Anyone who has heard of Filipino Independent Cinema will most likely have run into the name Lav Diaz. His films, often sprawling multi-hour black and white epics, are lush with ideas and a clear, persistent love for our country. However, his body of work can often be challenging to watch (though not impenetrable). His filmmaking style is not conventional in the least, breaking the shackles of what we normally think about when we watch movies. There are no Hollywood-style visual or audio clues. We get pure story in Diaz's unique style instead. Before his introduction to new audiences with Norte, screenings were sparse, and even then, only people in the industry, film students, and the most dedicated cinephiles would attend and stick it through to the end.
This is why it's something of a minor miracle that his latest film, Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis (Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery) is being shown to packed theaters, distributed by one of the largest film distribution companies in the Philippines, known more for producing and distributing formulaic rom coms and comedies. The release of the movie was accompanied by a campaign framing the task of watching the epic movie, which clocks in at over eight hours, as a challenge. Of course the movie is far more than a simple ordeal; Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis is more of a ritual, an experience that one shares with other people.
The story is is composed of multiple plot threads, but there are two that stand out. On the whole, Hele is basically a sequel to Jose Rizal's El Filibusterismo: following on the heels of Simoun's failed plot to eliminate the ruling elite during a wedding, he is despondent and on the run from authorities. Isagani, who was responsible for foiling Simoun's plan, is beside himself with guilt, lamenting every Filipino loss to the Spaniards in the ensuing revolution to be partly due to his actions. This continuation of fiction is framed within the historical, as our protagonists learn of the impending death of Jose Rizal, and later mourn his passing - immortal literary creations lamenting the death of their mortal God. Meanwhile, Gregoria de Jesus searches for the remains of her husband, the revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio. She is joined by three other characters, each with their own reasons for helping Gregoria in her quest.
Throughout the film we see a mix of the historical, the fictional, and the mythological. In the world of Diaz's Hele, all three are real - all of them are stories that we create from truth or or own selective biases.We use stories, fictional or not, to teach ourselves, to learn, to get over past mistakes. In a way, the film represents an evolution towards an end of history, though not in the exact sense that Marx and Fukuyama intended, but rather a paradigm shift from a traditional way of making sense of the past into more postmodern forms, something that was touched upon in Diaz's earlier Norte.
Film has a way of emotionalizing and personalizing history, in the words of historian Robert Rosenstone (whose work, The Historical Film as Real History, has been cited in this blog before.) He continues: "The aim is not to tell everything, but to point to past events, or to converse about history, or to show why history should be meaningful to people in the present." Also, on the experimental approach to historical films: "Experimental films may help to revision what we mean by history. Not tied to «realism,» they bypass the demands for veracity , evidence, and argument that are a normal component of written history and go on to explore new and original ways of thinking the past."
Through this melding of stories both fictional and real, the film posits the problem of our country's curse of being oppressed by foreign entities, and later by our very own people; and our subservience to a ruling class - an oligarchy rather than a true democracy. And it places the solution into our hands, with one such solution expressed through the very notion of freedom as expressed in our literature, our art, our music. The film is filled with art through its frames, music (very uncommon for Diaz's films, which usually have no kind of soundtrack at all) and poetry, punctuated by Jose Rizal's very own Mi Ultimo Adios, which is told in two voices: that of Rizal's version in Spanish, recited by Simoun, and that of Andres Bonifacio's translation to Tagalog, recited by Isagani.
The film also shows how this art can be taken from us, destroyed like a Guardia Civil throwing a wrecked guitar into all consuming fire. It also shows us how art can be privilege rather than right - where only the elites and the antagonists of El Filibusterismo view the newly birthed power of the Cinematheque, expressing mirth at the plight of the indio in frames within frames. The power of stories and art is also a double edged sword. We have a tendency of selectively forgetting the past, denying it, even glossing over it to serve our own biases. We have a tendency to create our own stories and delusions to search for supermen and heroes that can save us from our problems, only to realize that no such supermen exist - only we have the power to elicit change through our own actions - to make people remember our past mistakes.
And Diaz seems to be taking these lessons to heart himself: despite being eight hours long, Hele is easily one of his most accessible films. There's a certain kind of musicality to the film that his other films didn't have in abundance. His long meandering shots are less indulgent, and the editing on the whole is now mostly restrained, perhaps so that people can focus on the frame and the emotion without being too distracted by anything else.
The acting is great across the board: dialogue-wise, the meatier roles are that of Simoun (Piolo Pascual) and Isagani (John Lloyd Cruz), though Gregoria de Jesus (Hazel Orencio) is amazing as well. Props have to go to the three tikbalang characters that pop up every so often, especially Bernardo Bernardo as the male tikbalang. There are some weird technical moments, such as one sequence where there was something in the side of the frame (a finger perhaps?) Though the editing means that there aren't many distinctive long travel shots as before, there are some really gorgeous scenes that are further enhanced by the monochrome palette: one scene in particular, a tracking shot where Susan Africa's character walks in mud, evokes (at least in tone) shades of Tarkovsky.
People seem to have responded to the campaign and the marketing of the film: the theater I attended was packed (and I would later learn that the theater was sold out, despite the fact that a wildly popular mainstream Hollywood film was up against it.) These weren't just film students or people working in the film industry, these were people from all kinds of backgrounds. Imagine that - from sparse screenings with an attendance of five or less to now - we've come a long way.
People who have seen other films from Lav Diaz's filmography may not find this film to be their favorite (mainly due to its speculative fiction properties, my personal favorite is still Hesus Rebolusyonaryo). But for people just getting into the man and his unique brand of cinema, this is a good place to start.
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