Magnifico has to rank has having one of the saddest endings in movie history. Move over Love Story and Terms of Endearment - though I've never seen either one of those, having been put off by what I heard about them.
But Magnifico is different. Though you know death is coming at the end of the film -- the whole thing is about death, from Lea's dead puppy in the first scene to Catherine who lives by the cemetery because her entire family died in a fire to the bus driver obsessively grieving his recently deceased mother to the grandmother diagnosed with stomach cancer -- it's not a tearjerker.
Well, it is a tearjerker but not told in a tearjerker way. The only deep conversation is near the end when his older brother tells the rich girl he tried to hustle that he's going to prove he really does love her.
And you won't be prepared for the ending.
The first time I watched it, I was outraged, because it seemed to come from nowhere and had no meaning. But as it watched it again, I began to see how the pieces fit together. Plus, the title of the final song -- Anghel na Sugo or Angelic Messenger -- is a clue.
Magnifico is a young boy who manages to touch the lives of everybody around him, leaving them better off or just better people.
Yet, informed of his grandmother's impending death and that it will cost roughly thirty thousand pesos -- a sum so big he cannot even comprehend its enormity -- it goes about helping his family, who of course barely has enough to eat on, let alone pay so much. This includes matter of factly measuring her and then gathering scrap boards and borrowing tools to save his family some money by making her coffin himself.
And it's his friend Carlos who points out the plain wood needs color, so he decorates it with pictures of the sun, clouds and sky.
My one beef with this movie is that apparently because a child is the main character, it's for children. I think I'd rather let my kids cry over the death of Bambi's mother than see this movie. I'd think I'd rather let them watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because that's less gut-wrenching.
The transition from the triumph of him taking his little sister with cerebral palsy around the carnival to the next morning is . . . indescribable.
I believe the scene at the cemetary is the most powerful burial scene I've ever seen in a movie. Maybe it helps that it's in The Philippines and, though I've never been to a funeral or burial there, I can believe how everyone gathers so close to the open casket and expresses their grief. It'd be a lot less believable or credible in America, where only the family goes to the actual burial.
The structure of the scene, the sequences of images of everyone grieving so horribly, and the music add up to one of the most emotionally drenching scenes in the movies.
In the end, all I can say is that . . . Magnifico does raise the thirty thousand pesos for his grandmother, and throws in enough for his mother to get back the wedding ring she had to pawn. But that's not much of a spoiler.
This movie takes a while to absorb. I recommend it highly. Let it sink in. It's saying a lot more than it seems to. If you're angry at the end -- as I was the first time -- watch it again and observe the pattern.
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