Portrait of the Anguished as a Filipino

Noel Vera

I first encountered Lav Diaz's rather unique sensibility in Joey
Gosengfiao and Lily Monteverde's Good Harvest Film Festival, in
1998. The film was "Serafin Geronimo: Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion,"
starring Raymond Bagatsing, a minor Filipino-Indian actor (his
surname is derived from "Baghat-Singh") who plays Geronimo as a kind
of Raskolnikov figure, haunted by guilt for his part in a kidnapping
gone horribly wrong. It was not a perfect film, I thought--the
pacing was sluggish, half the scenes were dramatically stillborn,
and there was no production value to speak of (it was one of Good
Harvest's "pito-pito" (seven-seven) films, reportedly made for
around 50 to 65 thousand US dollars, shot in seven days (actually
around ten), and post-produced for another seven (actually ten to
fourteen))--but two things about it stood out: it had an unusually
thoughtful tone, and it had a riveting lead actor. Bagatsing was
intense yet understated, introverted yet eloquent in suggesting
immense amounts of guilt and despair--a major performance, I
thought, possibly the best from a Filipino actor in years past (and
years since).

Any thoughts of Raskolnikov are hardly coincidental: Dostoevsky is
the one writer you think of when you watch Diaz's films. His sense
of grand themes, of moments of humanity and depravity informed by a
touch of mysticism, are what Diaz is all about. Diaz even gives
Geronimo (whose full name is an odd combination of angel and
warrior) an infected tooth, a horrific little touch not unlike
Smerdyakov's epileptic fits, functioning as an indicator of the
character's inner state (with Smerdyakov, a mental static hiding the
presence of malignant evil; with Geronimo, a lingering pain
reminding him of unspoken guilt). Perhaps the most interesting
element in Geronimo's character wasn't his guilt so much as his
loneliness, his sense of isolation from Filipino society in general--
an isolation felt by many a Diaz protagonist, possibly by Diaz
himself. The production, hampered by a production budget that could
barely convey its reportedly ambitious, two-hundred-pages-plus
script (which leading Filipino critic Nestor Torre declared the
previous year "would never be made in twenty years"), nevertheless
managed to be the most impressive debut by a Filipino filmmaker
since Raymond Red's "Ang Magpakailanman" (The Eternity) in 1983.

Diaz's next film "Hubad sa Ilalim ng Buwan" (Naked Under the Moon,
1999) is a strange hybrid, the only one of Diaz's features not
completely written by him. Diaz started with a script by Suzette
Doctolero and with the help of Bong Ramos rewrote the story, turning
what should have been a standard melodrama (about a failed married
priest (Joel Torre)) into yet another existential quest (the
priest's daughter (Klaudia Koronel), who sleepwalks in the nude, is
haunted by memories of being raped). The production was again
flawed: Klaudia Koronel as the sleepwalking daughter does mostly
that throughout most of the film (the actress, a capable comedienne
with a body like a walking erotic joke, is wan and lifeless under
Diaz's direction). More interesting is the story of the girl's
father, who is not only a former priest but also a cuckolded
husband, and who at one point vanishes from sight. The man who
leaves family and home, searching--for what, even he isn't sure he
knows completely--is a recurring motif in Diaz's films (Geronimo
leaves behind a wife to join the kidnap gang), and possibly
represents a number of things: dissatisfaction with the status quo;
a hunger for change and for the unknown; a need to achieve a state
of perfection…a need even Diaz acknowledges in his films can never
be satisfied.

"Burger Boys," about a group of youths planning a bank robbery--no,
actually it's about a group of youths writing a screenplay about a
group of youths planning a bank robbery (the original title
is "Laruang Krimen" (Criminal Games))--is reportedly the first film
Diaz made with Monteverde's Good Harvest / Regal Films, but the
third to have a commercial run (even its release history is
paradoxical). It's very possibly Diaz's strangest, and the one that
most obviously shows the dearth of an adequate production budget. A
subplot concerning a posse pursuing the youth gang, composed of
cartoonish grotesques wearing cheap cowboy hats, is embarrassing to
watch; on the other hand, casual touches like a father's unfinished
statue--an angel with the wings left incomplete--suddenly coming to
life has the haunting quality of Bunuel at his most offhandedly
lyrical. The film is too crudely made, both visually and
structurally, to be considered a success; rather, it's a vivid,
unforgettable failure. Strangely enough, because I had translated
the film for the Frankfurt Film Festival's Good Harvest
retrospective and received an audiocassette to help in the
translation, I realized while listening to the tape that the film
plays much better as a radio drama--reveals itself to be an extended
prose poem, a fevered dream…

Diaz's next film, "Batang West Side" (West Side Avenue), about the
killing of a young Filipino-American and the murder investigation
that follows, was at five hours the longest Filipino or Southeast
Asian film ever made, back in 2001 (there's been longer films since,
but more on that later). It's an epic-length picture that,
strangely, refuses to act like an epic--no large sets, no big battle
sequences, no grand displays of emotion or sweeping parade of
historical events. Instead there's the quiet (a Diaz hallmark)
accumulation of story and characters that, when completed, presents
a comprehensive mural of a Filipino-American community--from
youngest to oldest, richest to poorest, most sensible to least--in
Jersey City, New Jersey.

