Cinemanila 2013: The Act of Killing (Anonymous, Christine Cynn, Joshua Oppenheimer); Norte: The End of History (Lav Diaz)

Killing with Lav

 Cinemanila 2013 has come around again, from Dec. 18 to 22 in the SM Aura Premier Cinema, Taguig, and its range and depth and variety of titles is--for a Filipino festival--as breathtaking as ever. I mean, where else can you find one brilliant if morally problematic film, another arguably the best of the year (and yes I've seen a few of the suspects--To the Wonder, Blue Jasmine, Gravity, Dallas Buyers Club, Captain Philips, 12 Years a Slave)?

Sight and Sound dubbed Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and an anonymous collaborator's The Act of Killing its film of the year, and one can understand the admiration: it's a collection of interviews of gangsters commissioned to torture and execute hundreds, perhaps thousands of Communists in 1960s Northern Indonesia; not only have they not been brought to justice since but today are hailed as heroes (some anyway), even hold powerful positions in Indonesian government and society. The filmmakers, not content to simply hear what these men have to say about the killings, gave them free rein to stage and shoot said killings in any manner or style they choose: straight documentary, noir, and (most bizarre of all) a musical number with overtones of an expensively produced prayer meeting. Not a few re-enact their exploits with energy and enthusiasm, even unmistakeable glee.

On watching this my unthinking reaction was: why listen to these people? Thought about the question, thought some more; finally realized--why, that was the right question to ask all along. Or rather: yes we should listen, yes their input on the events of 1965 to 1966 has relevance even importance, but why limit the film to merely presenting their story unfiltered and unmediated--no historical context, no opposing viewpoint to complicate, if not counteract, theirs? It's like giving these people a hundred-and-sixty-minute platform to reach not just Indonesian but international audiences, accompanied by the weight of dozens of awards, the praise of hundreds of critics. Validation perhaps not of the rightness of the killings (though most make many onscreen declarations), but of the killers' humanity, charisma, charm.

"Ah,” but you ask; “what of Anwar? Doesn't he come to regret what he did?” Yes he does apparently (though many of the others are loudly unrepentant), and that's the most insidious service of all performed on behalf of these people. Every time Anwar expresses doubt about what he did I wondered: how sincere was he? When he becomes violently sick and the camera moved in to capture his distress, I wondered: how sincere are the filmmakers? Is Anwar genuinely experiencing remorse (in which case why doesn't he turn himself in?)? Was he, as he later claimed, deceived when making this picture? Or was his onscreen breakdown a brilliantly acted tale of self-redemption handed to him free and clear, his backstage pass into morally acceptable society (“I regret what I did, may I join you folks?”)?

One further question: is Cinemanila right to screen this in Manila theaters? I think so: The Act of Killing is perhaps not an ethically irreproachable work, but it's an important work, in that it has dragged (promoted?) a heinous crime involving thousands of lives into the international spotlight, complete with accolades and awards. It needs to be seen, digested, discussed; if the filmmakers fail to provide us with a mediating intelligence to suss out the meaning of what they have shown (and--trust me--much of it is appalling to watch) I'd say it's up to us to ask the questions and suss out the meanings ourselves. If Oppenheimer isn't able or willing to finish the job, maybe we should do it for him--transcribe the discussion and hand the record over, as a gift. He may or may not like what we have to say, but he might finally get his work of art.

Then there's Lav Diaz's Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte the End of History) which I submit is the corrective to Oppenheimer's documentary--here is Diaz's equivalent of Anwar Congo, in the guise of Fabian (Sid Lucero), a brilliant former law student turned existential murderer (this is Diaz's unabashed re-enactment of Crime and Punishment in a Philippine setting). Fabian has killed only two souls compared to Anwar and his friends' thousands (I for one am a believer in the absolute value of a single human being), but otherwise the key details are there: the eloquence, the authority, the charisma; the intelligence and self-serving arrogance.

