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Director: Lav Diaz
Screenplay: Lav Diaz
Cast: John Lloyd Cruz as Isagani;
Piolo Pascual as Simoun / Crisostomo Ibarra; Hazel Orencio as Gregoria 'Oryang'
De Jesus; Alessandra De Rossi as Ceasaria Belarmino; Susan Africa as Aling
Hule; Joel Saracho as Mang Karyo; Bernardo Bernardo as Lalake / Tikbalang;
Cherie Gil as Babae / Tikbalang; Angel Aquino as Androgynous / Tikbalang; Sid
Lucero as Basilio; Ely Buendia as Musikero
Lav Diaz is a figure who can exist because of where cinema is at in
the 2010s; he started in 1991 and directed his first film in 1998, and together
with a fellow Filipino director Khawn,
has taken advantage of digital camera technology and international film
festivals into the 2000s onwards between them. Diaz more so is the product of the 2010s as someone whose work
would've been hellishly difficult to try to see beforehand, as one of his
trademarks is an average film running time of over eight hours long and even
longer. Not only is a film festival a more likely place to programme such an
imposing work, never meant to be segmented as a mini-series but as a film, but
also the world of internet streaming (i.e. MUBI
for the most part) has offered a way for a film like A Lullaby to a Sorrowful Mystery can be seen even temporarily by
anyone.
The initial concern is that, on a
normal day, Lav Diaz makes a film up
to ten hours long, stretching his dramas so long that a small production for
him, Norte: The End of History (2013),
one of the only films easily available, is still over four and a half hours
long and would qualify as major epics in another director's hands. There is a
question to ask, in all honesty, whether A
Lullalby... really has to be eight hours long when a lot of its story could
be told in half or even less the time. In this case, the follows the 1896
Philippine Revolution, in which as a colony the Spanish occupier of the country
found themselves against a Filipino revolutionary society called the Katipunan,
eventually culminating (but not part of this film's narrative) with Spain
losing and ceding sovereignty of the Philippines to the United States. From
there, there are two main plot threads - one of the wife of a rebel Andres
Bonifacio, real life figure Gregoria De Jesus (Hazel Orencio), who is trying to locate him in the mountains, and Simoun
(Piolo Pascual), an instigator of
violence in this climate finding karma devour him as a slowly unfolding fatal
gunshot to the stomach leaves him being dragged across the jungle full of
regret. The eight hours is spent in an extensive form of "slow
cinema", a concept fully gestated in the 2000s where extreme glacial
pacing is used to forced to soak in the atmosphere of the scenes as these
characters go through their existential states.
In the midst of this you also
have among many: the search for legendary heroic figure; a pseudo Christian
rebellion group in the forests; and three half-human, half-horse figures known
in Flippino folklore as Tikbalangs, the only overt supernatural aspects to a
realist film which nonetheless steal the film as a mischievous and freakish
Greek chorus, figures who interact with everyone as strange eccentrics but
stand out as the most memorable characters. Truthfully, I have to ask myself
what I gained from this - film writer Nick
Pinkerton wrote of these films being those you must surrender to, that you
become part of them, but for me personally I factor for this to succeed for any
long term motion image work is how it should take advantage of said length for
an expansive, long form work. Satantango
(1993) was the film that helped me become the person who watches films like
this, or even create an amateur film blog, at seven and a half hours actually
cramping so much into itself and reflecting a novel, adapted almost exactly,
which was a dense work in small pages. This is just one example however and
length choices, if unrestricted come from various reasons. The scope, that the
content needs the length or just if you've involved audience participation you
need to make sure as many people are credited or have their answering machine
comments on the work2.