If a typical Diaz film features a loner-hero who wanders parts
unknown on a spiritual quest, Diaz here presents two such loners:
murder victim Hanzel Harana (Yul Servo) and investigating officer
Detective Juan Mijarez (Joel Torre). Like "Kriminal ng Baryo
Concepcion," the basic premise seems inspired by "Crime and
Punishment," only Diaz has blurred the lines even further: Hanzel
might have been complicit in his own shooting or might have even
committed suicide, while Detective Mijarez may or may not be a
righteous guardian of justice and the law.

Hanzel, the film's initial focus, is a classic casualty of the great
wave of Filipino migration that has been going on for decades--his
mother (Gloria Diaz in the performance of her career) left Hanzel as
a child to work in the United States as a nurse; she fell in love
with one of her patients (a rich old man), married him, and is
caring for his stroke-paralyzed body when she finally brings Hanzel
(now a young man) to America to stay with her. Hanzel loves his
mother but cannot stand Bartolo, her lover (the magnificent Art
Acuna--a, believe it or not, really nice guy in person); he moves in
with his grandfather Abdon (Ruben Pizon) for a while, then lives on
his own, renting an apartment with money earned from unknown sources…

It's perhaps the finest, most fully realized portrait of Filipino-
American youth to date on the big screen. Hanzel and his friends are
not your stereotype Filipino-Americans--sexually chaste, clean-cut
robots who earn high grades in school and show filial respect to
their parents; these kids smoke, brawl, make out, do and push drugs
(and in fact "shabu" (crystal meth) use among the young is one of
the community's darkest secrets). At the same time Diaz also doesn't
give us the usual rebels without cause--Dolores, Hanzel's girlfriend
(Priscilla Almeda, previously known for her soft-core porn films and
a revelation here) is a level-headed girl who would rather study
than shoot up; Hanzel himself--for a while, at least--attends some
classes and learns to use a computer; some of Hanzel's junkie
friends hold down jobs, have relationships, and are otherwise funny,
likeable people.

Diaz showed unusual sensitivity in portraying adolescents in "Burger
Boys;" one character--the young man haunted by his dead father, and
his father's unfinished angel sculpture--leapt from the screen at
you he was so vivid, then almost immediately sank back again into
the chaos of the film…but you never forgot the pain and suppressed
anger on that young face. Servo's Hanzel is that youth reborn, with
the time and space to develop into a far more poignant figure--an
eternally lost soul, turning from mother to grandfather to
underworld father figure in the hope of finding the love he's never
gotten from any of them (think of his namesake, abandoned by parents
in the Grimm fairy tale). Grandfather Abdon comes closest to
reaching Hanzel by treating him as an equal, comforting him with his
patience, tempting Hanzel with shelf after shelf of literature and
knowledge (I love it that Grandfather Abdon's lures him with books)--
but we already know this promising start is doomed to fail; the film
begins, after all, with the discovery of Hanzel's body on the frozen
sidewalks of West Side Avenue.

As Hanzel's story unfolds, so does Mijarez's. He's the criminal of
Barrio Concepcion in the role of police investigator; the father
with an unfinished sculpture; the defrocked priest returned from his
wanderings. He's Hanzel only decades older, with warier, wearier
eyes (at one point the two actually bump into each other on West
Side Avenue; the resemblances--and differences--between the two are
remarkable). The impression of a secret hidden deep within Mijarez's
psyche develops over the course of the five hours, from hints and
clues dropped by Diaz throughout the narrative--how Mijarez likes to
call his wife on his cellphone, but not speak to her; how he tells
his therapist unsettling little dreams where nothing happens but the
very air is full of unresolved tension; how he sometimes explodes in
temperamental fits of anger; how--most disturbing of all--he
sometimes just sits there, staring off into space, looking at unseen
images either wondrous or horrifying: he can't make up his mind
which, exactly. If Servo's performance as Hanzel is the product of
innocence and raw talent, Torre's performance as Mijarez is the
product of veteran experience, of years of observation and
imagination fashioning a character that--because of conflicting
forces of anger, guilt, and love--finds himself in a state of
hopeless equilibrium, hanging suspended between heaven and hell.

