One of the most brilliant movies that I saw last year was Muro-ami from the Philippines. The fact that I saw it in an American film festival rather than the comfort of my own country says something - and something not very nice, at that - about our own film distributors and exhibitors. Their lack of adventurousness will steadily impoverish our creative imagination - but this isn't the time to rail against them.

What struck me most about Muro-ami , aside from the fact that it's extraordinarily accomplished on every technical level, is that the director Marilou Diaz-Abaya and her writers have hit upon an unusually apt and resonant metaphor for political corruption. It goes beyond the use of prostitution in Ringgit Kasorrga or bull-fighting in Jogho . In fact, reading the Malaysian news every day periodically brings the movie back to me in vivid Technicolor.

The title refers to "reef-hunting", where under-aged boys are culled from poor villages to engage in deep-sea fishing. This method of fishing involves the boys diving off a ship and swimming to the bottom of the sea, where they will hack away coral reef to chase the fish out of their natural habitat and straight into waiting nets.

Needless to say, the boys aren't equipped with scuba gear for this dangerous activity. An early scene shows the expedition head Fredo (Cesar Montano) auditioning prospective candidates: the boys are timed while holding their breath underwater. Quite a few don't make the cut, and even during the voyage several lives will get lost.

Resources destroyed

Fredo is driven to surpass last year's catch. He orders the ship to go further away from the shore despite contrary advice, destroying even more coral along the way. The real trouble starts when they get lost; the sea around them turns eerily white and flat; there's no sign of life. At this point of no return, mutinies and mini-rebellions are sparked, while greed and acrimony put in more than guest appearances.

The scenes of the coral reef being steadily destroyed are scary. It would not occur to these characters to think about the long-term damage being inflicted on the environment or indeed of the economic legacy that will be inherited by future generations. They are able to get more fish now, but in the long run the sea will be less habitable. Do they care? Nah.

The destruction that we see on the screen resonates not only in the immediate realm of pollution and child exploitation. It may sound glib (the movie never is), but I also started thinking about the short-term political strategies in our own fair land, where dubious subsidisation and racial demagoguery have the same net effect of hacking away at the material and societal resources that have been growing for years.

Whenever I now read of a new crony bailout or one of the Prime Minister's divide-and-rule speeches in relation to Malay rights, the image that comes to mind will be the underwater scenes of coral being hacked away. All the talk of Malay entrepreneurs being of world standing will mean nothing if their incompetence has been proven time and again, and if Big Daddy continues to cover up expensive mistakes. And all hope of Malaysia one day being a truly integrated nation (as encapsulated in Vision 2020, no less) will keep on being dashed by politicians resorting to any old trick to keep their race-based parties afloat.

Optimistic end

The actor Cesar Montano is a superstar most known to his home audience when he played the title role in a Jose Rizal biopic in 1998, which became the highest-grossing Filipino film of all time. I don't think it's a coincidence that Diaz-Abaya (who also directed Rizal ) chose the same actor for her latest film. The character of Fredo requires someone who seems heroic; in fact, all the little boys initially revere him. It becomes all the more devastating to the audience when this seemingly capable leader drags his followers down with him.

The metaphor of reef-hunting is taken to its tragically inevitable conclusion when the ship sinks after an attempted mutiny. It's a tragedy in the Greek dramaturgical sense because Fredo isn't a total villain, but someone fatally undone by his own pride. The final scenes of the kids frantically scuttling away from the fiery sinking vessel to an uncertain new future in a seemingly desolate piece of land achieve an almost mythic grandeur.

There's a sense of optimism to the film's ending that's justified not because the film is sentimental, but because it acknowledges the capacity of ordinary humans to transcend the corruption and short-sightedness of their supposed betters. It's difficult but it can be done. It would have seemed corny if handled by a lesser talent, but Diaz-Abaya knows exactly what she's doing, and for this we should be grateful.