Asedillo (Celso Ad Castillo, 1971)

Gun and typewriter

By 1971 Celso Ad Castillo had written and directed a number of features when he was tapped by Fernando Poe Jr. to direct a biopic on one Teodoro Asedillo, a former schoolteacher and police chief turned revolutionary during the American Occupation. 

Apparently the two were feeling each other out. Ad Castillo may be a veteran filmmaker, having written eighteen scripts and nine features previously, but FPJ (as Poe is popularly known) had at this point directed eight, produced fifty, acted in approximately ninety. Ad Castillo must have acquitted himself well; FPJ called him 'my little genius' and asked him to direct three more pictures in quick succession (Ang Alamat, 1972; Sto Domingo, 1972; and Esteban, 1973)

FPJ was said to have impressed Ad Castillo in turn with the scene of Asedillo addressing the people of San Antonio (see pic above) who, thanks to American propaganda, have lost faith in him. The shoot happened in the latter part of the day, involved a high wide shot with plenty of extras, was eight pages long on paper including an intense monologue; on top of which they had already been delayed some three to four hours setting up. FPJ was exhausted; his brow furrowed while reading the script, and no one knew if he was happy or not with what Ad Castillo had written. 

Then the movie star launched into it: a long, involved speech at the end of which he was yelling himself hoarse, and you felt the frustration exhaustion and anger in his voice wasn't all acting.*

The film is considered one of FPJ's best, helping establish his reputation as a formidable gunslinger and defender of the downtrodden poor, but when I first saw it, in a degraded video copy, I struggled to see why-- yes Ad Castillo did an excellent job of mythmaking and yes the concept seemed simple enough, a teacher turned rebel against American oppression, but the muddy image and barely legible dialogue made the experience a slog. 

After a thorough restoration by FPJ Productions in 2017 it's as if the scales fell off my eyes, the wax run from my ears: I could actually follow the plot from what the characters are saying and get the gist of the action in the occasional nighttime firefights; I could gaze upon the surrounding Laguna landscape-- the high hills, the wide lakes, the scorched gold sunrises. Been to Laguna many a time, and have tried to capture some of that beauty on a measly cellphone; Ad Castillo with cinematographer Sergio Lobo (Manila by Night, Himala ) succeed on an emotionally epic scale. 

The film opens on thatched huts huddled on a mountaintop; the huts look unkempt and empty, their eaves decorated with tattered Christmas parols. We see an unlit lamp, a crock hanging on rope, a bloodstained bamboo bed-- Ad Castillo basically setting the film's pensive tone by giving us a taste of where this will all end. 

The tale isn't totally new-- man seeks to redress injustice, is blocked by a system built to protect the established rich. In Asedillo's case he's more self-aware than most; as schoolteacher he chafes at having to teach his students the hymn "Philippines, My Philippines" in English instead of Tagalog, and refuses to use the Department of Public Instruction-approved English-language textbooks because the students find them difficult to relate to, much less understand. 

Asedillo is fired for insubordination, becomes chief of police in Paete, is fired from that for embezzlement (a charge he vehemently denies). I'm guessing there's a deleted scene somewhere as the sequence starts outside the Paete town hall at night with the closeup of a hand striking a match, the hand moving back to reveal a shadowed man lighting his cigarette (a nicely ominous shot)-- then awkwardly cuts to Asedillo in the midst of being beaten by his own officers. 

I blame missing footage, but there are other instances in the picture when you feel the action has taken a confusing leap (subplots that don't lead anywhere, crucial developments that occur offscreen, sudden changes in character or story) that suggest another possibility: Ad Castillo doesn't really prioritize clarity in his films, preferring to focus on staging passages of bravura filmmaking over worrying if the passages will actually form a comprehensive narrative later on. 

The gambit works, more or less; you can imagine movie audiences-- particularly Filipino audiences of the '70s-- not caring much about logical progression, you imagine Ad Castillo counting on that lack of concern. Cavalier attitude towards storytelling aside, the director (who was also screenwriter) does have an eloquent if florid way with words, which he instructs his actors to deliver in an understated deadpan; when Asedillo's friend Abel (an almost unrecognizably young Ruel Vernal) cautions him about fighting the town mayor (confusingly called 'the municipal president') Asedillo replies: "Ever since I was a child my father taught me to value my honor above my life. Abel hear me-- the man you're talking to is dead. They've killed my honor."