But his isn't the only story Diaz tells; there's also Joaquin (Archie Alemania), the unintended consequence of Fabian's crime--when Fabian escapes, Joaquin is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison in his stead. Victimizer, meet victim; unlike in Oppenheimer's film, the criminal does not get a free pass--Fabian follows Joaquin's family and his conscience torments him accordingly (this being a fiction film, one accepts without much trouble the storyteller's omniscient viewpoint...where in Oppenheimer's, a documentary (a film where the ostensible intention is to arrive at the truth), you're strangely far more reluctant to accept the veracity of the onscreen redemption).

Diaz doesn't operate according to the oversimplified calculus of good vs. evil, innocent vs. guilty; watching Joaquin we wonder just how much in his innocent goodness he's culpable for the situations he somehow magically (even comically) falls into; likewise while watching Fabian we wonder at what point do his anguished attempts at retribution become valid, maybe even acceptable. Diaz clearly has sympathy for Joaquin, but you can't help but notice that Fabian's sensibility--his critical view of the ordinary Filipino, his philosophy of fighting ignorance and evil without mercy--feels uncomfortably similar to Diaz's own.

Diaz doesn't mean to present an ethics lesson; you realize this sitting through the film's entire two-hundred-and-forty-minute length, and in fact I'd even insist it's necessary to sit through the film's comparatively long running time (comparatively; he's been known to make films that run for eight, nine, eleven hours) to realize the full extent of its complexities and ambiguities, a realization which gradually seeps in, as opposed to being baldly presented on a silver platter--or not present at all.

What distinguishes Diaz from Oppenheimer, and his collaborators? The latter gave the game away early in his film, when a gangster bullied a Chinese merchant into giving not just his daily blackmail amount but a considerable extra--the unspoken implication being that he's demanding more because there are cameras watching. At which point I realized Oppenheimer hadn't fully thought out the consequences of this scene--how the gangster would react to his presence, how it would affect the merchant--and that he probably doesn't know what he's doing at all. Diaz does--least I feel he does--and he presents, questions, provokes with the probity and passion of a real artist.

First published in Businessworld, 12.18.13

Cinemanila 2011 (13 Assassins; Dario Argento; Jafar Panahi; Nora Aunor)

Cinemanila 2011: Cup runneth over

It's that time of the year again, and Cinemanila--running from the eleventh of November 2011 (All those ones! Put that in your lottery ticket) to the seventeenth at the Market! Market! Cinemas at Bonifacio Global City in Taguig, Rizal--is easily the best show in town, everything from the latest by Wim Wenders (Pina (2011), about famed dance choreographer German Philippina "Pina" Bausch--in 3D, at that) to the latest by Park Chan Wook (Night Fishing (2011), a 30 minute short shot entirely on an iPhone). Plus films by Lav Diaz (Siglo ng Pagluluwal (Century of Birthing, 2011), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)), and Chang Dong Lee (Poetry (2010)).

There are retrospectives on Dario Argento (Suspiria (1977)) and Nora Aunor (Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976), Himala (Miracle, 1982), Bona (1980)), both of whom are to receive lifetime achievement awards; films by Jaffar Panahi (Offside (2006)) including the latest he did while officially prohibited by the Iranian government from directing films (This is Not a Film (2010)); the latest by Raya Martin (Buenas Noches Espana (Goodnight Spain, 2011)); by John Torres (Mapang-akit (Seductive, 2011)); by Kim Jee Woon (I Saw the Devil (2010)); by Takashi Miike ((13 Assassins (2010)) and by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)). The latest in independent shorts, digital films by Southeast Asian and Filipino talents. And many, many more.

Pick a title, any title...possibly the most audacious aspect of Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins (a remake of Eiichi Kudo's 1963 'jidaigeki' (period samurai) film, about twelve samurai plus one hired to kill a shogun's psychotically sadistic son) is its unapologetic invitation--dare, almost--to be compared to Akira Kurosawa's three-hour epic Seven Samurai (1954).