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Diaz does have a lot on his mind, and A Lullaby to a Sorrowful Mystery looks gorgeous, but do the long moments of stillness really represent emotion? Time is a huge influence, enough in itself to be abstract if used to force a viewer. However it is a potentially poisoned chalice as, if you even cross over three hours, the passage of time must be earn, something I have learnt developing a fascination with this type of cinema from examples I have watched and written about, "long form" films not that dissimilar to a mini-series barring the removal of an obstructing segmentation of pieces as continuous works whose scale change their form completely. With A Lullaby... we are dealing with real history, where real figures were killed, pointedly following the aftermath of the 1897 massacre of Silang, but I feel that, in honesty, Lav Diaz could've gone further with this material especially with the knowledge that Norte, half its length, is a legitimately great work which contains a great deal by itself. He also found a way on a clearly low budget to depict a century ago, with strategically chosen architecture and period costume, so a low budget experimental period film with this tone is fascinating to experience when on point.
Probably the segment which proves
an issue, as the film can be split into multiple two hour segments, is where Gregoria
De Jesus is searching for her husband in the forest and her group, including a
couple of work and a man revealed to be slowly dying of a lung disease, spend
the time in contemplation in a long glacial and deliberately meandering
segment. A lot of the film beyond this is very interesting, and Diaz when his characters talk gives them
the time to talk, a lot of incredibly potent dialogue and a willingness to even
make apparent villains, barring the Spanish, actually so much more complicated,
both in how one female character who sells out a village to be massacred in the
most horrible fashion during the Silang
skirmish was at a younger age treated horrifically by their own elders,
and Simoun was already having honest reflections on his contributions to the
colonisation of the country. The film is beautiful to look at as well, Diaz shooting in monochrome as is his
traditional choice and creating an incredibly beautiful film, the Filipino
forests both ominous and haunted.
The film is ultimately good, a challenge
but one which I have come to admire the longer I have thought about it, the
exorcism of his country's past found in how the weight of regret permeates the
characters. If I was able to see the film more, it could easily grow in
quality. The pace, when it succeeds, allows everything to grow and the
complexity is felt in real time. Again though, does eight hours constitute a
weight, when this complexity was possible from Lav Diaz in four hours? Probably in terms of a sombre, existential
haze, but a part of me still hesitates as I did, much more negatively a few
years back, with his 2011 Century of
Birthing, that the director is going to continue going to these long
lengths unless he changes his style, but with the sense that it could easily
become a dangerous indulgence we as viewers have let him fall into. If he makes
the weight felt fully, that lack of restriction will be an incredible virtue,
but one of the odd things about slow cinema is that it can even be less the
ninety minutes and felt in longer time than most films, so it is a dangerous
crux to think nearly a whole day's time is necessary unless you intend to fill
it with an entire real history.
It is a pertinent thing to end
on, in lieu to this, is how when Jacques
Rivette's Out 1 (1971), which is
over twelve hour, was finally available for people to see I suspect its
mystical lustre was actually damaged. When limited amounts of people could see
the film, it gained a reputation as a sacred work, but when anyone could,
people like me were as quick to suggest that it could drag (the theatrical
performance sequences) as it had so much to admire. As much of this is that,
sadly, we're not prepared in our environment to treat films and most media as
an expansive work that takes hours to ingest, not helped by the fact that, in
the case of Lav Diaz films, its
sometimes impossible to rewatch and absorb the work as it becoming much more a
concern for myself. As much of it, though, is the knowledge some of these films
are really taking a risk that, even if you admire the work, might mar its
lustre knowing the length could be edited down without losing its imposing but necessary
weight in length. The irony is that Rivette,
despite his reputation for long films, originally intended Out 1 for television but, when that wasn't on the cards, the whole
work was screened on a non-stop length at cinemas thus causing its legend to
take place. A film like A Lullaby to a Sorrowful Mystery wouldn't lose any
power if it was cut up into chapter headings, but the question arises whether
even then the film could feel spun out at times still even for someone (me) who
absolutely admires it. The ritual of viewing a film in a cinema mixed with an
incredible length does have a profound effect, but likewise, time itself must
be used to an advantage and it can be possible to be indulgent.
Abstract Spectrum: Minimalistic/Magic Realism
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None
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1) HERE
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