Lancelot du lac (Lancelot of the Lake, Robert Bresson,1974)

(The last of my previously unpublished Bresson articles)

Bresson goes to war

Robert Bresson's Lancelot du lac (Lancelot of the Lake, 1974) comes as something of a shock if you've been watching Bresson's films in chronological order. Not so much the fact that it's in color (it's his third color film), but because the opening sequence shows violence; not just violence, but graphic violence, the lopping off of heads, the spurting of blood in bright arterial red.

Taken (Pierre Morel, 2009)

Fakin'

Pierre Morel's Taken (2008) is an anachronism, a thriller George W. Bush might have enjoyed or--more to the point--something Dick Cheney might have chortled over, reminiscing of better times, if they had remained in power. One can imagine it screening in the White House's private theater, only not for its intended audience: the two little girls sent to bed, the wife close by his side, both set of presidential knuckles tightening over their armrests--not so much in awe of the derring-do depicted onscreen (the action sequences are incoherent and therefore dull) as in wonder at the idiots who can dream up this garbage.

The plot is silly enough--former spy Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) scoops up his collection of forged passports and wads of foreign currency again when his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace, who likes to run around in an irritatingly dorky manner) is kidnapped by white slavers intending to sell her into prostitution (or at least high-end mistressing)--but it's the unquestioned assumptions underpinning the plot that truly offend. I mean--is France really a seething cesspool of sex traffickers, wealthy hedonists (mostly Arab) and corrupt bureaucrats? Are ex-CIA operatives really so noble as to give up their career for the daughter they love? Is time so short and matters really so desperate that torture is the only alternative (and anyway, are the answers produced reliable?)? Are the filmmakers (Morel and his writer-producer Luc Besson) really so intent at earning the all-important American dollar they are willing to slander their own country? Are teenaged American girls really so stupid as to be abducted hours after landing in a foreign country (in which case is one really out of line in feeling she deserved what she got?)?

Mills' CIA-honed mind isn't all tactical brilliance; he stages a one-man raid on a construction site office for no apparent reason (other than to pad the running time past the 90 minute mark) and escapes only through sheer dumb luck. In probably the most controversial scene in the picture he shoots a government official's bystander housewife to obtain much-needed information--maybe it's me, but isn't it possible a man, even a Frenchman, would go ballistic when you shoot his spouse? Wouldn't offering a bottle of Chateau Latour of good vintage be more effective? Way to go for international diplomacy and the righteousness of the American Way, by the way--after all it isn't just Mills' daughter at stake, but her purity as well (Boo! Hiss! European and Middle Eastern degenerates!). The value of a Western Caucasian's hymen has always been high, at least in Hollywood movies.

Mills' torture of the gang boss is cleverly staged--electricity looks clean, just a buzzing noise, flashing lightbulbs, and an actor pretending convulsions; audiences wouldn't be half as comfortable if Mills had uprooted a few fingernails or pulled a tooth or punctured an eyeball. But shoot, he's no barbarian--it's either this or waterboarding, the technique first used by Americans on Filipinos in the Philippine-American War (when it was known as the 'water cure') about a hundred years ago, more recently one of five reportedly approved methods used by the previous administration on Iraqi prisoners during 'enhanced interrogation' sessions.

One watches with a kind of appalled fascination; if Morel were a talent in the same league as, say, Don Seigel (Dirty Harry, 1971), one might announce the American debut of a new fascist film master, able to serve up conservative drivel with an artist's flair; regretfully (I mean this, too) not the case. Morel's setpieces are of the Paul Greengrass school of action moviemaking, with camerawork done as if by an alcoholic and footage cut as if by a John Deere power mower. One can sense that Mills is supposed to be a formidable fighter and crack racing driver, but one can't be quite sure--the action is so chaotically presented it's hard to tell which fist is pummeling whose face where, and why.

All this ludicrousness would be easier to dismiss if it weren't for Neeson. Tall and stooped, with a distinct melancholic air about him (he's both hunchback and belltower in one forlorn figure), Neeson invests Mills with all the humanity the filmmakers apparently lack. He even pulls off the shamelessly sentimental early scenes, of Mills watching from the sidelines as his precious daughter receives a birthday pony from her rich stepfather and Mill's ex-wife (Morel sketches the man's situation with such economical and understated skill one is tempted to call out to him: "forget action, do drama--you've got a real flair"). One can accuse the movie of Neanderthal politics, blatant racism and gratuitous violence, but one can't accuse it of bad acting, at least not the lead actor (and only the actor; the dialogue ("I'll tear down the Eiffel Tower if I have to!") is an entirely different matter). Give me Neeson as the fearlessly questioning Kinsey in Bill Condon's 2004 film of the same name (can an actor be so clueless about the script he's reading?); give me also Neeson in Sam Raimi's Darkman (1990)--every bit as sadistic, but Neeson's character Dr. Peyton Westlake at least openly admits to the monstrousness in him, and Raimi's film has more of a sense of irony about it.