Does Miike measure up to Kurosawa's definitive statement on war and violence? Certainly jacks up the numbers--from seven to thirteen heroes, facing at first seventy, then two hundred soldiers, their battle involving not just swords and arrows but slingshots, guns, booby-traps, bursts of flame, huge explosions, giant sliding fences that block off the action and redefine the battlefield again and again. Unlike Kurosawa, Miike doesn't strive for strict realism; the sliding fences look impossibly high, and digital effects help simulate a stampede of burning bulls (no, really). Unlike Kurosawa, Miike doesn't even bother to keep the battle's village setting spatially coherent--he has a main avenue where most of the killing is done, then opens up all kinds of back alleyways and side passages and courtyards for heroes and villains to run through and die in as, if, whenever necessary.

Like Kurosawa Miike follows the classic form, or at least gives passing acknowledgement--there is a recruiting sequence, and some of the characters recruited stay in mind (two that do are drunken nephew Shinrokuro (Takayuki Yamada) and forest hunter Kiga Koyata (Yusuke Iseya)); a preparation sequence that doesn't really explain much (but is fitfully entertaining); and a showdown that takes up almost half the picture (you can tell where Miike's priorities lie). The endless scenes of close combat are long, carefully choreographed (if outwardly chaotic) affairs, with coherent camerawork and editing in the classic Kurosawa manner (Miike may be crazy but he isn't stupid); the final showdown is as operatic and overblown as anything one might wish for from Kurosawa, or Sergio Leone, or any of the classic Western (in both sense of the word) filmmakers.

What makes this exercise in relatively straightforward jidaigeki most distinctly Miike is his villain, Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu. Naritsugu enjoys plenty of screen time, enough to establish him as one of Miike's more baroque creations--a hedonist with limitless appetites, a sociopath who finds absolutely no value in human life, a sadistic pervert with (and this may be the most shocking detail of all) no real experience of the real world, completely unaware of how other people think or feel (one speculates that he's lived a sheltered life where his every whim is obeyed, no matter how unreasonable). Played by the blandly handsome Goro Inagaki--it's the nondescript prettiness covering a seething nihilistic innocence that makes the character so unsettling--Naritsugu dominates 13 Assassins in a way that no character in Kurosawa's film ever did; he galvanizes the picture, gives it urgency and a sense of impending doom (the man is on his way to receive a high position from his younger brother, the present Shogun; once promoted the man would be untouchably, monstrously powerful). More, he provides a detached god's eye view of the battle, relishing with greater and greater appreciation his enemy's increasingly desperate tactics (viewing a particularly bloody struggle, Naritsugu asks Hanbei his chief samurai:

“You think the age of war was like this?”

“Perhaps.”

“It's magnificent. With death comes gratitude for life. If a man has lived in vain, then how trivial his life is. Oh, Hanbei; something wonderful has come to my mind.”

“Huh?”

“Once I'm on the Shogun's council, let's bring back the age of war...”).

As Naritsugu's chief samurai Hanbei Kitou, Masachika Ichimura makes for the perfect foil, a noble samurai who doesn't hesitate to protect his lord, even if his lord is crazy. Theirs (as the poem goes) not to reason why, theirs but to do or die--you can feel Hanbei's distaste, yet he's warrior enough to swallow his sentiments and stay true to his master. Partly because of the loyalty (fanaticism?) of men like these monstrous governments, administrations, kingdoms are made possible, are granted bloody birth.

Perhaps the worst criticism ever leveled at Kurosawa's masterpiece was that it provided little insight into the forty bandits facing the samurai. Miike addresses that lack many times over with his Lord Naritsugu; he manages to give the man his own inimitable point of view, one that survives a final confrontation with the assassins, even affords him a morsel of sympathy. A great action film? I don't know; Kurosawa's shadow looms large over the landscape. But Miike does throw a few clever ideas in, giving the material an interesting spin.

