Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros

Maximo “Maxi” Oliveros is a young and innocent boy who has a heart of a girl. He takes place the role and responsibilities of his deceased mother from cooking and even doing the household chores. One night, when Maxi is walking back to their house he was harassed by some of their neighbor, and saved by Victor, a police officer that he fell in love with. From that day on, he was doubt of where his loyalty is.

The movie started with the view of a dirty canal that symbolizes how polluted and unpeaceful that place is. Poverty is there, because of the criminal behavior of Maxi’s father and brothers who are into illegal drugs and snatching of cellphones, but despite of what they are doing, Maxi’s father never forget to ask for Lord’s blessings, where in they pray first before they started to eat.

The shadow of the electric fan on Maxi, as if Maxi is inside a cage or jail, this symbolizes that Maxi’s innocence brought him to a complicated life wherein he is in doubt of what is right and wrong in the society because he was blinded by the love and acceptance of his family. Since Maxi is still young, he has the wrong perception of what life is. There is a lot of thought came into his mind, a question that still on process on how life must be. We should go deeper, we should not see life as it is instead know and understand the meaning of it.

“Maraming masasamang tao dyan” “Maraming ngang masasamang tao, pero iisa lang ang Papa ko” this is a conversation between Victor and Maxi that caught my attention. Simple yet very meaningful line, which no matter how bad is the member of the family, still he/she is part of it and no one could ever change it. In the end, the brothers of Maxi started to change, because I know that in every decision in life, we have to make a choice to take the chance if we want anything to change.

In the end, I come up to the point of realization that this Indie film talks about the different issue in the society. First, the homosexual or the transgender people show how they are being rejected and accepted in the society. Poverty, an issue in the society that is very clear in this film because as what they’ve experience when their mother died because they are rejected by the hospital because of the lack of financial assistance. Change, allows individual to grow that makes me believe in this: ‘No one can go back and change a bad beginning but anyone can start now and create a successful ending.’ By this we gain experience, experience that molds and shapes us into a better person.