the worst in people that he's watching over. Every act becomes sinister, and everything that he's not privy to is some sort of conspiracy. The clever thing is that the movie itself doesn't hide a lot from us. We see the same things that Gonzaga sees, and he just seems to be more than willing to ignore how well things are actually going in this prison community.

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Dennis Trillo shines

Madrid is capable in the lead role, but this movie is really all about Dennis Trillo, whose Zamora is a paradoxically expressive puzzle. The whole game of this movie is not knowing what Zamora is actually doing, but Trillo just lets us in on the bare humanity of this character. He wears the pain and worry on his face, suggesting a history more complicated than the one that Gonzaga has in his head.

There's nothing flashy about Green Bones. It is very much just a human sized story that asks us to believe in something, and maybe to wish for something good in ourselves. Maybe it is exactly what we need in times like this, when the whole world feels like a circus, and all the news can only lead us to believe that things can only get worse. Here is a simple story that prescribes a better way of seeing things, without lurching into empty escapism. The film acknowledges that bad things happen, that people will do bad things. But maybe that isn't the end of it. Maybe, if we allow ourselves to see it, there can be more.

Rating: 4.5 stars.

Green Bones opens December 25 in cinemas nationwide.