Of Dario Argento--what else can be said that hasn't already been said? Don't consider Suspiria his best work but it's easily his best known: a parody of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) where instead of a massive Oedipal complex we have a malevolent witches' convent; instead of austere black-and-white we have an operatic palette of colors, hue, textures. The shadows are as deep and velvety as outer space, the sound and music (compliments of the band Goblin) as eclectically precise as a collection of surgical instruments; you find yourself strapped metaphorically to your chair with Argento bent over gazing at you, scalpel in one hand. Screaming at this point would be a blessing.

Jafar Panahi is by turns politically astute, irrepressibly satirical, restlessly experimental; to the edict that he be forbidden from directing a film, for example, he responds with a work titled This is Not a Film.

Offside is about a group of girls trying to sneak into an Iranian soccer game (where women are banned). Not just any soccer game--it's the game where Iran qualified for the 2006 World Cup. Comedy this sharp is almost impossible to describe, the way a beautiful kick past a goalie can be impossible to describe: there are no words there are only the motions as the filmmaker sidesteps all restrictions in his production (He can't film the girls in the game, for one thing, he has to hope for the purposes of his script that Iran wins, and for budgetary reasons (not a lot of money for extras) he has to shoot during the actual games). The ending, a victory for the record, is both exuberant and bittersweet.

If there isn't much to add to what's been said about Argento, there's even less to add to the considerable amount of ink that has been spilled over Nora Aunor, on her umpteenth comback with a successful 'teleserye' (Mario O'Hara's Sa Ngalan ng Ina (In the Name of the Mother) recently wrapped and a major film (Tikoy Aguiluz's Manila Kingpin, a remake of The Asiong Salongga Story) coming soon. Aunor in this retrospective can be seen in at least three different aspects, as handled by three major filmmakers: as object of adoration and religious icon (Ishmael Bernal's hallucinatory Himala); as downtrodden maid in an urban melodrama (Lino Brocka's Bona), and as provincial lass turned Japanese collaborator in Mario O'Hara's period epic (Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos).

Aunor broke the tradition of using light-skinned screen stars with Westernized faces; hers is the face and figure of the masses, dark-skinned and diminutive, and they love her dearly for this, love her success because it's their success too. She's not only an accomplished actress in the silent-screen manner (those dark eyes!) but an accomplished producer as well--one of her own projects, O'Hara's Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos is arguably and in my book possibly the finest Filipino film ever made.

So; go see. Have fun...

First published in Businessworld, 10.10.11

Cinemanila 2011 (11.11.11 to 11.17.11), Market! Market! Cinemas, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

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It's that time of the year--Cinemanila.

Cinemanila 2010

Movie, movie

From December 1 to 5 at Robinsons Movieworld, Robinsons Galeria in Quezon City it's the 12^th Cinemanila International Film Festival--still, for my money, the best and most varied offering of World and Philippine cinema available locally.

So what to watch? Everything. But if you have limited time and budget, I have more specific recommendations:

December 3 (Friday):

Cinema B, 8 pm: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Edgar Wright, 2010). The first ever video game movie I've ever liked (actually, a manga-style graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley) samples from all kinds of bright-colored, bright-sounding games, committing to no single title (and managing to be all the better for it). Perhaps key to its success is the premise, a teenage variation of one of the funnier gags in Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve, where the geeky hero discovers that his lady love has more than one skeleton in her closet (seven, in fact; "Seven Evil Exes," as she calls them), and that geeky hero must vanquish each and every one before he wins her.

Throw in Edgar Wright's inventive sense of visual humor (when Scott urinates in the men's room a "pee bar" empties above him) and pacing and use of cheesy digital effects and the result is like a souffle--it'll deflate once you leave the theater, but while you're enjoying it it's an inimitable experience.

