Boses: An Insightful Reflection

Maev Tagalog

“Boses” was unfamiliar to me up until the afternoon of March 1 when we viewed the film
and I have finally grasped its quintessence. At first, I’d expected it to be some kind of cheesy
mediocre film but I later found out that it was more than that. The film is highly abundant with
life lessons and empowering messages that focus not only on the main characters but everybody
in the film. It expresses the realism of the situation of the characters: their pain, happiness and
their journey to recovery. Gender is also an important element to the movie; the female characters
were given roles not only limited to traditional oversimplified conception and the male characters
were also given a part which contradicts society’s stereotype on masculinity. Onyok, a child
abused and weak to fight back due to his state and lack of power is given a voice through his
violin, through music. This story expresses the cruelty of abuse on a micro level but also reflects
the macro level of society; an example of the oppression and stereotype is seen in the scene
wherein Onyok’s father thinks that playing the violin would make Onyok gay so he pushes him
to play basketball instead.

In my opinion, the film greatly expresses that there are always twists and unexpected
happenings and every person can exceed his or her character no matter what his or her gender,
race or standing is… which I find very relatable because it depicts the belief that the weak and
meek can go beyond that and that hope can arise in any dark situation. The film changed my
understanding of the lives of abused children and broken adults; it gave me an insight of how
these lives were lived contrarily to how I thought it would be. Taking everything into account, the
movie not only commends the children who live through maltreatment and abuse but appraises
the value of unspoken generosity each of the characters has shown.