As for Besson--hard to think of any other names left to call him. From modestly talented director (Le Dernier combat (The Last Combat, 1983)) to international hitmaker (Nikita, 1990; Leon, 1994) to Hollywood camp stylist (The Fifth Element (1997), maybe my favorite of all his works) to pretentious hack (The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, 1999) to just plain hack writer (this movie) with distinct reactionary leanings, he's run almost the full course of his downward trajectory.

This could all be a gag, of course, some elaborate effort on the part of Morel and Besson to signify that they're just pulling the legs of the present United States administration instead of sucking up to the previous one (What, were they actually counting on John McCain to win?). I don't know, I don't know--in the movie's distinctly unironic ending (please don't read any further if you for goodness knows what reason still want to watch this atrocity) Morel and Besson has Mills nobly presenting his daughter to her mother and stepfather (yes, she still runs like a dork), safe and sound, not a hair mussed, hymen still intact.

First published at Businessworld, 3.13.09

Mike de Leon's 'Sister Stella L.' 25 Anniversary special screening

In celebration of Sister Stella L.’s 25th anniversary, the UP Film Institute is holding a special screening of the film on March 20, 5 p.m., at the Cine Adarna, UP Diliman.

Dubbed Sister Stella L. @ 25: Tuloy ang Pakikibaka, the activity is organized by the Film 280 class in cooperation with the Vilma Santos Solid International, Inc.

My article for the occasion:

Stella for star

It was 1984, and the mood was angry. Difficult to describe just how angry, but the film was released less than a year after the assassination of Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino, Jr., after the massive parade bearing his body from Santo Domingo Church down Quezon Avenue. The milling crowds watching Aquino's coffin pass were in a peculiar mood, a mood perhaps not unlike what the Roman centurions might have sensed from the surrounding crowd two millennia ago, while escorting their condemned Jew--veteran soldiers troubled, trembling, knowing how dangerous the moment was. Activists who knew all along, who struggled for years against the Marcos regime, felt vindicated, the same time they felt keenly the loss of one of their more outspoken members; people who wandered through the martial law years under varying degrees of slumber felt shaken, stirred--they never realized how it was, and they were angry. They wanted justice and it was not immediately forthcoming, perhaps never will be.

Caught up in the moment was Regal Films producer "Mother" Lily Monteverde. She had approached filmmaker Mike de Leon for a possible project, any project, as long as she could do the casting. De Leon suggested a Jose "Pete" Lacaba script he had been trying to develop since 1982--about a labor strike and a nun played by famed Filipina actress Vilma Santos. Lured by the prospect of de Leon--arguably the Philippines' most brilliant director--doing a film with Santos, Monteverde greenlighted the project (as to the possible controversy over the film's politics, one wonders if she perhaps didn't think things through, or simply didn't care).

Sister Stella L is arguably the first motion picture from a major Filipino studio to respond to the Aquino assassination. Not directly--the story focuses on Sister Stella Legaspi (Santos), her involvement in a cooking oil factory strike, and her gradual awakening into full political awareness; no mention of Marcos, or of martial law. But the very fact that the film spoke frankly of labor unrest, featured songs and chants with a decidedly socialist slant (it must be remembered that for the longest time Marcos presented himself as the best qualified leader to fight communism in the country), and towards the end suggested that police or military officers might be involved as strikebreakers--those were outright acts of courage. Everyone assumed Marcos' grip on the nation was tight as ever, his ability to silence critics--or worse, make them 'disappear'--as absolute; everyone assumed--and in those early days, they may have been right--that people's lives were in danger, thanks to this film.

But they were in an angry mood, and would not be silenced. You feel it radiating from Pete Lacaba's script--like fever heat--and you feel it in the chanting that on occasion is heard from the soundtrack. Make no mistake, this is a Pete Lacaba film more than it is even a Mike de Leon film; the narrative is linear, the script construction muscular, the dialogue lean and functional. The film resembles other Lacaba-penned films of the period (see Bayan Ko (My Country, 1985), and Orapronobis (Fight for Us, 1989)) more than it resembles other films de Leon has directed (I'd heard that de Leon himself admitted it was his least personal film). If (as I suspect) Lacaba's biggest flaw is an abiding fealty (once quaint, now with the passage of time somehow heroic) to neorealism and straightforward, Hemingwayesque storytelling, it's a flaw one wished would afflict more Filipino scriptwriters; if (as one Filipino filmmaker once told me) Lacaba's fault is that his characters talk far too intelligently, with too much self-awareness, it's a fault too few Filipino characters suffer from nowadays.