December 4 (Saturday)

In Cinema A at 10 pm: Thirst (Park Chan Wook, 2009). Forget Twilight and even Tomas Alfredson's otherwise excellent Let the Right One In feels thin and timid in comparison. The bad boy of Korean cinema takes a stab--hell, tears a few hunks of steak--off the necrotic carcass of onscreen vampirism. He basically junks most of the paraphernalia (no garlic, no crosses, no changing of form or inviting people in or any of that silliness) and has his Catholic priest hero (Song Kang-ho) infected through an experimental vaccine. The priest sucks and is miserable about it--bad enough, until he meets a beautiful woman (Kim Ok-vin) trapped in an unhappy marriage whereupon the whole thing transforms into The Postman Always Rings Twice with fangs.

Song's fatalism contrasts vividly with Kim's feral will to live, and the results are hilarious, creepy, erotic, and bloody beyond belief even for a bloodsucker flick, thanks to Park. It's also surprisingly poignant, taking on as its subtext the unhappiness of two people trapped in a troubled relationship. If you like vampires, if you like gore, if you like horror, if you like comic horror, if you like stormy love affairs that leave both lovers either unhappy or dead or worse and if you like all this stirred into a delirious mixture (Park has rarely showed much restraint when it comes to sex and violence and judging from the evidence on hand he's not about to start any time soon) delivered hot and steaming in a tall glass, this one's for you.

December 5 (Sunday)

In Cinema B at twelve noon: Bontoc Eulogy (1995) is Marlon Fuentes' haunting mock documentary about Markod, one of the thousand plus Igorots carted off to the St. Louis World's Fair to be exhibited as fascinating 'primitives'--live exhibits for naïve Midwesterners to point and gawk at, marveling at the assumed superiority of American civilization over theirs.

Fuentes uses archival images and film footage to tell Markod's story, the wrenching changes he had to undergo to adapt to the weather and culture. He digs deeper, his narrator (who remains nameless) ruminating over his own fate as an immigrant, a fellow savage traveling from tropical rainforest to temperate grasslands, from Third World poverty to First World decadence with barely a moment's pause to adjust. Fuentes in effect tells three stories at once: Markod's leaving his pregnant wife; the narrator, leaving his native soil; and Fuentes himself, leaving home and family never (reportedly) to return. He captures them at a pivotal moment, when they are in the process of assimilation, of dissolution, of fading into the ever-rising hum of America's multicultural society, a kind of simultaneous death, fusion and transcendence that carries its own sense of tragedy, loneliness, and loss. A great film, undeservedly neglected--it would make a fascinating companion piece to Floy Quintos' play St. Louis Loves Dem Filipinos (now a musical, with music by Antonio Africa). Where Quintos tells the story of Bulan, a Bontoc prince reduced to being lonely and poor as high tragedy, Fuentes turns the story into an intimate portrait, makes it part of his own story (or his own part of the larger story). 

At 8:45: Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (2009) is a crash course in prison life who are the gangs, which one to join, what is of value and available for buying, selling, smuggling in and out of the prison walls. Audiard and his writers (Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, Nicolas Peufaillit) take a page from Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather--Michael Corleone's transformation from fresh-faced college graduate to stone-cold gang lord--and transposes it here, with fresh-faced Malik coming under the wing, protection and eventually tutelage of gang leader Cesar. What breathes unruly life into the film are the bits and pieces you haven't quite seen before, not even in Coppola's epic (which in my opinion is overfamiliar, perhaps even overrated)--the hostile faces--Arab, Corsican--staring at each other from across the courtyard; the DVD players and radios delivered by cart to one's cell; the everyday delivery of fresh baguettes, as if hot bread were a right every bit as guaranteed as your weekly phone call.