But "Batang West Side" is more than just the stories of these two
characters plus a constellation of supporting characters--it's
Diaz's attempt to ask crucial questions about us Filipinos (Is
immigration the great solution that we all make it out to be? Is the
family still the central organizing unit around which Philippine
society is formed? What hope is there for our young, or is there any
kind of hope left?); it's his condemnation of and tribute to the
Filipino youth, to their many vices and singular virtues; finally
it's a response to a crying need, a correction of a longtime
imbalance--a restoration, in effect, of the weight and value of the
Filipino soul, accomplished by mulling over the loss of a single
life. Yes, Diaz seems to be telling us, a Filipino life is worth
this much, at the very least: a five-hour exploration of his life
and circumstance and untimely death. This is Diaz's masterpiece, I
think, and a great film.

After the long struggle to make "Batang West Side" (at one point the
producer had effectively abandoned the project, and Diaz had to
scrape together the money to finish it; the film ultimately cost him
friends--even his marriage), Diaz went back to Lily Monteverde's
Regal Studios to make a commercial film. He was to write an action-
packed storyline (military hunt for a rebel leader), use name stars
(Mark Anthony Fernandez, MTV Asia VJ Donita Rose), and bring in a
finished product of reasonable length (the final running time was
112 minutes).

"Hesus Rebolusyonaryo" (Jesus the Revolutionary) is a dystopian
science-fiction film set nine years in the future. The Philippines
has been taken over by a dictator-general, and the Communist Party--
one of several factions opposing the military regime--is in the act
of purging itself. Like Orwell's "1984," a commentary on Britain at
the time of its writing (1948), the film is really a commentary on
the Philippines in the year 2002. Manila's streets have not changed;
if anything, they look seedier and more garbage-strewn. They are
often deserted; you hear talk of curfews and spot military
checkpoints at every other corner. Diaz in effect took his budget
constraints--no money for sets, or crowd extras--and turned them
into a political point: that Manila in the future will be more of
the same, only worse.

Through these streets walks Hesus Mariano (the surname being a play
on "Mary"--mother of Jesus, of course; Diaz has a fondness for
allegorical names)--scholar, musician, poet, warrior. He's too quiet
and introverted (hallmarks of the Diaz hero) to be an obvious choice
for Savior of the Philippines, but Fernandez (son of Filipino action
star Rudy Fernandez) plays him with an easy charisma that you
imagine can be switched on and off like a blowtorch--when the
charisma is on, you can't help saying to yourself: yes, he can lead
people to the barricades. Hesus is another of Diaz's journeyman
loners, and he wanders the desolate landscape like a time bomb with
a troubled mind (not only does it wonder when it should explode, but
why, and what's the point of it all anyway?). The film is possibly a
working out of Diaz's notions and beliefs about Philippine politics
(more of the same, only different) and history (which is cyclical,
and tends to repeat itself--the events in the film are based on
actual purges that took place within the Philippine Party in 1996).
The ending can easily be seen as a disappointment; I think it's the
film's most daring and ominous conceit, consistent not only with
Hesus' character, but with Diaz's philosophy and sensibility
overall.

After making a five-hour film, then following it up with
a 'commercial' effort that was actually one of the more
unconventional science-fiction/action films ever made, what does one
do for an encore? For Diaz it was to take footage that he had been
working on for some eleven years, shoot additional scenes, and turn
it all into a picture more than twice as long as his last two
combined. In effect the first film he ever shot has become--has
evolved into, if you like--his latest (yet another interesting
aspect of Diaz's career are the complex and even melodramatic
histories of his various productions), and by far (at ten or more
hours) longest.

"Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino" (Evolution of a Filipino
Family, 2004) covers around fifteen or so years of Philippine
history, from before the advent of Martial Law in 1972 to some time
after the fall of the Marcos regime in 1986. The title refers to one
family but the film actually follows two: the first lives amongst
the rice paddies of Gerona, Tarlac and is headed by grandmother
Puring (Angie Ferro); the second lives in the mountain forests of
Itogon, Benguet Province, headed by Fernando (Ronnie Lazaro).

