A castle meant to last

Noel Vera

Mario O'Hara's "Kastilyong Buhangin" (Castle of Sand, 1980) is the
story of two children, a boy and a girl. The boy lives with his
mother (theater and radio actress Metring David); the girl is an
orphan, and suffers under a stepmother (Bella Flores) and her lover
(Mario's brother and character actor Edwin O'Hara), a drunkenly
violent man who beats the girl every chance he gets. At one point,
the girl confesses that she envies the boy, who has many dreams and
seems to be going somewhere; she, on the other hand, has no place to
go. The boy chides the girl, and tells her that he'll always take
care of her, no matter what. And so their fates are sealed...

O'Hara tells this hard-luck story with such heartfelt simplicity and
directness that the viewer is captivated. Boy befriends a girl with
a curse; boy and girl help each other, find solace in each other's
company. Boy confronts curse, and defeats it; with the implacable
logic of all fairy tales, curse is lifted from the girl and
transferred to the boy, who spends the rest of his youth growing up
in reformatory prison.

O'Hara shows us a prison life full of realistic detail and a casual,
almost unnoticed lyricism--at one point he has the boy running
through a field of flowers that, we assume, the convicts have planted
and cared for over the years. The girl, now staying with the boy's
mother, visits once in a while, and their meetings have the unforced
happiness of two childhood friends seeing each other again. Then,
almost unnoticed (a quick match-cut from young boy to grown man), the
boy becomes Lito Lapid, one of the film's stars, who runs up to meet
his visiting "sister," Nora Aunor, the film's other star.

I described the lengthy beginning in some detail because it seems
important to O'Hara's concept of the film. "Kastilyong Buhangin's"
prologue painstakingly establishes a fairy-tale tone (perfect for
defusing disbelief in a fairy-tale melodrama); presents to us the
childhood traumas that shaped the characters; and introduces an all-
important fatalist attitude towards destiny--how one may fight and
resist it for a while, but ultimately must submit to it.

It's this prologue with its precisely evoked emotional texture that
distracts you--distracts, misdirects, ultimately demolishes from your
awareness the fact that this is actually a vehicle for both Lapid and
Aunor. Aunor being a singer and actress and Lapid being a stuntman
turned action-star, the film is a melange of pop-song numbers and
hand-to-hand combat sequences--an odd combination for a melodrama and
usually a fatal one, in that the natural reaction would be to refuse
to take any of it seriously. I mean, how can you watch with a
straight face a cover of "Corner in the Sky" from "Pippin" (complete
with Carpenters-style orchestration and choreography) followed by a
deadly gang fight set in a meat market?

Somehow you do; somehow you watch not only with straight face but
also with bated breath, hoping Lapid comes through the meat-market
fracas okay--which is O'Hara's achievement. Like the popular song
composed by George Canseco that serves as the film's theme and
title, "Kastilyong Buhangin" dives into its emotional core and serves
the story up simply, sincerely, shot in O'Hara's uniquely cinematic
style.

Aunor as the rising singer saddled with a problematic lover (think "A
Star is Born") gives the film its dramatic fire and substance. She's
the sensible person hurting because she loves someone much less
sensible; she's torn between the urge to abandon that person (the
common-sense professional) and the urge to stand by her man (the
little girl that still remembers her childhood protector). By this
time Aunor was considered a heavyweight drama actress--she had
made "Ina Ka ng Anak Mo" (You are the Mother of Your Child, 1979)
with Lino Brocka; "Ikaw ay Akin" (You are Mine, 1978) opposite rival
Vilma Santos (Ishmael Bernal directing); and, of course, "Tatlong
Taong Walang Diyos" (Three Years Without God, 1976), with O'Hara--but
there is nothing heavy about her acting here; it's human-scaled and
elegantly drawn, with few wasted gestures or unnecessary lines of
dialogue. As with Aunor's very best performances, the intensity
comes not from her line readings (possibly her weakest moment is when
someone is killed, and she cries out, perhaps too theatrically, for a
doctor), but from her eyes--huge, dark, eloquent, a silent film
actress in a sound picture.

O'Hara, understanding this, gives her many moments where she displays
this quality--moments like when she suddenly ends a recording session
and sits alone in the studio, all wordless glamour and mystery. Or
when Lapid comes to her bedroom drunk, and makes a pass at her--Aunor
rejects him at first, then thinks better of it. This second example
is especially fine: you see from the expression on her face that
she's a proper girl who really should refuse him--but she loves him,
damn it, and she's tired of being so proper. The wine, after all is
said and done, must be decanted some time; just this once she wants
to live dangerously.