If Malik is the central consciousness in the film, Malik's knotty interaction with Cesar is the film's central relationship. Certainly there's a father-son affection there, as Cesar lets his mask of brutality slip to reveal a lonely, insecure old man (mind you, this doesn't dilute Cesar's more monstrous qualities, merely makes him grotesquely fascinating). Malik seems to count on Cesar's patronage, but when Cesar at one terrifying point turns on him, pressing a spoon into his eye, the affection seems to shatter. That said, one is never surprised that Malik for all his softness grows into his criminal shoes: the boy is a physical and intellectual sponge, starved for knowledge (in school he learns reading, writing, basic Economics, Arabic; he learns--this on the fly--the problems of negotiating with people, dealing with disparate, distrustful groups) and activity. He catches some unbelievable breaks--ever so often he manages to turn a swift ambush into a golden opportunity to network or make connections--but not once does he doubt his good fortune, or question the general velocity of his life; with the swiftness of the very young (and utterly ruthless) he makes his bloody progress up the pyramid. Also showing on December 6 (Monday) at Cinema B, 9:15 pm.

And then--as it turns out--on December 6 (Monday) Cinemanila is extended! At Cinema A twelve noon is Brillante Mendoza's Kaleldo (2006), a lovely slice-of-life melodrama, where the three interweaving stories of three daughters is captured in bits and pieces over seven summers in the daughters' lives. Of the daughters it's Cherry Pie Picache's story that leaves the strongest impression--Cherry Pie, a character actor of considerable skill who has played supporting roles in films often unworthy of her talent, shines as the quietly suffering tomboy, unwanted and largely ignored by the family patriarch. Mendoza's handheld camera, much in the fashion of the Dardennes brothers and cinema verite, gives the stories a distinct caught-in-the-moment feel.

At 4:15, Yang Ik-Joon's Breathless (2010) at times induces that eponymous state, especially when debt collector Sang Hoon (the director doing triple duty by writing the script and playing lead actor) goes into action. I don't know what Yang is like in person but onscreen he's a singular presence, small eyes taking a steady bead on you (a moving target), jaw settling into a particularly grim line, hands working themselves into fists, prior to letting them fly. He talks insolently, contemptuously, his language a string of firecracker profanity; he collects debts by beating the money (and will to resist) out of his clients. He's dedicated enough (or unstable enough) to work overtime, pummeling his next-door neighbor or even a passerby gratis, without even expecting a fee.

This portrait of a near-sociopath bully would be compelling on its own but Yang goes a step further by introducing Yeon-hue (Kotbi-kim), a teen-aged schoolgirl who, as it turns out, is his match in foul language and possibly his superior in perverse fearlessness (he has his fists to back him up; she has nothing but sheer attitude). She defies him, wins his respect, and later his trust; the film plays out like Beauty and the Beast with the lovers suffering a severe case of potty-mouth; the effect is startling and unsettlingly funny at the same time. 

 

At 9:30 Bong Joon-ho's Mother (2009) is terrific fare, possibly his best work. Where his The Host worked in stops and starts, careened all over the place in terms of emotional tone and genre, in Mother Bong seems completely in control. Hard to see the comedy here, but it is dark comedy, nevertheless--Bong pokes not-too-gentle fun at the stereotype of the smothering Korean matriarch as he spins out for us the tale of one mother's love for her mentally challenged child, the determination and ferocity involved when said child is accused of the murder of a young woman.

On December 7 (Tuesday) at Cinema A is a twelve noon showing of Jeffery Jeturian's Pila Balde (1999) a multi-character, multi-storyline film of modest virtues and modest pleasures, possessed of keen intelligence and a recognizable soul.

So--what are you waiting for? Go forth, and see much more.

First published in Businessworld 12.3.10

Cinemanila 2009 (final weekend)

Lav Diaz's Batang West Side

Cinemanila 2009 (final weekend)

The world on the big screen at Cinemanila

It’s that time of the year again, and again I’m not sure we appreciate the kind of bounty we get at Cinemanila. There are other festivals for foreign films (Cine Europa, Eiga Sai, the various embassy festivals); other festivals for independent films (Cinema One Originals, Cinemalaya), but seeing cutting-edge Filipino films screened side-by-side with the latest offerings from world cinema, that’s a different experience entirely. We see the best of what we have to offer alongside the best of what the world has to offer, and we can come to the conclusion that yes, there is much in the world that’s different and much we can learn from, the same time there’s much we can offer in return. The exchange of ideas, images, interests, cultures, stories and, above all, friendships--that’s the real value of a festival like this.