I'd mentioned Mike de Leon's direction. The man has one of the strongest if not the strongest and most distinctive visual style in all of Philippine cinema, and subsuming it to the scriptwriter is no small feat--if I find the film at all interesting, it's because of this unusual fact. De Leon's camera serves his story at all times, but the choice of material, the way the story unfolds, the overall tone you sense from one of his pictures--dark if not sardonic, at times both--is so unmistakable it's startling to see the warmer, more earnest emotional palette found in this film (Lacaba's scripts are rarely bathetic or unnecessarily sentimental, but there's a camaraderie found among his characters, particularly those committed to the cause--to his cause--that one finds irresistible). This combination of passionate (but rigorous) intelligence, and the intellectual chill surrounding it, holding it together, giving it form and structure, is a bracing mix--de Leon and Lacaba have not worked together since, so it's possible this may be the only example of such a brew in local films, at least for now.

Of the film's imagery, allow me to cite two--the scene where Sister Stella and Ka Dencio (the inimitable Tony Santos, Sr.) are captured and interrogated most clearly bear de Leon's imprint. Sadism and cruelty are a de Leon specialty, and what makes it so startling isn't so much the physical pain inflicted as the casual, almost cheerful bonhomie of the torturers--it's as if they're playing some adolescent game, and from accounts I've read the attitude of some of the actual people involved isn't too far off. Sister Stella at one point is seated surrounding her interrogators, and her helplessness is palpable--what is it with de Leon and the straight-backed chair that the mere sight of one in his films can inspire so much terror (see also de Leon's Batch '81 (1982) for at least two other memorable occasions)?

The second is the film's finale (please skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film), which was altered--de Leon had originally added footage of a rally that marched on Epifanio de los Santos (EDSA) Avenue (this was before the People Power revolt that eventually toppled Marcos), footage that would have put Sister Stella's struggles in a nationwide context. The film instead ends with Sister Stella framed against a serene blue sky, speaking. It's a plain speech--easily Lacaba's most characteristic moment--using simple but heartfelt words. Santos to her credit (it's the performance of her career) gives the lines very little histrionics: just the facts, ma'am, no palabok. The film's contemplative end, oddly enough, ties it with a more contemporary socialist filmmaker--Lav Diaz, whose Hesus Rebolusyunaryo (Jesus the Revolutionary, 2002) concludes on a similar note. I'd asked Diaz why such a strange finish, and he said "it's necessary--after a period of action, Hesus has to step back and meditate on his actions. He has to pause and consider the meaning of it all." Sister Stella L. is a clean dive into political consciousness and a clear call to action, at the same time there's a thoughtfulness underneath the picture that lingers in the mind and haunts one's memory.

Au hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

(Some old articles I never got around to publishing; a couple of more Bressons in the following weeks)

Gift of a Magi

What's so remarkable about Au hasard, Balthazar is that Bresson uses the simplest things--a donkey; a girl; a camera that tends to look at things askance; some piano music--and with them creates (as Godard puts it) the whole world, or about as beautiful and complex an evocation of that world as anything I've ever seen.

Bresson eschews most special effects, most camera moves, uses only one lens for the entire film (50 mm), doesn't resort to surrealism or trick cutting or even makeup, yet what he creates is as immediate as anything by de Sica or Rosellini, and as strange as anything by Bunuel or Godard. His lead actress hardly twitches a muscle throughout the film, yet you feel you know her inside out; his lead actor--a donkey--has at most a pair of darkly liquid eyes and a head of unkempt fur yet you're moved by his predicament, and ultimate fate.

Bresson throws in the story of a man accused of murder who comes to believe he is guilty (even if he isn't), and it's of a piece, as integrated into the film as if the film had wrapped roots around the man's story and just kept on growing into maturity. From an encounter between an old miller and the film's heroine (insomuch as the film actually has a heroine) Bresson manages to sketch an outline of the girl's father without the man being present, just the miller contrasting the father's philosophy against his own (honor vs. material wealth; pride vs. avarice); with every word he speaks the miller condemns her father's philosophy, then, for good measure, his own. In the end the girl succumbs to the miller, corrupt and decrepit as he is, partly because she must (he's taking her in for the night), partly because it appeals to her sense of perversity, her need for degradation. All this psychologically plausible, the simplest realism, yet somehow poetic, stylized, cinematic.