Aunor may be the dramatic spine supporting the film, but Lapid's
character is its central consciousness, it's heart. Which is
amazing, as from the little I've seen of his other work, Lapid's
range as an actor is strictly limited--he has always played this shy,
likeable "probinsyano" (provincial) who comes to the big city, mainly
because it's the only part he can play. And O'Hara uses this; he
counts on Lapid's shyness and apparent innocence to keep the audience
on his side while O'Hara sketches a darker, more complex side to the
character.

In effect Lapid, who's eventually released on parole, has adjusted so
well to the claustrophobic cells and strict regulations of prison
life that the open spaces of the world outside gives him a kind of
agoraphobia; he can't help but shrink back in fear. From whiling
away the days with his convict friends, he's now expected to go back
to school, get a job, become a responsible human being (expectations
so daunting, even to us ordinary people, they must seem almost
impossible to an ex-convict).

And Lapid can't deal with it; he resorts to drinking regularly, falls
in with all kinds of dubious friends, gets into all kinds of trouble.
In effect, Lapid never left prison--he's just graduated to a larger
one with more complex regulations, the locks and restraints applied
mainly to his mind, where they can't be picked or broken. In one
telling scene some friends get him drunk, and he responds by giving
them a floor show--the kind of gyrating dance men learn from
nightclubs and strip joints. Eventually his dancing suggests
something more--a release of pent-up emotions, of energies long
repressed. Finally he's merely whirling in place, his arms and legs
flailing about while he fruitlessly seeks escape, release, relief, a
mammal running helplessly on a treadmill until he collapses, weeping
in anger and frustration. He literally has no place to go.

In Lapid's character O'Hara shows us that innocence is not enough--
that in fact it will be innocence that causes us to fall out of step
with the world (which is essentially corrupt), that will trip us up
and bring us down. O'Hara gives us a portrait of a man drowning, and
surrounds him with loving, caring people (Aunor, David) who can only
watch helplessly as he gradually chokes to death.

A word on the violence in this film--there's plenty of it, mainly
because Lapid's character spent most of his time in prison learning
(as far as I can tell) a combination of boxing, Karate, and
streetfighting. The tragedy is that he might have learned too well;
if he wasn't so good at defending himself, if he had been beaten up a
few times early on, maybe he wouldn't be so fearless about getting
himself into trouble.

As it is, the fight scenes are intricately choreographed, coherently
shot and edited, and relentlessly realistic; they mark a major
difference between O'Hara and his one-time collaborator, Lino
Brocka. While Brocka has made noir films ("Jaguar," "Macho
Dancer," "Hot Property"), and song-and-drama flicks ("Stardoom,"), he
could never do action scenes, an essential to noir, very well--he
leaves that to a fight choreographer to arrange, then photographs the
results indifferently.

O'Hara is clearly more familiar with violence; he shoots it with
flair and a real filmmaker's eye, and in "Kastilyong Buhangin" it is
a major contributor to the film's grim visual texture. O'Hara even
has a final setpiece, a riot in a prison shower room, that outdoes
anything I've seen even in Ringo Lam's "Prison on Fire" movies, and
looks extremely difficult to choreograph and shoot (O'Hara takes
advantage of the fact that almost every one in the shower room is an
accomplished stunt man to do the near-impossible--and on wet tiles,
yet). The musical accompaniment to this orgy of violence is a sad,
tinkling little melody, the kind likely to evoke childhood memories--
as if Lapid's thoughts had gone beyond the body-blows and splashing
blood, to a time when he could be both innocent and happy with the
ones he loved. "Kastilyong Buhangin" was a big hit, possibly one of
the few times the Filipino public would find O'Hara's dark
sensibilities so palatable (the song, an anthem to the transience of
life, would endure through the years to become a sentimental
classic). In later works like "Bagong Hari" (The New King, 1986)
and "Pangarap ng Puso" (Demons, 2000) O'Hara would push farther and
farther into violence and brutality, almost uncaring as to whether or
not the public would follow. They wouldn't, but these films remain
as signposts marking off the kind of lonely and forbidding
territories Philippine cinema--or at least one practitioner of the
art--is able and willing to explore.

("Kastilyong Buhangin" can sometimes be seen at the Cinema One
Channel, in Sky and Home Cable. Check your cable guide for schedule)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)