Asedillo at this point is disgraced but what turns him into an out-and-out criminal is a murder charge. Next-door neighbor Atong (Mario Escudero) has learned that Abel has been bedding his wife; in an extended sequence that evokes noir and giallo and (oddest of all) Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," Atong invites Abel to his house to sample a jug of lambanog (powerful coconut wine that, as Atong puts it, "has been steeped in raisins for five years"). While Abel sips, Atong pulls out his shotgun and exacts memorable vengeance, Ad Castillo switching from lurid color to startling black-and-white because-- well I'm not sure why. Because he can?

And Asedillo must avenge Abel because-- not sure why either. Far as I can tell Abel was a sneaky shifty-eyed jerk (we're talking Ruel Vernal after all) and not much of a friend overall, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do, and as the soldiers escort Atong across the river sniffing into (wiping away tears with?) a bloodstained rag (his wife's chemise?) Asedillo raises his shotgun heavily to his shoulder (you feel his reluctance) and fires, dropping not just Atong but-- to underline the irrevocability of the act-- the two officers flanking him. 

And then-- and then-- as Atong's body is carried away by the waters the incarnadine rag slips from his nerveless hands and acquires a life of its own, curling and unfurling and swirling down the restless current, a wordless symbol of Atong's anguished departing soul; that, or Asedillo's swiftly vanishing prospects for a quiet life, the pivotal moment when he finds himself well and truly outside the law. 

That's both the ignominy and glory I think of FPJ's 'little genius' (Ad Castillo's nicknames including 'The Kid' and, oddly appropriate, 'The Messiah')-- he only occasionally nods in the direction of the script; you sense a wayward spirit more interested in winkling out moments where he can improvise, build on something, link one shot after another in a daisy chain of images until suddenly out of nowhere he's formed an amazing evocative sequence that serves no immediate practical purpose but lingers on the tongue like an aftertaste of paradise, a touch of the divine. When he struggles (as in his silly remake of Ang Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa, 1996), he will manage at most one or two such scenes; when his mojo is working (as in this film) he can toss off five without looking and end the picture aiming to pull off a sixth (likely as not succeeding).

Impossible to submit Ad Castillo to critical analysis, I submit, because there isn't much to analyze; to yield meaningful results a film must have a guiding intelligence behind it that chooses this direction or that, follows some meaty hidden theme that over time will allow itself to be dissected and categorized and neatly displayed under a glass case. I'm not sure Ad Castillo works that way; I can only attempt to help us-- Robert Heinlein of all people came up with a word-- grok Ad Castillo by citing moments when he's at his most heedlessly inspired, pulling off visual miracles with little preparation scant resources and even less money.  

Hence aside from the mysterious moody opening, the speech before the town of San Antonio, and that amazing throwaway image of the bloodied rag fluttering down the river, I'll cite the scene right after a punishing raid, when Asedillo's group finds itself knocked back on its heels and forced to bury its dead. Under a low dim sky the rebel leader presents a makeshift crucifix to his men: "Forget that we hide in the mountains," he tells them. "Forget that we're far from our loved ones. In the name of our comrades who died defending our rights I swear--" and the director cuts to a wide shot as the man thrusts the length of wood downward, and we hear the hiss of the sharpened end driven into soil like a stake into a man's heart, and he continues: "-- on this spot, we plant the tree of our cause. We are the first leaves to sprout from this tree, we will be the first to fall; but others will sprout in our place and continue the fight, to defend the rights of the abused." 

Ad Castillo may pay scant obeisance to the gods of scriptwriting but I swear he can write weighty monologues that, while hardly Shakespearean, evokes however distantly the Bard's way with cadence and metaphor and outsized sentiments, likely thanks to his years of writing popular komiks (often under a pseudonym), and for genre movies of all kinds (war, horror, espionage, parodies). Somewhere along the way he learned eloquence, and the sight of it sprouting from the melodrama, like blossoms from a rotting tree branch, only underlines its miraculous nature. 

