Rae Mariel Concepcion - - COM13

FILM REFLECTION

The Trial was a very powerful and more mature movie compared to the many other films Filipinos have created over the years within the film industry. Through- out the movie, it continuously threw you many questions that left you wondering until the end of the film. The movie was about a young man named Ronald who we find out is a “mixture” of “mentally challenged” and “developmentally delayed”. He is allegedly accused of the rape of his friend/ teacher, (Ma’am) Bessy, and with solely the information we know, we decided ourselves whether or not he is guilty of this crime. We see that in the end, that everyone is frankly convinced that the case was actual rape, but eventually the truth came around in time and told otherwise.

This film taught me to look at all ends of any story before making final conclusions. Because you may only see one end of the story, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true. Ronald was easily accused, because the film only showed the sex tape- showing the part when Bessy was shouting. But instead of easily concluding that it was rape, we (the viewers and other characters in the film) didn’t bother to investigate why she was shouting- if there were any other reasonable explanations that could’ve triggered that sort of behavior. Another piece of information that all the viewers and characters in the movie knew was that Ronald was “mentally handicapped”, which we easily abused the knowledge of, and didn’t bother to look for other possible clarifications whether or not he knew what he was doing, or if in general- if it took part in explaining his actions. There were people that were like Julian (the lawyer) while others opposed against the crime like Amanda (his wife). Julian was a perfect example on how the average individual watching this movie would’ve thought. We could imagine that he could’ve said: “Ronald has a mental disorder, and I saw what happened in the video. Done.” No further questions. While on the other hand we had Amanda, who was almost completely convinced by her husband and by the others around her, but in the end didn’t easily give in like the rest of us and continued to fight for Ronald’s stand. She would’ve said: “Yes, Ronald has a mental disorder. And yes, I saw the video. BUT there could be other further explanations, therefore I’m not going to set my foot on the ground and conclude anything, until I know all sides of this story.”

Generally speaking, every day we face our own problems or hear about other people’s problems, and as humans- we tend to immediately jump to conclusions, and we choose side with the people whom we believe to be right. But instead, we need to learn how to first stay neutral and looking at all sides of the story before we make any sort of assumptions about the truth.