Cleaners Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Cleaners Blu-ray Movie Review

As unique a coming-of-age film as you're likely to see all year...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown December 31, 2024

Take a moment and watch the trailer for writer/director Glenn Barit's experimental Philippine coming-of-age drama. Intrigued? Truly unique and visually arresting, Cleaners aims to capture the joy and angst of adolescence, not just in the Philippines but the world over. Its young cast of complete unknowns was filmed in digital black and white on a Sony A7S camera; eye-piercing colors were later splashed on (in intentionally messy fashion) to identify key characters by hue; but it doesn't stop there. Pixilation, a stop motion animation technique in which live actors move static pose by static pose, rounds out the wholly striking image, giving the film a jarring judder that highlights the kinetic and the explosive, and somehow makes sweetness sweeter, pain more unnerving, injury more disarming, and moments of quiet repose more thoughtful. It's difficult to explain yet beautifully effective. Cleaners feels utterly (and ironically) spontaneous; its heart not so much on its sleeve as it is beating and bleeding, pinned to the front of each teen's chest. And the story? Both minimalistic and important, which is a far cry from most teen dramas released in the U.S.

A group of high school "cleaners" prepare their school for the coming year, then work to survive the trials and tribulations of adolescence. Simple, right? Hardly. Set in the backdrop of a Catholic school in Tuguegarao City in 2007-08, the teens face what might be ordinary to an adult but that is horrifying, painful, celebratory and life-changing to a young heart and mind. Dealing with the pressures of being an upstanding young citizen, the teens stive to keep themselves clean, proper and pure while slowly discovering that the world around them is dirty and superficial. The film stars Ianna Taguinod as Stephanie (green), Leomar Baloran as Eman (orange), Julian Narag as Lester (orange), Carlo Mejia as Arnold (orange), Gianne Rivera as Angeli (yellow), Charise Mabbonag as Britney (magenta), Allan Gannaban as Francis (blue), Andrei Marquez as Junjun (purple), and many others relegated to black and white.

There's a rawness and power to Cleaners that has to be seen to be believed, or perhaps experienced to be fully understood. There are laughs to be had but I found myself on the verge of tears at times, watching teens fight against fate to try so desperately to uncover their true selves and establish lives untainted by the world, which here is far too eager to destroy any light each adolescent has inside. Adults are purposefully left in black and white, as are most students, not just so we know who to pay attention to -- that would be far too cheap a trick -- but so the rarity of each teen is bursting out, visualized vibrantly at all times, often in defiance or opposition to the oppressive society surrounding them, working at every turn to stamp out their individuality in favor of conformity or corruption. So much of the image is black and white that the color feels suffocated, isolated, alienated and sometimes crushed, and the stop motion jitteriness only compounds the impression. These poor kids are up against all odds, which is an invitation to rebellion for the extroverted among them, but dangerous and almost deadly to the more meek and mild students.

Until the very end, Cleaners offers more of an anthology than a traditional narrative, which is perhaps its only detriment. Rather than watch colorful teens band together to survive a dark world, we get vignettes of various students, with some stories proving more poignant than others. It works by the time the credits roll thanks to a cacophony of rainbow cheer, but it's one aspect of the teenage experience -- finding your tribe, if only to survive -- that's sorely missing throughout the feature. That's not to say the chapters don't capture the totality of adolescence. Just that it serves to further isolate the teens rather than depicting how quickly we turn to one another to thrive in the midst of tumultuous change and in the face of uncertain futures. Of course, the United States isn't the Philippines, so perhaps I'm missing a crucial cultural clue to the film's puzzle. Regardless, Cleaners is often a profound experience that isn't merely style over substance. It's substantive to the nth degree, utilizing stylization to enhance the souls beneath the flesh, the minds behind the actions, and the spirits beyond the words. This is joy in the face of hardship and persistence against all odds, and it equips its teens with far more life than each one realizes.

Cleaners Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

"Every frame of filmmaker Glen Barit's Cleaners was printed, hand colored with highlighters, and then rescanned, giving each of its angst-drenched emotions a singular handmade texture and the whole film a bone-deep nostalgia for growing up in the Philippines in the early aughts."

Any and all damage, print marks and visual anomalies are intentional in Cleaners' 1080p/AVC-encoded video presentation. You won't find macroblocking, banding or other issues of the sort, but you also will never encounter anything "clean" or traditionally stunning. And yet the image is just that: stunning, through and through. The black and white photography is stark and hotly contrasted, with crushing black levels and distinct differences between lighter and darker portions of the image. Again, all intentional. Color, which arrives in singular splashes of bright, image-piercing hues, is striking and powerful, and yes, bleeds out into the backgrounds at times. The frame rate too jags and jitters. All of it could be overwhelming, and it is I suppose. But it's potency and poignancy are married in a love affair of stylized beauty, much of which is due to the stop-motion tampering of the image. Detail is razor sharp, textures are revealing, edges are hyper-crisp, and the textile nature of each frame is delivered to perfection. Cleaners's visuals may not be to everyone's liking, but its transfer couldn't be more flawless. Even if there are issues I've failed to detect, it wouldn't matter. Every "problem" would only add to the experience of approximating the problematic world surrounding and vying to crush the film's adolescents.

Cleaners Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Music is key to Cleaners, as is the noise and fury of bustling walkways between classes and crowded gatherings. And yet despite the lack of LFE channel support and rear speaker activity -- the film is only afforded a DTS-HD Master Audio stereo mix -- the experience remains wholly engaging and enveloping. It's rare, in fact, to find such an effective stereo mix, and yet here it is. Voices are clear and intelligible (despite occasional dips in fidelity, which only enhance the docu-drama tone and tenor of the production), effects are clean and buoyant, prioritization is purposefully sloppy yet perfectly in tune with the needs of any given scene, and dynamics are quite good, relatively great even... yes, even without a 5.1 lossless beastie. It's possible I was so taken with Cleaners that it biased my impression of the audio track. It happens. But I'm quite certain that between its video and audio presentations, the film is just as it was meant to be seen and heard. And that goes a long, long way.

Cleaners Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Feature Film Audio Commentary - with director Glenn Barit

• Short Films (HD, 89 minutes) - Six short films are included, five from Barit. Among them you'll find Yung Huling Swimming Reunion Before Life Happens from 2023, Luzonensis Osteoporosis from 2022, Endless Oven from 2021, Judy Free (by Che Tagymon) from 2019, Nangungupahan from 2018, and Aliens Ata from 2017.

• Initial and Secondary Proof of Concept Reels (HD, 3 minutes) - Color and stop-motion PoC's.

• Behind the Scenes Videos (HD, 5 minutes) - Short but sweet.

• Festival and Domestic Release Trailers (HD, 4 minutes)

• Booklet - with extensive writings by Richard Bolisay and Benj Gabun Sumabat

Cleaners Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even if the Blu-ray weren't up to snuff, Cleaners would come highly recommended. Fortunately, the Blu-ray is nothing but terrific, with a virtually perfect video presentation of the film's unique, highly stylized visuals, an excellent lossless audio track, and a solid series of extras. If the trailer appeals to you, I'd even recommend a blind buy.