The world cinema programming in particular--it’s a relief to see programming that’s aware of what’s going on out there, instead of relying on distributors or popular hits or goodness knows what criterion to pick films for one’s festival. Here we have commercial hits (Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds), the latest from any number of exciting filmmakers (Fruit Chan and Jian Cui’s Chengdu, I Love You; Steve McQueen’s Hunger; Lukas Moodysson’s Mammoth; Francois Ozon’s Ricky). We have the latest from the finest Filipino filmmakers working at the moment (Raya Martin’s Independencia; Ralston Jover’s Bakal Boys; Pepe Diokno’s Engkwentro). We have screenings of two of Lav Diaz’s most important works, Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family), and Batang West Side (West Side Avenue).

Batang West Side is as Diaz himself put it his “first film”--or, at least, the first where he truly realized his vision (I do like his earlier efforts, however flawed he may think they are, particularly the Dostoevskian Serafin Geronimo: Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion (Criminal of Barrio Concepcion)). Batang West Side explores the different levels of an entire community, the Filipino-American community, from its oldest to youngest generation, from its upper class to middle class to underworld. In its five-hour accumulation of detail, with a density and scope and leisurely pace very much like a novel, it achieves greatness; it even has room for deadpan humor (a gang boss’ trippy speech (“Shabu (crystal meth) is the salvation of the Philippines”) and surreal imagery (a nightmarish dream sequence). Diaz balances severe aesthetic with a novelist’s comprehensive storytelling in this film and achieves, I believe, his masterpiece.

Ebolusyon at eleven hours is an even bigger canvas, and admittedly more impressive (Film critic/iconoclast Olaf Moller, writing for Senses of Cinema, picked it as the Best Film of 2005 and, writing for Cinematheque Ontario just this year, as "Film of the Decade"). I would argue that Diaz had trouble validating his mix of 16 mm and video footage, and that the historical perspective doesn’t really integrate with the personal storylines that crisscross the narrative. But huge canvases and overreaching ambitions are often accompanied by considerable flaws, and there are more than enough themes and surpassingly moving moments here to make it worth one’s while--a grandmother lying among her photographs, spending her final moments in mourning; a man’s pathetic, agonizing death stretched out almost to eternity as the camera follows his dying crawl. Diaz attempts nothing more and nothing less than an epic retelling of thirty years’ of Philippine history, and the results are confusing, fascinating, altogether exhilarating.

These are difficult and essential films to see; if you are Filipino, or a lover of all things Filipino, or a film lover, or a lover of Filipino films, or a combination of any of the aforementioned, you must, must, must see these two works.

(Belated note: the Batang West Side screening apparently didn't push through, but festival director Tikoy Aguiluz hopes to have it screened at a later date)

As for the other films--Israel may not be the most morally upstanding country at the moment, but that doesn’t go for some of its filmmakers. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary about an Israeli soldier (Folman himself) trying to recover his memories of what happened during the Lebanon War, in particular the Sabra and Shatila massacre--the animation acts as another level of stylization that helps the filmmaker deal with memories too painful to remember. Bui Thac Chuyen’s Adrift (Cinema 5, Saturday 12 to 1.50 pm) is a gorgeously photographed Vietnamese film much in the tradition of French erotic dramas, only the Vietnamese do the French one better by throwing a few virgins in the mix, to help recall what a surprise and terror and wonder human sexuality can be. Chris Chong’s Karaoke is one of the best films I’ve seen recently, an understated drama about the shattering of a youth’s illusions in life, with a great wordless sequence in the middle that reveals what it’s all about and why nothing the youth can say or do really matters.

First published in Businessworld, 10.23.09