Scorpio Nights (Peque Gallaga, 1985)

Marriage story

Come finally to the notorious Scorpio Nights (Peque Gallaga, 1985), a quickie production reportedly mounted (by Regal Studios) to take advantage of the promise of censorship-free screenings at the Manila Film Center. Just to make the challenge that much more difficult, Gallaga had suffered a heart attack in late 1984 and was still bedridden when shooting began (he reportedly directed most of the film lying on a portable cot). 

Virgin Forest (Peque Gallaga, 1985)

Enchanted Forest

The film's opening minutes are stunning. Cinematographer Conrado Baltazar seems to take his cue from Vittorio Storaro's work in Apocalypse Now, capturing the vast seascapes and sensually textured sunsets of the Filipino countryside. A longboat glides down a river through thickets of mist (another callback to Storaro) while a narrator sketches details of the American Army's true-life attempt to capture President Emilio Aguinaldo.

Unfaithful Wife (Peque Gallaga, 1986)

Cafe flesh

(WARNING: plot twists and story points discussed in explicit detail!)

Comes the time to discuss the late great Peque Gallaga. The past few days have seen tribute after tribute; folks have expressed love and affection, not just for his films but for the man himself. His Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death, 1982) is oft considered his best-known work, and one of the greatest if not the greatest Filipino film ever made.  

I'm not a big fan; yet why does he bother me so? Partly I think because even I can see he's prodigiously gifted--you can't look at the extravagant celebration that opens Oro and fail to acknowledge the talent--partly because I find him so undisciplined. Reportedly the film's original cut ran to five hours--it's said than Ishmael Bernal locked him out of the editing room to trim the length down to a merely intimidating two hundred and ten minutes. You wonder at the excess Gallaga must have proudly put on display before Bernal dragged the production back to earth; you also wonder about each and every one of his succeeding projects, on which would ultimately come out on top: the filmmaking or the recklessness?

Unfaithful Wife is arguably Gallaga's most earnest attempt at domestic drama, with generous doses of sex on the side to help sell the production. Crispin (Michael de Mesa) runs a beer garden with his wife Irene (Anna Marie Gutierrez); Fidel (Joel Torre) walks through the barroom doors and immediately Crispin's face lights up: he misses his longtime long absent friend.

Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death; Peque Gallaga, 1982)

War story

I remember seeing Peque Gallaga's Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death) on the big screen back in 1982--an impressive picture, back when our idea of a Filipino film was Lino Brocka's social-realist melodrama Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon), or Ishmael Bernal's multinarrative tapestry Manila By Night. Gallaga's epic was something else entirely: a period piece set in World War 2 full of endless tracking shots, slow motion, and (outside of the independent films of Kidlat Tahimik, or the occasional surreal experiment by Bernal) visual poetry for the sake of visual poetry, never mind that it was rarely justified by the narrative.