Linking the two families is the classic Diaz protagonist: loner-
wanderer Reynaldo (Elryan de Vera), an abandoned child picked up by
Puring's daughter Hilda (Marife Necesito) in the streets of Manila,
then brought back to Tarlac after an unspecified incident caused
Hilda to lose her mind. Hilda's insanity provokes Puring into
complaining bitterly that the woman has brought bad luck to their
family, plus a reputation for mental instability; Hilda's brother
Kadyo (Pen Medina) defends Hilda and Reynaldo and tells Reynaldo
that come what may he regards him as his own blood. After Hilda's
death, Reynaldo wanders off to become Fernando's adopted, helping
him in his various enterprises--chopping up tree branches for
firewood; panning rocky streams for gold; exploring abandoned
tunnels for untapped veins of the same rare metal. Puring in a fit
of conscience asks Kadyo (who has just served a prison term for
theft) to look for Reynaldo, hopefully persuade him to come back to
the family; in the meantime, Fernando has to confront a larger rival
mining gang over exploration rights to the tunnels…

The film is less complex and yet more experimental than "Batang West
Side:" while the running time is much longer, we know less about the
characters because they talk and interact less (considering the
stretches of silence between lines of dialogue, "Ebolusyon" might be
considered a silent film). Perhaps the most unbelievable aspect of
the whole production was that Diaz brought the picture in on a
budget of two million pesos--just under the budget of "Kriminal ng
Baryo Concepcion," or $40,000 for a ten-hour film, so it may be
forgivable, even expected, that the production suffer from serious
flaws. Perhaps not the underlighting--parts of the film go on in
almost complete darkness--because these portions add a touch of
tension to the film, a touch of mystery (you know something's
happening and you're not sure what, but you badly want to find out).
Diaz probably wanted to shoot everything in 16 mm--the footage he
did shoot in this medium has a harsh beauty--but there just wasn't
enough money for that, so he settled for video. Which should have
been fine, but unfortunately Diaz couldn't make the rational for
doing scenes in either 16 mm or video consistent--what should have
been 16 mm flashbacks set in the '70s are sometimes in video
(presumably because Diaz found he needed to shoot new scenes set in
the '70s, and couldn't scrape up the raw footage to do it). It's
interesting to compare the 16 mm footage to the video: where the
earlier footage uses dramatic angles and shadows, the video's
lighting and framing is more serene, more confident; even in terms
of visual style, Diaz's film shows a process of evolution.

Perhaps more troubling is Diaz's use of historical footage: a coup
d'etat from the Aquino administration, for example, precedes the
1986 EDSA revolution that brought Aquino to power. Diaz is
presumably showing us someone's memories of historical events, and
of course memories aren't necessarily recalled in chronological
order, but it isn't clear whose memories these are--most of the
characters seem barely aware of what's going on outside their
immediate barrio--and why such-and-such memory is being evoked at
such-and-such point in time. Diaz might also be trying to create
parallels between historical events and peoples' lives (the way
Visconti did with "The Leopard," or Bertolucci with "1900"), but you
see precious little connection between events in Manila and events
in either Tarlac or the Benguet Province. When, for example,
Ferdinand Marcos declares martial law on television, it isn't clear
why these folks' lives are going to turn out for the worse--you see
guerillas, and you see the military rounding up barrio folk, but
these could have been going on (and did, actually) before Marcos'
announcement and after his fall. In fact, the worst events to occur
to the two families aren't caused by historical forces so much as by
immediate ones, by the people around them--a group of drunken
neighbors, or a gang of rival miners…

What's needed is a way to make these connections, to maybe have some
character explain why this or that event has an effect on their
lives, so many miles away. Rey Ventura's rebel leader Ka Harim would
have been the perfect choice--early on he's seen explaining a few
things to Kadyo, and presumably he would have gone on explaining
things to Puring, or Reynaldo, or one of Puring's granddaughters--
but Ventura tragically died in 2004. Diaz may also have felt that
too much spoken exposition would ruin the film's air of mystery (one
might call this 'The Kubrick Defense'--his line of reasoning for not
explaining anything in "2001: A Space Odyssey")--but I think a
balance could have been struck between being too obscure and being
too explicit; "Batang West Side," after all, had room for several
long speeches, all of which were quite informative, and some of
which were downright zany, even hilarious.

I feel ambivalent about the use of Lino Brocka (played with
remarkable vigor by film critic/iconoclast Gino Dormiendo) as a
crucial plot point. Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine Marcos
finding Brocka threatening enough to actually plot anything against
him; on the other hand, that Marcos might find Brocka at all
worrisome would so tickle the vanity of any film enthusiast--cinema
can change the world, yes!--that it's difficult to find fault with
Diaz's conceit. Plus there is the possibility that the plotters are
in fact deranged (a charge that could be leveled against all film
enthusiasts), so that this subplot is in fact an elaborate prank on
Diaz's part, a reminder to all of us to take ourselves seriously,
but not too seriously.