Bresson believes he's trying for a film where everything "is in its place," and cites the story of Bach reacting to a student admirer, saying what he does is not all that special: he just hits a note at the right time, and the organ does the rest. Bresson claims to be doing the same infuriatingly simple, mysterious act: he points the camera, then glues the resulting footage together. The projector, or so he would like you to think, does the rest.

The classic reading of the film is that the donkey stands for Christ, and all who abuse it are the sinners of the world. Recent critics think otherwise: the village folks' cruelty and vice, the village priest's ineffectuality contradict a strictly Christian interpretation and suggest, among other things, that the donkey is more the victim of an unfeeling materialist world. Bresson immerses us in the textures and sounds--the materials, in effect--of that world, presenting to us through Ghislain Clouquet's crystalline photography the rough weave of the characters' clothes, the crudely hewn rocks that make up their houses; his soundtrack emphasizes specific sounds--clacking cart wheels, clanking chains, Balthazar's defiant, pathetic bray.

If I may throw in my own two centavos (into a pot probably brimming over with currency): Balthazar's behavior in the film is like a base line for all living creatures; the animal acts the way man would act, bereft of human intelligence and given only a basic level of consciousness--move when able, resist when tired, ignore pain when struck, flee when the pain is unbearable. Simple yet, I would say, sane.

The donkey reacts as any animal would react; everyone else reacts differently, self-destructively you might say, because they're cursed with self-conscious intelligence and are capable of doing things against their immediate interest. They are for much of their lives insane, and the film continually compares the donkey's behavior with theirs to sometimes comical, sometimes tragic, effect. The girl sleeps around, her father refuses to compromise, the boy who loves her allows himself to be humiliated, the boy she loves is allowed to humiliate her, the accused man drinks heavily, the miller counts his virtues as covetously as he does his money; through it all Balthazar ambles along, a braying, four-legged condemnation of humanity's perverse craziness. If the donkey dies, that's because the world itself, or the part of it infested by human civilization, has gone mad, and no sane, sensible creature can long survive in it.

August 26, 2007

And the winner is--

Right after The Golden Doorstops are the one series of awards I really care about, The Razzies. And nominated for a full complement of awards including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple (winning the last two awards) is The Hottie and the Nottie, which I had happened to write about, but failed to publish.

So without further ado, etc., etc.--here:

I loathe Paris in the summer

It's not as if the basic premise of The Hottie and the Nottie (2008) was actually amusing (grade-school boy has undying crush on grade-school girl, seeks her out ). The Farrelly brothers did this sort of thing much better with their monstrous boxoffice success There's Something About Mary (1998), only the Farrellys had the inspiration to cast Cameron Diaz (a genuine beauty with a comically unstoppable sense of good cheer) and surround her with a rogue's gallery of comic performers (Ben Stiller, Lee Evans, Christ Tucker, and a wonderfully underhanded Matt Dillon).

(That said, I don't even think Mary is the Farrelly's best work--that would be Kingpin, made two years before their breakout (and to my mind more mainstream, hence more diluted) hit: Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid and Bill Murray (ad-libbing all his lines which, incidentally, are the funniest in the picture) in a hundred and thirteen minutes of sheer mean-spiritedness (Vanessa Angel does capable supporting work as the movie's surprisingly level-headed two-legged erotic joke).

Speaking of erotic jokes, the main (perhaps only) reason to see this particular picture would be Ms. Paris Hilton herself, and while her charms--both of them--are on abundant display, I for one am unmoved: who wants to worship a pair of silicon implants, a nose job, and a bottle of bleach anyway? Mind you, I don't consider plastic surgery repulsive, straight out--I like, say, Filipino movie star Rosanna Roces, who's been candid about the work done on her by local celebrity surgeon Vicky Bello (and who is especially fine in comic roles, or in one of her handful of good films (La Vida Rosa (Life of Rosa, 2001)))--it's just that Paris is such a featureless, characterless blank on the big screen you don't have much else to look at, save for the aforementioned 'charm,' both of them.

So the opening joke is that Cristabelle Abbott (Hilton) jogs down a park path, and all the males around start losing their composure, balance, concentration, what have you; the joke actually has a double layer of meaning (a layer more than the moviemakers intended): Paris is such a self-absorbed, uncharismatic, unappealing presence (like a black hole, she just sucks all the good will from the surrounding air) you don't believe the men's discomfort for a second (think of, say, the pop star Madonna--her star power's undeniable, so long she has the thick makeup, carefully angled spotlights, outsized concert stage and sound equipment--in short, all that wealth and power and technology--around to make her look good).