Then there's the long sequence of the officer on his horse marching his troops through town, one of Asedillo's men bound and dragged behind. The townsfolk watch as the soldiers pass, crowd around, press close; one by one as the officer lopes ahead the soldiers following are pulled aside, overwhelmed, and gagged. Finally the officer sees a fellow figure on horseback ahead, the camera lens deliberately out of focus; when the blurred figure finally rides up close enough to resolve into Asedillo, the officer reaches for his gun-- and only then realizes he's surrounded not by his troops but by the unsmiling crowd he rode so imperiously through. 

Asedillo draws closer, the only sound the clop of his horse; he informs the officer: "Tell your superiors my fight isn't with you or your fellow soldiers. You are one of the people whose rights I'm trying to defend."

It's a clever sequence that underlines along the way how united Asedillo is with the townfolk-- that in whatever the rebel group is doing the town is complicit, that the members of the group are indistinguishable from the citizens of the town, and the poor officer was outnumbered the moment he rode in. 

Then there's Asedillo's confrontation with fellow rebel Vicente (Paquito Diaz) in their mountaintop hideout, with the camera looks over Vicente's shoulder at Asedillo. Ad Castillo couldn't put things more dramatically: the long barrel of Vicente's rifle is pointed straight at the revolutionary's chest who is framed, in turn, by the glittering magnificence of Laguna Lake; Asedillo walks carefully from right to left, addressing the pointed rifle in a low voice: "Vicente. Any time you want to shoot--" suddenly there's a pistol in his hand "--go ahead and shoot." 

At which point I need to pause to reflect on the magnificence that is Paquito Diaz. Bearded and mustachioed, often cast as goon or rapist (here he's caught by Asedillo's men in mid-act), it takes a strong character actor to play adversary to the film's star, an even stronger actor to play adversary to arguably the biggest star in all of Philippine cinema, and Diaz steps into the role with confident ease. Vicente states his case: that he was driven to attempt sexual assault by hunger, exhaustion, endless cold, by the prospect of no reward beyond the vague promise of some future justice, and no man can be expected to endure so much for so little reward. He almost makes his story convincing, calling into question the justice or even sanity of what Asedillo is attempting. 

And Diaz beyond his oft underrated acting abilities is a badass. If FPJ is reportedly a crack shot and blindingly fast draw, Diaz in turn has the physical agility to execute a double-legged strike at either side of FPJ's head with almost casual elan-- and do it upside-down. 

And then there's Asedillo's ultimate fate, prefaced by a long sad sequence of the men huddled around the fire pulling their blankets tighter against the unceasing wind, one by one coming to their leader to shamefacedly ask if they can take leave to visit their families for Christmas-- not sure if they can come back after. 

Asedillo is left with a much-reduced force guarding his little hut (decorated with already fraying Christmas parols) and seated in front of his typewriter, and again pause a moment to note how Ad Castillo depicts that boxy mechanical instrument, a gesture on his part against the cliche of the strong hero type, often inarticulate to the point of being mute; the man of clever one-liners fit only for viral memes ("enough talk!" "I'll be back!"), readier to express himself with gunfire than with actual ideas. The true-life Asedillo was an educator and labor organizer, a thinker and intellectual; he constantly questioned the American hegemony and knew the value of propaganda, of owning the narrative (hence his attempt early on to provide his students with an alternative education, and later his gambit of presenting himself to the town of San Antonio, in an attempt to win back their hearts). 

Unfortunately Ad Castillo's approach isn't perfect: we learn little of what the rebel leader wrote-- not even a brief moment of him reading aloud from his typescript-- and we get little sense of how well he's doing in the propaganda war against the Americans (He definitely has the attention-- and trust-- of San Antonio, but what about outside the town? What about the American accusations that he's a mere bandit and terrorist?). 

We do at least have this-- the man in his little hut pecking out letters, messages, statements, to his men and to the world at large. A mere image but Ad Castillo gives it the force of an emblem, a gesture of defiance against the established authority gathering about to silence him; the romance to it, the lack of substantial detail behind it, the director's fatalistic acknowledgement of its ultimate futility actually adds (I submit) to the mystique. Call it Ad Castillo's idea of himself, the writer-director, churning out eloquence in word and image drawn from near-nothing, almost as if by magic, weaving a spell of power and invincibility against an encroaching inevitable darkness. 

*(Thanks to film writer Epoy Deyto for the anecdote)