Two French classics and a lovely Filipino film

Noel Vera

The 2006 French Film Festival opens with a platter of recent Gallic
offerings and a few classics, but easily the most interesting and
imaginative of the lot isn't even French. Raya Martin, who just
attended the Cinefondation Residence du Festival de Cannes--possibly
the world's most prestigious filmmaking residency--is holding the
Philippine premiere of his latest work: "Maicling Pelicula Nang
Ysang Indio Nacional (O Ang Mahabang Kalungkutan ng Katagalugan)" (A
Short Film About the Indio Nacional (Or the Prolonged Sorrow of the
Filipinos), 2005).

The ninety-six minute film can be described as a conceit in the
guise of a dream doubling as a memory told to us as a mystery. It
begins with a woman lying on her mat, trying to sleep; she sits up,
staring into space, and it's difficult not to read all kinds of
emotions into her face--restlessness, dissatisfaction, impatience,
even a kind of despair; outside dogs bark and crickets relentlessly
chirp, but otherwise (you can tell from the ambient sound) the
darkness is still and deep.

She wakes up her husband and asks for a story. The husband (Bodjie
Pascua) sits up and tells her about a boy who meets an old man with
a heavy bundle. He explains that the man is the Philippines and the
bundle men who lie and hand out poison (public servants, presumably,
who do the opposite of rendering public service); he doesn't say--
but the implication is there--that the boy is himself, long ago. The
film's title appears onscreen; the rest of the picture is black and
white and silent, with only a single plangent piano for
accompaniment.

What does this prologue mean? What does the story mean? Yes, the man
explains part of it, but he doesn't explain what it has to do with
the rest of the film, and why he tells it with such intensity (he is
almost weeping by the story's end). Martin's film is so full of
deliberately unmade connections and cunningly hidden implications it
would probably take a discussion several times longer than the
film's running time to winkle much, if not all, of it out; suffice
to say that I think the man's story--and the profound emotional
impact it has on him--is the key to the picture's form, and many of
its secrets (either that or it's the most audacious red herring I've
ever seen).

The rest of the film unfolds, as noted, in silent black-and-white,
and if ever a medium was fit to evoke a kind of collective memory of
a specific historical period (the 1896 Philippine Revolution) it's
the silent film, which was developed around the same time. The black-
and-white figures walking and gesturing wordlessly look like your
grandmother's family portraits come to glimmering life; it's as if
Raoul Walsh had crossed the Pacific to make a pictorial record of
our revolt before he did Pancho Villa's. Beyond the conceit though,
Martin has a gift for the striking image: a sacristan opens the
doors of a church, and sunlight floods the screen; later, the same
sacristan polishes the frame of a huge church window, and you marvel
at the luminous latticework.

It's not all solemnity and gravitas--sometimes the piano becomes
uppity and insouciant, burlesquing what you see onscreen. At one
point children look up to witness a solar eclipse, and a crude
animated drawing of a smirking moon crowds out an indignant sun;
another time a young revolutionary in bed looks down to watch an
animated sun rise from between his legs.

The film's final segment is perhaps its most enigmatic, focusing as
it does on an acting troupe, and particularly on an actor playing
Bernardo Carpio. As noted in Jose Rizal's novel "El Filibusterismo"
(The Filibuster), Carpio was a giant trapped between two hills; when
he's freed, he will lead the Filipinos in a revolt against Spain.
Martin gives us glimpses of the revolt, yes, but the Filipino
response is puzzling--the sacristan (now a young man) can barely get
out of bed; Carpio himself when freed can only wander aimlessly.
It's as if Martin, after poetically evoking the revolution, reminds
us of what happened after--the country handed over from Spain to the
United States; eventual independence (after forty years of American
rule); dissipation of the gains made from independence into a state
of chaos and confusion, to the point that a dictator could seize
power and rule for twenty years. Lav Diaz makes films of epic
length, meditating on the state and future of the Philippines;
Martin dwells on similar themes, but approached from a considerably
different direction, using silent and experimental filmmaking to
create a dense palimpsest that is at the same time beautifully
evocative poetry. He's a welcome new voice to what seems to be a
swiftly developing and fascinating new Philippine cinema.

The two older French films share a common trait: both were made
during the Nazi Occupation in World War 2. One--Henri-Georges
Clouzot's "Le Corbeau" (The Raven, 1943)--is wonderfully nasty fun,
about a mysterious "Raven" who writes poison pen letters to various
people in a small town. Clouzot's picture is arguably "film noir"
before the genre was actually invented--the expressive shadows, the
cleverly angled shots, the atmosphere of repressed tension and fear.
Clouzot was banned from working for two years after liberation,
ostensibly for producing such a negative view of the French,
possibly because he profited under the Occupation (actually the film
is a caustic look at informants in Occupied France, and the
atmosphere of moral corruption and paranoia they inspire).

The second, Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert's "Les Enfants du
Paradis" (Children of Paradise, 1945) is a vast tapestry set in 1820
France, much of it in the scandalous world of the theater. Again
there is a hidden anti-Fascist message as Garance (Arletty, easily
one of the most unforgettable faces in all of cinema) fends off the
pursuit of four men, one of which--(the Count de Montray (Louis
Salou)--represents the Nazi regime. The true glory of the film,
however, isn't so much Carne's direction (he poured most of the
troubled production's hard-won money into the extravagant sets and
costumes) as it is Prevert's script, by turns intimate, epic, witty,
tragic, stylized, and powerfully real. One of the greatest French
films ever made.

("Indio Nacional" will premiere on June 12, 7.30 pm at the Shangri-
La Plaza; "Le Corbeau" and "Les Enfants du Paradis" will screen from
June 9 to 18 at the same venue. There will be screenings in Cebu
from June 23 to 25. Please contact Shangri-La Plaza (633-4735 or 633-
2227) or the French Embassy for details)

(First published in Businessworld, 6/9/06)

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