Enter Nate Cooper (Joel David Moore), who has geeky features and a geek's way with women (as in: not much). His hot girlfriend had just left him (Kathryn Fiore, most notably from the Charmed TV series--which makes you want to ask: if he can land someone who looks like that, why settle for Ms. Hilton?), and he has just realized that the only woman in the world for him was the girl he fell in love with back in first grade (a girl who, as it turns out, is more than willing to return his affections). The picture shares something with Judd Apatow's Knocked Up (2007): boy-men who refuse to let go of their childishness, land in comic fantasy situations (a pregnant hot chick; a nymphomaniac childhood friend), and somehow muddle through just fine. This is comedy without teeth much less a spine, or any semblance of believability.

Rom-coms (what the romantic-comedy genre is called nowadays (the term makes it sound like a disk drive)) must have some kind of obstacle in the way of true love, and here it's June Phigg (Christine Lakin), a cute brunette made up (a huge chin mole, bad teeth, various skin rashes, granny clothes) to look hideous. Cristabelle has made herself the promise that she won't go out on a date until her best friend June has found the man of her dreams (what would you have to be smoking to make a promise like that, anyway?). So what are the chances that June will ditch her prosthetics, and clueless Nate will promptly forget Cristabelle and realize the identity of his true true love?

Surviving this movie is a matter of finding a grace note or two to focus on (otherwise you'll be ramming popcorn up your nose, in an attempt--futile one, I might add--to choke to death). Johann Urb plays Johann Wulrich, an unscrupulous dentist-slash-model who seems to be Nate's romantic rival--Urb, unlike Hilton, seems to know how to make fun of his ridiculous prettiness. When he declares that he's a dentist, male model, airplane pilot, then plucks a guitar from Nate's hands and turn the discussion into an impromptu group singing session, you can't help but like him for laying all that out with a straight face. Later, in the movie's only truly funny joke, Nate (running after his true love) confronts a shirtless Wulrich at his front door; the two are speechless, the moment electric--you almost expect them to fall into each other's arms and forget Ms. Hilton. I wish I could.

Best pig ever

Best pig ever

Well, it's official; Anthony Bourdain in his show and blog has said it: Filipino lechon is "the best pig ever.'

It's not as if we Filipinos need the affirmation--well, maybe we do. Travel shows don't usually showcase the Philippines (Bourdain and co-conspirator Andrew Zimmern excepted); Filipino chefs don't usually win Top Chef or become The Next Food Network Star, and I wonder if Samantha Brown will ever grace a Filipino beach with her bare suntanned foot. The Philippines is probably Southeast Asia's best-kept culinary secret, with travel bloggers and travel books pooh-poohing our food for being blander and less spicy than our Thai neighbors (Bourdain to his credit upon hearing this opinion in the show immediately dismissed it: "no, it isn't that," he says brusquely).

So if some gangly white man with a popular travel show and rep of straight-shooting no-nonsense street smarts flies in and declares our roast meat the best he's ever tasted, yes I can see where our reaction can be a little, uh, enthusiastic (see Bourdain's Hierarchy of Pork, and the almost four hundred (as of this writing) comments that follow, or see Marketman's (pseudonym of one of the show's purveyors) posting of the No Reservations Lechon Lunch (which includes an ingredients list of the various pigs roasted, both the classic Cebu lechon and the Marketman variation) with its hundred-plus reactions (including a dissenting one warning that Bourdain will never come back to the Philippines, ever).

I did offer my opinion that any disappointment Bourdain may have felt about his Philippine visit, or dampening of spirit felt due to Augusto's (his erstwhile host) lack of energy and initiative, is, while not exactly feigned, probably pointed up in the editing room during postproduction. I've watched enough episodes of the show to notice that Bourdain likes to have a through-story, a kind of premise on which to hang the show on, and the apparent premise he'd hit upon on this installment goes something like: "Bourdain takes naive Augusto, who apparently doesn't have a clue about his parents' culture and feels left out, and reintroduces him to said culture, through the medium of roast pork (hell, the previews practically spelled it out for us). Nicely different take for the show (Bourdain saves Filipino from himself!), nice way of turning apparent handicap into virtue (no bar scenes, which may mean the Filipinos failed to take the hint from past episodes and introduce Bourdain to the joys of lambanog, basi, or tapuy--meaning in a sense the Filipino hosts did screw up big time (or was Bourdain watching his alcohol? He quit smoking recently)), nice way to showcase Bourdain's softer, more paternal side (white man good guy). 

