The write stuff
I remember the 1988 UP Creative Writing Workshop, the panelists and guest panelists including among others NVM Gonzalez, Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio, Jimmy Abad, Elmer Ordonez, and the intimidating Domeng Landicho--intimidating because Landicho at one point, having had enough of the workshoppers' brash insolence, stood up and on the spot delivered a fiery five-minute rap about (if I remember right) the stupid insolence of youth. I remember my fellow workshoppers and I leaning back against Sir Landicho's onslaught and, when he finally sat down satisfied he had pinned our collective ears to the rear wall, giving him (despite our burning lobes) a standing ovation.
Some of my fellow workshoppers managed to rise to prominence: poet-playwright-novelist Vim Nadera; playwright-turned-filmmaker Auraeus Solito (aka Kanakan Balintagos).*
*(Perhaps the bestknown of my batch but I must say there were others who--because of lack of drive or of luck--failed to achieve fame but were equally talented if not more so)
I remember the invitational dinner that closed the workshop, and the group picture we finally mustered the discipline and patience to assemble for. And I remember this elderly man with a bottle of San Miguel Pale Pilsen sweating in one hand shuffled up to one side of our group, draped an arm across a young Turk's shoulder, and grinned with us at the camera.
As he shuffled away I whispered to my companion: "Who's that?" in a tone suggesting "Who does he think he is?!"
My companion stared. "That?" she said in a tone suggesting disbelief. "That's Nick Joaquin."
I looked around wondering if I could catch sight of him again but he was gone. I've asked about that photograph ever since but lost contact with the photographer; last I heard she's gone too, tho I keep asking and looking and hoping. Forgive the longish anecdote, but that's the kind of keenness this man--shambling old, possibly drunk--can inspire in Filipinos.
Sari Dalena's three-hour twenty-years-in-the-making docudrama Dahling Nick, about the aforementioned writer, seems driven by similar passion; if the film has any virtues they mostly stem from what one senses is a filmmaker heedlessly in love with her subject (Joaquin was both friend to her father and constant visitor to her childhood home); if it has any flaws they flow from the same adoring source.
The film doesn't waste much time, straightaway staging an encounter between a man and a beautiful naked woman walking a crab. The woman faints; the man looks back; the crab clambers up the woman's breast, its claws poised on either side of a stiffened nipple. The oddly comic startlingly erotic sequence captures the flavors of Joaquin, whose prose conjures sepia portraits of stiffly posed grandmother and grandfather hiding shameful secrets, faded photographs of horsedrawn calesas rolling past darkwood houses--and that lone figure cloaked in deep shadow looking down at us from a capiz window. As was pointed out about Joaquin: he's like a Spaniard writing in English, with the poise of a gentleman who knows the piquant pleasure of a well-turned phrase.
Comparisons have been made with the better-known Gabriel Garcia Marquez, particularly the passages of 'magic realism;**' I'd like to point out that not only did Joaquin anticipate much of what Marquez wrote but did so in English, and his prose--to these eyes anyway--reads more fluidly and with more emotional resonance than translations of Marquez do (even if translator Gregory Rabassa is so good the author reportedly preferred Rabassa's version over the original Spanish).
**(In my opinion a canny marketing term for 'fantasy' which (again in my opinion) is what distinguishes Marquez*** from Joaquin: canny marketing.)
***(I do like Marquez; for the record I think his One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great novel. But there can only be one Nick Joaquin.)
Making those comments? Among others F Sionil Jose; Butch Dalisay; Ben Lumbera; the aforementioned Jimmy Abad; Krip Yuson; Greg Brilliantes; Pete Lacaba and his wife Marra Lanot; Erwin Castillo; Recah Trinidad; painter Danilo Dalena (the filmmaker's father).
Sari uses their voices to give presence and context to Joaquin and arguably MVP of the group is Jose, who seems closest to the writer (of the mourners he appears to be the most stricken)--but they could be reciting the PLDT phone directory and I'd still appreciate their presence. In my book the prime value of this docudrama--after introducing and dissecting the life and works of its titular artist--is in gifting us with testimonies of some of the best Filipino writers alive. They--how do I put it?--feel like an embattled even endangered species, longform warriors in this age of brief scribblings on Twitter and Facebook. Seeing them speak and joke and hang mournful expressions on their faces as they remember their friend and colleague is almost--almost--as welcome as seeing them in the flesh.
The subject matter himself is represented by amusing audio recordings and (briefly) video footage at a podium; in the gorgeously shot dramatized sequences he's played by Raymond Bagatsing, who captures not just his lean darkbrowed beauty as a young man but also his highflung hand gestures, his drawling delivery (the older Joaquin reminds me of William Hickey's Don Corrado Prizzi only wittier, and very much in the joke). I remember how Bagatsing electrified the screen with his anguished preternaturally quiet lead performance in Serafin Geronimo: Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion twenty-plus years ago; this is the diametrical opposite--a bigger-than-life louder-than-life sketch of a titan of Philippine literature.
The film's dramatic high point I'd say is the National Artist brouhaha in 1976: Martial Law was in full swing, and dissidents including Pete Lacaba languished in prison. Joaquin didn't want to have anything to do with the dictator but Marcos was persistent--he needed Joaquin's literary prestige to gild his corrupt regime (yes the National Artist Award started out as a Marcos propaganda tool). Joaquin's solution was elegant and flamboyant both as he stood at the podium, hands outstretched in sacrificial crucifixion--his gesture suggesting both Marcos' low regard for human life and his own desire to help dear dahling Pete.
Are there flaws? Well--yes. As mentioned, Sari shows such obvious love for her subject you can imagine her hardpressed to trim her film, reduce the material on Joaquin. To be fair there's an embarrassment of plenty--I think The Woman Who Had Two Navels was shortchanged and there is no mention of two other film adaptations of Joaquin's short stories: Tikoy Aguiluz's Tatarin which, for all the quips about anachronistically modern dance choreography, is a handsomely photographed and produced take on "The Summer Solstice;" and Johnny Tinoso and the Proud Beauty which, for all its budgetary limitations (the spirits dancing through the night are basically torches hung on wires), is a comically evocative retelling of Beauty and the Beast (Beast as grave melancholy figure, Beauty as acidtongued spoiled brat).
The three hour length doesn't really bother me, but the sense of shapeless overindulgence does. The material needs more discipline to go down easier, I feel; a clearer structure or direction, perhaps a livelier pace--something the newcomer or casual reader can hang on to while plunging deep into this expanded Joaquinverse. Between this overflow and the usually sparse documentary segments you see cobbled together for Filipino TV shows or magazines, however, I'd definitely prefer this: a labor of love that offers too much of the man and his writings to easily digest at one sitting. Joaquin--never known for his restraint--deserves at least this much.
First published in Businessworld 9.4.20
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