METRO MANILA (independent film) メトロマニラ

とても興味深い映画を見たので、その映画の感想をここで書きたいと思います。
I have watched an interesting film so I am going to share my review of it with you here.

ユネスコの世界遺産として登録された、棚田郡でしられるバナウェからのある家族は、生計を立てるためにメトロマニラまで上京しました。
A family from the province of Banaue, which is widely known for the Rice Terraces and registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site, came to down to Metro Manila to make a living.

その家族の父親であり、また4年間軍隊に仕えた農夫は、メトロマニラでの度重なる苦労の末とあるアームドトラック会社に雇われました。
Oscar, the father of the family as well as a farmer who used to serve as a solider for four years, was hired by an Armed Truck Company after his struggling in Metro Manila.

彼の命はたった一日で500ペソの価値、彼はその仕事で危険に晒らされるなど知る由もありませんでした。
He never knew that he would be exposed to the dangers of his job, and the equivalent of his life is just 500 pesos a day.

彼の妻マイはようやくあるバーでダンサーとしての仕事の機会を得るが、それは彼女にとって望まない仕事でした。しかし、夫の収入だけでは生活できないので、そのバーで働くことを決めました。
His wife, Mai, also grabbed the opportunity to work as a dancer in a bar, which was an undesirable job for her. However, since the family cannot survive with only her husband's income, she decided to work at the bar.

この映画のイギリス人監督であるシーン・エリスは写真家でもあります。なのでこの映画は芸術的要素も含まれています。映画冒頭シーンでの棚田郡の景色は息を呑むほど芸術そのものでした。
Sean Ellis, the British director of this film, is also a photographer, which explains the artistic aspects of the film. The landscape of the Rice Terraces shown at the very first scene of the film was a breathtaking art itself.

しかし、この映画はもっとメトロマニラの暗い部分、金、貪欲、性産業、裏切り、そして殺人などを焦点に当てています。
But, the film was more focused on the dark side of Metro Manila; money, greed, the sex industry, betrayal, and murder.

オスカーは純粋で忠誠な男性として描かれていますが、同時に騙されやすい男性としても描かれており、その性格はトラブルの元になっていました。
Oscar was portrayed as an innocent and loyal man, and at the same time, as a naive man, a personality that caused him trouble most of the time.

時々貧困は人々から理性を奪います。それは犯罪に繋がるような破滅的な行動を誘発させるかもしれません。
Sometimes poverty deprives people of reason, which might induce desperate actions that would end up to committing a crime.

私たちは貧困から抜け出すために犯罪を犯した人々をどう裁くことができるのだろうか？生きるために娼婦になった人々をどう判断できるのだろうか？あなたはこれらを悪と見なしますか？それとも善と見なしますか？
How can we judge those people who committed a crime to escape from poverty? How should we judge people who became prostitutes for a living. Do you see these things as vice or virtue?

この映画はとても考えさせられますし、多くの質問を投げかけてきます。
This film makes me think and poses a lot of questions at me.

最近の見た映画の中で、一番素晴らしい映画でしょう。
The best movie among the recent ones that I have watched so far.

METRO MANILA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGVC5rtYRYY

The poorest region in Osaka

Tokyo was names as the safest city in the world by The Economist, the world news magazine, with Osaka coming in a respectable third. 

 I doubt whether the magazine company investigated all regions in Osaka because there is Airin-chiku, which is known as the poorest and the most dangerous region in Japan. If they had known this fact, Osaka wouldn't have been ranked even within the top ten. Why is it so dangerous? 

This is because:

• 4'069 out of 30'000 are street people in the region
• So many day workers who can not be identified
• Even policemen stay away from the region
• A lot of street people collapse during the winter period because of sever coldness
• Sometimes, there are dying people on the street
• Many warning signs, meaning, the inhabitants don't follow rules
• Some people are going crazy because of starvation
  
  

If you research Airin-chiku (あいりん地区) on the internet, you will know more about the reality by looking at the pictures. It is also true that the city government of Osaka makes efforts to hide the existence of the region not to disgrace the other ones in Osaka. 

Invisible poverty

To my surprise, one of six Japanese children is suffering from poverty at the moment. They are living the below the living standards that the Japanese government set. However, the poor that the Filipinos imagine are quite different from the ones in Japan. It seems like they are living a normal life; they have a place to stay and sleep, and they can eat meals somehow. Most people probably don't notice that they are actually suffering from poverty. With parent's low income, one of six children can not go to a college/university and end up looking for a job, even it is not right time for them. Most of those children have single-parent families. Some single mothers are having a hard time to allocate their money to child-raising because of their financial problem. No one gives them a hand or　even hear their voices because of the invisible poverty.