All snarking (who said Bourdain had a monopoly?) aside, the man does know his pork. As he's said in practically every episode, he loves pig, and he's declared this or that variation of the meat good, better, great, or forgettable. And he seems impressed enough to say Filipino lechon is the best not once but twice, and follow it up with a clear ranking in his blog. Cynical as I may be, I'm not one to look down on another cynic's repeated praise; thank you sir, for the compliment.

(Can't help but go into a lengthy aside about my own experience with lechon Cebu--a friend Iris who worked for a Cebu resort invited the family over, and generously had us installed in one of the huts facing the sea. We just had to walk right out our door, and the ocean was about fifty paces away.

Beautiful place, with a shark pool in the front lobby (I remember standing at one end, marveling at some of the larger fish, only to turn and discover that one of my young 'uns had been standing at the other end, dipping his hand in the water). The seaside restaurant--literally, a grill place where you sat at the end of a jetty, over the water, as you ate--served a hot, briny and gingery Manila clam soup, and live lobster sashimi. Basically the chef plucked a large lobster out of his fishtank, bisected the tail with his sharp chef's knife, chopped the meat into large chunks and served it, still quivering, on a plate. It was unbelievably sweet.

The next day we went boating, and on one mid-ocean stop one of our guides dived for sea urchins. He surfaced with a bagful, which he banged against the boat's hull--to remove most of the spines--used a pair of scissors to snip the uni open, plopped the pale orange flesh onto our hands, and had us pop it in our mouths. The lobster was sweet, but this was rich, like briny butter, with a distinctly creamy texture. I felt this thrill emanate from the center of my forehead all the way down to my belly, it was so good.

We finally ate at Iris' home, and she topped the whole visit with an entire lechon Cebu, ordered and delivered to her home. Crisp crackling, with just the slightest hint of fat (like the world's richest sandwich spread, on a slice of porky toast), and the flesh around the ribs had the flavor of sea salt and lemongrass. We talked about that meal--about Cebu--for years afterward; still do nowadays. Actually, we talked about the lobster, uni and pig just a few nights ago, just after the Bourdain episode.)

A few complaints I had about the show (to be fair, Bourdain himself professed nervousness about trying to do justice to the cuisine of seven thousand islands). He didn't nibble on a balut, at least not in the show. He wasn't impressed by the pancit palabok (to be fair, maybe it wasn't a good sample).

He liked the pakbet, but if I were helping with the show (ha!), I'd have asked our manang, who comes from the Ilocos region to help prepare it. That was a Tagalog pakbet in the show, hardly the real thing at all, or hardly the most flavorsome version. An Ilocano pakbet would be cooked in a palayok (an earthenware pot), would feature the small Ilocano eggplant (about the size of a large egg), the small ampalaya (bitter gourd), sitaw (string beans), patani (a pale white Lima bean), small tomatoes, okra, ginger. The vegetables are not cut up, but tossed whole in the palayok to stew with fish bagoong (fermented fish paste) and--glorious of all glories--that decadent deep-fried pork product called bagnet, which is to chicharon (fried pork skin) what Bruce Banner is to The Incredible Hulk (bagnet is basically pork belly fried till it's crispy hard; for a detailed description of the meat and how to cook it, check this out). The result is an eye-rolling, sigh-inducing stew of pork-and-fish flavored vegetables, in a thick and incredibly flavorsome broth.

Then there's the bulalo, boiled beef soup and shank bones. Bourdain to his credit knows enough to suck out the bone marrow, but as I explained in this blog post, sipping the marrow without using patis (fermented fish sauce) is like enjoying the beef, the very essence of beef (as Zimmern likes to say, "fat is flavor") without adding the poetry, the briny sweetness that helps the beefiness take flight.

Finally, and this is possibly the saddest omission of all, Bourdain failed to partake of agus-us. I first heard of this possibly mythological delicacy years ago, from Ed Alegre's column in Businessworld. The article described various Filipino bar chow, including kaldereta (probably named after its cooking vessel, a Filipinized caldero, or large cooking pot), the best version of which features goat meat, the kaldaretang ulo ng kambing (stewed goat's head) being the best of the best with its tender, flavorful tongue, its pair of fatty eyeballs, its soft, cheesy brain tucked away like an oversized gold nugget within the skull. Plenty of crushed garlic as thickener ("which is why it's so expensive," I remember Ed writing), and whole sweet pickle, not relish ("so you can take it out and pop it in your mouth," Ed writes) as--well, I'm just not sure what it was for (flavoring or souring agent?), only that it tasted good.

