Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino 2018 | Returning to Balangiga: Howling Wilderness

In the wake of the nationwide release of Khavn's Balangiga Howling Wilderness, it is a source of added resonance that only recently the United States Government has decided to return the Bells of Balangiga to the Philippines. When we last saw this film in QCinema, the credits stated that it was a work in progress. Though this current version of the film screening in cinemas says the same thing during the credits, Balangiga fared much better on second viewing. It's a deeply emotional film, a children's film on crazy juice, Grave of the Fireflies on psychedelic mushrooms.

The film elects not to show the Balangiga massacre itself, or the series of retaliations that followed. It instead shows us the aftermath, a place I described in my earlier review as an apocalyptic "hellscape littered with dead bodies and devastation."

We view the film through Kulas (Justine Samson) who represents not only us, but the Filipino people as a whole. He is draped in the colors of the Filipino flag, taking off one color at a time until only red remains. His interaction with an American soldier later in the film alludes to our colonial past, where Americans, Spaniards and Japanese alike used us and our skills for their own benefit, only to be repulsed by fighting back.

It's a film filled with strange dreams, about walking bells and flying carabaos. The violence wrought by the American forces spared no one - livestock, women, children all. It can be hard to watch for some, but it serves as a chronicle; art as testimony. Though strange and at times seemingly impenetrable, the interludes also say something about religion as colonial legacy.

And Kulas survives the strife through his wits and the skills he has learned from his grandfather. The film is a roadtrip to Biringan, a city existing on a plane unseen, a name that means "hanapan ng nawawala," a city of lost souls. It does not come without cost, as Kulas gives up almost everything for this journey. But the ending also betrays a sense of hope, in that the Filipino spirit will carry on. How strange and wonderful for a film with a man dry humping a goat.