THERE is a major actor on-screen and he is Arjo Atayde. The sterling proof is in this on-demand TV series, called Bagman, where this young man dominates the narrative of corruption, corruption and corruption gilded as an action film turned cautionary tale turned parable.
Bagman follows the tradition of all of those dark and gory films that have been suffusing our screen from its celluloid days to the present. In another period, or mostly from the 1950s to the 1990s, Bagman would have been the natural heir to the so-called detective stories of yore. Indeed, as with its progenitors, this series has all the elements of those screen capers where one man has the licensed to kill or be killed, and where bosses hide behind shadows, and henchmen are as disgusting as they are thoroughly dispensable. But the legacy ends there.
Bagman soars away from its vicious origins as it explores the tripartite process of initiation-separation-return that noble heroes follow. Think of Daniel Barrion but with a twist because our hero is close to a heel, a twisted good man embedded in a bad, sad man trying to make good while being evil. But like all heroes, he undergoes a kind of test, is separated from his family, with a questionable return.
Atayde is Benjo, not yet the Bagman, but a husband ready to work and die for his family. Those are ethos for living that in Benjo’s newfound life becomes an ethos for dying.
Benjo is also a barber whose shop sits atop a stretch of a sidewalk up. According to the law of the barangay and the city, the sidewalk is supreme. That barbershop therefore, which doubles as Benjo’s home while he takes care of his pregnant wife, has to give way to the sidewalk.
In the many events that transpire in and out of that small, poor barbershop, the greater good is proffered, the bigger picture is painted. And Benjo and all those living near his barbershop are implicated in the quest for that greater “good.”
Something is going for Benjo though: He is a good barber, perhaps one of the best, and the governor makes him his personal “barber.” Before Benjo gets to meet his customer Numero Uno, he encounters other characters (other monsters?) and goes through challenges, which are more like tasks meant to test his agility, ability and loyalty. Instead of hermits or beggars, able-bodied men are the harbingers of puzzles to be solved, and the barber gets to provide the solution.
Cliché and more cliché abound in Bagman but in those templates of causes and effects lie the charm and danger of this series. The fact that we consider the evil machinations of the assistant to the Governor as cliché does not remove the fact that, in real life, those factotums and minions are organically evil elements in politics. The fact that soft-spoken avuncular personalities who can plot murder have become cliché means that we have become inured about certain lies in life. Rendered cinematic, these lies are turned into addictive truths.
The truth is Bagman makes the cliché of moral deprivation acutely persuasive because of performances that eschew the stereotypes. A political opponent, for example, is represented by a genial “sastre” or tailor. The governor, played by Raymond Bagatsing, has a menace that he appears to check constantly, careful not to disclose in public what he really is. His gestures given to goons who seldom share a space with him are rendered in codes as we guess what his next action will be. That uncertainly about the harm a powerful man can inflict on the man of small status gets reflected on the face of Benjo. The latter’s uncertainly becomes our anxiety.
Two other characters have delineations delicious to watch: Allan Paule as Cito, the governor’s special man, and Jeff Pangan, as Big Boy, the small fry imagining his own gravitas.
Pangan is Benjo’s entry point to the criminal world. Pangan’s Big Boy is easily the common man’s ideal villain. He appears to help out Benjo but we know he is duping this young man he now makes into his delivery boy. Paule’s Cito is more complex. He dispenses advice like “a man without principles is dangerous,” when we know his is a life without principle. Cito does not stop there; he compares the initiation of Benjo into this precarious career as the governor’s bag man to no less than “fatherhood,” which resonates with the young man about to be a father soon.
Mention must be made of Yayo Aguila whose caring words cloak a mind reeking of the naively officious.
And yet, we know, Big Boy, Cito and even “Pastora,” the woman-leader of a religious group being blackmailed to submission by the governor through Benjo, are not villains. How can they be bad when there are no good men in this tale? Well, maybe the father-in-law of Benjo? His wife? But both are not really keen in questioning where Benjo’s wads of cash come from.
Amid all these exemplary actors, Atayde stands out. He is practically in all the scenes, a taut and barbed thread in the tapestry of deceit. Innocent at the start, Benjo knows he is employed for the greater evil. Then he gets the hang of it; then we wait for any sign of redemption. But then he flashes his doe eyes and goes back to that hound-dog look. Atayde is so good we wonder if it is the fresh direction or the screenplay that pushes him to depict this extraordinary character. What we are sure of in this encounter is seeing an actor of the first order.
An iWant original series, Bagman is produced by Dreamscape Digital and Rein Entertainment. It is directed by Shugo Praico. Now streaming via Netflix, the film is getting a new traction and a new audience.
Atayde, by the way, was named best actor at the 2020 Asian Academy Creative Awards for Bagman.
1 comment
I hope there is season 3 and 4 or even more series. I hope that Benjo will be the President. For him to carve corruption in the country. He knows the problem and finally be a plot for solutions. Bagman is the best Filipino version of U.S Tele series “House of Cards”. I hope Bagman will finally reflect even in the Tele-movie that we as Filipinos hate corruption and other social illness of our country once and for all.