Haven't found that article, may never will, but I did find an earlier version where he mentions all kinds of bizarre bar chow, and it makes for a fascinating read. Like his description of dinubok: "Take a big fish, preferably one that's fat....wrap as it is in plastic and let to hang for 4 days to a week. Unwrap. Remove its innards. Wash clean. Slice. Wrap in kolis leaf. Inun-un (paksiw (a kind of stewing)) in salt, garlic, ginger, palm vinegar, vetsin. Ampalaya is optional. Or cook linarang-style."

Agus-us is mentioned near the end of the piece. It's a conversation with Loyong, the brother of Raymond Fernandez, a professor in the College of Fine Arts University of the Philippines Cebu. Raymond come from Dumanjug, a coastal town in Cebu.

"'It's tuba (palm wine) country,' he says. 'All our sumsuman (bar chow) goes well with tuba.

"'Dalupapa is cuttlefish which has to be marinated in toyo (soy sauce) for one hour; otherwise it would be very tough. We cook it slowly, five minutes on each side. Fried or broiled. If it is overcooked it is too tough to bite. And we use only the body.

"'Then there's lumayagan, which is a small squid, or cuttlefish perhaps. Two inches to a foot long. This we fry with very little palm vinegar and salt. It cooks in its own black sauce. We do not take out the entrails. That is what makes it delicious, the taste of entrails. It is especially delicious if it has bihud (squid roe).

"'The rarest is agus-us. We mix boiled kamote (sweet potato tops) and raw pork. We let it hang for a few months. When worms start to appear that's the time to eat it. Very good as sumsuman. I remember the Camayos of Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur, who wrap the newly caught wild boar in anahaw leaves and keep it hanging until worms come out--that's the sign that its ready for eating.'

"'Masarap (delicious)?'

"'Nothing like it,' Loyong asserts with finality."

This was to be a celebration of Filipino cuisine in all its varied glory, which made it all the more startling when, googling around, I discovered that Edilberto Alegre, columnist and writer and champion of Philippine culture and its cuisine, died a little over a month ago. I read his column many times back when I was working at a bank, and copies of Businessworld were available outside of any vice president's office, or on the secretary's desk; even met him years back--once, maybe a few times. I don't dare profess to know him to any great extent, which makes it a bit of a mystery, why belated news of his passing should hit me so hard.

I do agree with his primary argument: Filipino culture is not damaged goods. It takes its influences, from Spain, from the United States, from China, and makes them its own. It's a thesis Alegre has been supporting for as long as I remember reading him, and it's one under which I operate (a common-sense attitude, really--"I'm basically okay, and what I do with what I'm exposed to (American TV, movies, books) is Filipino adaptability working at its inventive best").

I remember our last conversation. I'd asked him about agus-us. "How on Earth could you justify eating something full of maggots like that?"

"I asked Loyong about it. His reply was 'But it's exactly then that it's safe to eat.' When they disappear, then you know it's gone past rotten to being too poisonous, even for maggots."

"So what does it taste like?"

"Like soft, ripened cheese. Like nothing on earth."

Till we meet again, Ed. 

2.19.09 

Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008)

So long, farewell

You can't help but feel that Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino is a leave-taking of some sort; not of the filmmaker--at 78, he's an apparently hale and hearty and very active filmmaker--but of a persona he's cultivated since it debuted thirty-seven years ago, in Don Seigel's superb (some might say appallingly so) noir thriller.

Yep--I'd call this "Dirty Old Man Harry," only Eastwood's grizzled iconoclast fails to molest anyone (in the 1971 film he sounds bitter about the misconception: "Now you know why they call me 'Dirty Harry.' Every dirty job that comes along."). Save for the military service and working-class background (he's a Ford assembly plant worker who served in Korea), Eastwood's latest screen incarnation might be Harry so many years later, long retired, living alone in his little neatly kept house and slinging racial slurs under his breath at the ethnically mixed neighbors passing by his sidewalk.

It's not one of Eastwood's major or even serious works, nor I suppose was it meant to be; it's basically a deconstructed 'Dirty Harry' flick where instead of bullets Harry fires zingers and instead of psychotic hippies or fascist police officers Harry guns after a Hmong gang that's leaning on the son of Harry's Hmong neighbors--seems they want the young man to join them, and are willing to beat him up for the privilege. Harry here wears a far more human face; at one point he's invited to a Hmong get-together, and one laughs as he grapples with a foreign language, unfathomable mores (he learns later that it's bad luck to rub a child's head), all kinds of strange dishes (the sickly smile he gives while Hmong women pile his plate full of indescribable food is, well, indescribable).

