Celso Ad Castillo, 1943 - 2012

One of the greatest has passed.

Celso Ad Castillo was born on the 12^th of September, 1943 in Sinaloan, Laguna, son of lawyer and writer Dominador Ad Castillo, and Martha Adolfo. He graduated with a BA in English Literature, married and had children, at least one of which-- Christopher Ad Castillo-- followed in his footsteps as filmmaker. 

 
Ad Castillo didn't start out to be a director himself; he really began writing for komiks, publishing-- with his father's help-- a magazine where he wrote every story under different aliases. He was commissioned to do the script to a James Bond knockoff (James Ban-dong, 1964) so successful it spawned a sequel (Dr. Yes, 1965). He eventually directed his first film-- Misyong Mapanganib (Mission Dangerous, 1965)-- at the relatively young age of twenty-one. 
  
Asedillo (1971), possibly Ad Castillo's finest early film, set the template for Filipino movie legend Fernando Poe, Jr.'s persona, as deadly gunslinger and champion of the poor. His best work was yet to come, but even this early on you see his grasp of film language. Poe's action movies are almost always well-produced, but this is the rare picture of his that shows touches of genuine poetry-- deep orange sunsets; village elders expressively lit and photographed; iconic shots of Poe on his horse climbing an impossibly steep slope (the camera tilted so to make the climb even more impossible), his body bent forward as if to keep from falling off.

At one point Poe reads a crucial letter from his arch-nemesis, offering parley: Ad Castillo cuts to the people outside waiting for the results of the fateful letter, and as they chat Castillo drops all sound except the wind blowing-- an effect full of portent.

Ad Castillo's Tag-Ulan sa Tag-Araw (Monsoon Rain in Summer, 1975) is about a young man (Christopher de Leon) who dorms with his uncle and aunt and falls in love with his cousin (a waiflike Vilma Santos). Ad Castillo tackles the sensational subject of incest by framing the two lovers' relationship as a kind of innocent affair, set in a countryside Eden.

It's the kind of hackneyed concept that really shouldn't work, less like D.H. Lawrence and more like Emmanuelle. But Ad Castillo happens to have one of the most prodigiously talented eyes in all of Philippine cinema, and the heedlessly melodious manner in which he shot Tag-Ulan transforms softcore porn into something like art. Every rainfall, every shaft of light, every leafy shadow caught by his handheld camera makes you catch your breath; there's lovemaking without nudity, yet Ad Castillo shoots with such throbbing intensity you can't help but be aroused.

Ad Castillo was also versatile, working in everything from action to psychodrama to of course horror. His Patayin Mo sa Sindak si Barbara (Let's Frighten Barbara to Death, 1974), about a dead woman's determination to wreak unholy vengeance on her poor sister, is not a perfect film or even a particularly good one, certainly not the finest of Ad Castillo's work, but after a first half of playing with devil dolls and cheesy sound effects the film lays aside its childish toys and tries silence, shadows, the stretching of a moment of tension to sadistic length, revealing in its second half arguably the most viscerally frightening film in all of Philippine cinema. At one point Ad Castillo evokes the scene where Arbogast (Martin Balsam) climbs the stairs in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)-- only unlike many a Hitchcock imitator, he manages to pull it off.

Ad Castillo's Ang Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa (The Most Beautiful Creature on the Face of the Earth, 1974) is an unabashed remake of David Lean's epic boxoffice failure Ryan's Daughter (1970); it nevertheless has a coastal sensuality that need not apologize to the underrated original.  Return of the Dragon (same year) took a comedian famous for parodying Bruce Lee (the physical resemblance is uncanny) and forged a remarkably straightforward exercise in Filipino chop-socky, complete with fight scenes staged as if under an azure crystal bowl. Lihim ni Madonna (Secrets of Madonna, 1997) has one of the most beautiful actresses in Philippine cinema (his taste in women was exemplary) running about in an abandoned mansion in a state of perpetual distress, wearing a semitransparent nightie-- a laughable premise, only he uses the gothic scare tactics of Patayin sa Sindak si Barbara to keep the audience off-balance, and ends the film with a magic-realist finale worthy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

With Ang Alamat ni Julian Makabayan (The Legend of Julian Makabayan, 1979) Ad Castillo and his cinematographer Romy Vitug were accused of imitating the honeyed sunlight Nestor Almendros created for Terence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978). If the films share a superficial similarity (both involve extensive outdoor shooting) the resemblance ends there-- I doubt if Malick possesses the showmanship to tell his story as a series of interviews, faux-documentary style, or the effrontery to pull a corpse out from inside the split-open corpse of an actual water buffalo. With Pagputi ng Uwak, Pagitim ng Tagak (When the Crow Turns White, the Heron Black, 1978) Ad Castillo proves he can combine the aesthetic of period epics with the energy of political firebranding-- a volatile mix-- the unstable whole held together by beautiful folk music.

As for his masterpiece Burlesk Queen (1977)-- here's an excerpt of what I wrote on a moment in the film (Chato's deflowering) for Chris Fujiwara's The Little Black Book of Movies: 
 
“Celso uses Jessie's smooth back as both veil and metaphor for Chato's nudity, the clothes dropping from overhead hangers as metaphor for her failing inhibitions; what makes the scene erotic and nakedly emotional is Chato's face, glimpsed over Jessie's left shoulder as terror (the widened eyes), greed (the remote expression, as if she were a starving man wolfing down a steak), pain (the startled look of one who has been kicked in the crotch), guilt (the tears) and finally pleasure (the bit lower lip) flit across and mingle in her eyes.”

Ad Castillo was not a genius, he was more interesting than that. His films were often incoherent and inconsistent because he didn't have the money or didn't have the discipline, or just plain didn't care-- apparently narrative was secondary to him, a mere excuse to flex his prodigious filmmaking muscles. 
 
Of his greatest works-- which include but are not limited to Ang Alamat ni Julian Makabayan; Pagputi ng Uwak, Pagitim ng Tagak; and Burlesk Queen-- his imagery burned like an incandescent bulb on the big screen, and his filmmaking technique was second to none. 
 
If Mike De Leon is Philippine Cinema's mad intellectual, Lino Brocka its fiery social realist, Ishmael Bernal its skeptic-satirist, Mario O'Hara its nightmare scenarist, Celso was its poet laureate-- his images were Filipino lyricism incarnate. His passing is an unimaginable loss.

First published in Businessworld, 12.3.12