Overall, I prefer "Batang West Side"--Diaz's previous film, I felt,
had better characterization, was more visually consistent, and was
for me (to use Diaz's favorite phrase) more 'organic.' More, I would
argue that Diaz's protagonist and method of storytelling is more at
home in "Batang West Side's" milieu than in "Ebolusyon's"--the
alienated wanderer-hero, who looks askance or at least skeptically
at family relationships and rootedness, has the temperament to
emigrate rather than cultivate. Diaz has spoken of "Ebolusyon" as
being some kind of prequel to "Batang West Side," and I see hints of
this design; I just don't think the design is altogether
clear. "Ebolusyon" is an impressive accomplishment, a work of art
created despite near-impossible odds (including, at one point, the
loss of an entire cut of the film due to a computer disk drive
crash)--but it still feels like a work of progress that could do
with more tinkering, more refining, perhaps even additional footage…

That said, I'd say "Ebolusyon," even in its present state, is a
remarkable work of cinema, and indispensable viewing. If its themes
of history pressing against the lives of ordinary people could use
further clarification, Diaz's inclusion of certain footage
nevertheless creates considerable impact: the chilling calmness with
which Marcos reads Proclamation 1081; the awe-inspiring shot of EDSA
as seen from a helicopter, lenses sweeping across miles of people
clogging the wide highway (in defiance of the soldiers and tanks
surrounding them); the chaos of farmers running from Mendiola Bridge
as soldiers strafe their ranks.

More than the documentary footage, though, "Ebolusyon" is perhaps
the greatest, most comprehensive attempt ever made to capture the
quality and flavor of provincial life. From rice paddy to highland
forests, from harvest to planting, from merciless noon heat to the
absolute dark of the nighttime countryside, Diaz shoots it all, and
more, shoots enough of it that we get to savor the kind of
measureless existence the people experience within the various
landscapes. Women walk down a path, sit to rest, rise up to continue
their trek; a pair of boys wrestle, pause from exhaustion, then
wrestle some more--this is life in the provinces, and if we city
folk think we'd go crazy trying to live like this (much less watch
it on the big screen) we had better brace ourselves: civilization,
when you look at the big picture, is a mere blip on the big screen
of existence. From living this way to living in a modern apartment
to going back to living this way is possibly the space of a few
hundred years--maybe less.

It's not all silence and angst--much of the melodrama you find in
Filipino films is shunted by Diaz to the radio dramas, which the
people follow religiously (I can't help thinking of "Burger Boys" on
audiocassette). Here you find tragedy and horror, sexuality and
humor galore; the fact that the stories are make-believe--and Diaz
emphasizes this by showing us the recording sessions, where actors
with headphones and hanging microphones shriek and weep and groan,
all in deadpan--seems to liberate Diaz into writing the most
outrageous situations (at one point it's suggested that a hysterical
woman was raped by a radio). It's his way of reminding us of the
huge disparity in attitude between the actors--who are at times
visibly embarrassed to be mouthing such tripe--and the listeners,
who take all this seriously, as if it were gospel truth.

Into this world--mostly quiet, sometimes absurd, occasionally
violent--Diaz injects moments of unbearable poignancy: Puring by the
fire, singing a heartbreakingly lovely song (Felipe de
Leon's "Sapagkat Mahal Kita" (Because I love you)); crazed Hilda
discovering the crying child in a heap of garbage (she is Diaz's
version of Sisa, the classic character from Jose Rizal's great
social novel "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch Me Not)); Kadyo speaking to
Reynaldo about their relationship; Fernando and sons scrabbling for
gold amongst the dried-up river's rubble; Fernando's wife standing
up to cook dinner, discovering she is going blind; Kadyo coming to
Puring, and being sent away to lifelong exile.

You have Kadyo in prison, singing Rey Valera's "Kung Kailangan Mo
Ako" (If you need me) in a plaintive, off-key voice to a cell full
of sleeping convicts (singing to himself, in effect). You have
Fernando, desperate to find his son, angrily confronting the rival
miners. You have Kadyo crawling on the sidewalk, his hand pressed
hard against his side, his moment of agony stretched almost to
eternity. You have Puring, all the photographs she has ever owned
scattered about her, looking sadly upon one. Finally, you have
Diaz's painfully poignant epilogue, titled: "The Story of Two
Mothers…"

It's not a perfect work, and I think a not fully developed one, but
if only for this series of moments--fleeting, yet unforgettable--I
feel it was a more than worthwhile experience, watching this film.

(First published in "Ekran Review for Film and Television," vol. 30,
letnik XLII, 5-6 2005. With thanks to Jurij Meden for permission to
publish)

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