It's a two-worlds-collide comedy not a serious drama, but that doesn't mean Eastwood lacks any serious motive for resurrecting the man. At one point in the earlier film a man says of the anti-social detective: "he doesn't play any favorites; Harry hates everybody. Limeys, micks, hebes, fat dagos, niggers, honkies, chinks, you name it." The line of dialogue is said with a wink, but Eastwood's probably gotten grief over it anyway, or felt he didn't go far enough--he has to present the same ostensibly racist crustiness just one more time, to probe for dough underneath. Harry here is proficient in all the ethnic insults, and rolls them with relish in his tongue. He probably believes that he's harming no one, that no one buys his billy-goat gruff act anyway, but he hasn't thought matters through--people who know him well (his barber of many years for one) give as good as they get, but the newly met (and those raised in a culture based on courtesy and tact) are bruised by his rough manners. It doesn't help that he customarily keeps people at arm's length; refuses to get involved in their affairs; readily assumes the worse about them (though at one point he's pretty much right--the neighbors' son is, after all, tried to steal his beloved Gran Torino).

Easily the finest moments in the film are those where Harry--stumblingly, grudgingly--extends a wizened hand. If he commits a faux pas for rubbing the child's head, at least he took the moment to make the gesture; if he turns down family offerings of food and flowers it's more a desire to be left alone rather than actual distaste for the offerings (loved it when he spots a platter of egg rolls--without missing a beat, he instructs the Hmong couple to lay the plate down inside his house). Harry develops a spiky relationship with his neighbors ("There's a ton of food." "Yeah, well just keep your hands off my dog." "No worries, we only eat cats."). It's not so much that Harry's spikes wear down rubbing shoulders with the Hmong--like the bit of grit in an oyster, Harry helps the Hmong (particularly their son) eventually grow their very own thick hide, studded by their own set of spikes, to better deal with him.

The film may sound like Dirty Harry and the Hmongs in outline, but really the focus is on Harry--like any mature filmmaker, Eastwood's started looking back on his career, rethinking and recasting figures from the past. Akira Kurosawa gave us an Toshiro Mifune playing an ambitious Macbeth in Kumonosu jo (Throne of Blood, 1957), resurrected a similar figure decades later in Tatsuya Nakadai's King Lear figure in Ran (1985), then introduced a mellower, smaller-scaled version of his aging hero in Madadayo (1993); John Ford cast John Wayne as a dashing if somewhat naïve bandit in Stagecoach (1939), then much later turned him into a frighteningly bitter vigilante in The Searchers (1956). Harry thanks to Seigel's urban mythmaking became icon as well as iconoclast; Eastwood shows the loneliness, the need inside of him to reach out to people, to establish a meaningful relationship of some kind, to matter to someone once again.

Eastwood's storytelling here, unlike say in his previous effort Changeling, is refreshingly bright and straightforward--Eastwood's always been a practitioner of meat-and-potatoes storytelling (allowing for the occasional lengthy handheld shot), and I for one prefer it when he relaxes into this default style of his, rather than straining for one somewhat different from his own (and it isn't as if that style never made for compelling cinema--look at Eastwood's A Perfect World (1993), easily my favorite of his works, or the final ten minutes of this film, both occasions where the camera achieves a languorous, almost surreal lucidity).

As for the ending--well, there are melodramatic finishes, and there are melodramatic finishes, and then there are melodramatic finishes, and Eastwood's final confrontation with the villainous Hmong gang is nothing if not melodramatic. All I can say is that Eastwood pulls off a neat little bit of outdoor theater (not to mention a serious mindfuck) on the gang, one that's carefully prepared for and thoroughly foreshadowed--no deus ex machina here, only a soberly arrived-at, carefully thought-out decision on a life-changing event. One can take or leave the sound of Eastwood's voice croaking mournfully away on the end credits (not that I'm an expert, but I don't think he's bad)--you find yourself either bent over laughing, clapping your hands to your ears, or (The horror! The horror!) wiping away a tear or two for poor Harry.

I know, I know, the man's name in this film is actually Walt--but whom are we fooling? Eastwood feels strongly enough about a bit of unfinished business that he devotes a whole film on finishing said business (it's a possible commentary on the regard--or relative lack of-- Eastwood has for Harry that the film for the most part is a lighthearted race-relations comedy, with guilt, loneliness and anguish a buried (carefully or not may be a matter of opinion) subtext). This is Harry's swansong, his last chance at playing civilization's champion and white man's scapegoat, all rolled up in one grizzled and crinkly package, and he takes advantage of it to the fullest; I for one don't begrudge him this final burst of energy at all, at all.

First published in Businessworld, 2.20.09