Season of the Devil (2018)

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Director: Lav Diaz

Screenplay: Lav Diaz

Cast: Piolo Pascual as Hugo Haniway; Shaina Magdayao as Lorena Haniway; Angel Aquino as Anghelita; Pinky Amador as Kwago; Bituin Escalante as Kwentista; Hazel Orencio as Teniente; Bart Guingona as Paham; Joel Saracho as Ahas

Another Lav Diaz film, and honestly, it was going to be a tough viewing experience even for fans of his work. Opening another wound in his country's history, Diaz recreates a situation that took place in the 1970s where, here, a group of soldiers meant to represent the Civilian Home Defense Forces, a non-standard paramilitary force supervised and deployed by the heads of the local government in the Philippines, in the middle of an era of martial law in the country who decide to terrorise and control a remote village by bringing back their fear in superstitions, witches and demons, whilst crushing their opposition. It is four hours long, incredibly short for the director's standards as he is known for films much longer than this, filmed in his usually preferred monochrome with still long takes. This time however it's a "musical". Not a "rock opera", as it's been inexplicably called in reviews, but specifically an a cappella musical in that (with Diaz writing the lyrics) the cast mostly sings without backing music.

On paper, it's inherently abstract and interesting as a structure, and to even tackle a bleak real life historical incident will be both miserable but a noble act. The result however, for me, raises furthers questions to do with Lav Diaz as a filmmaker, which has lead to him becoming even more frustrating as he's held in growing high regard for world cinema. Immediately of question, you never really get a wide picture of this story to provide context, entirely over four hours only really connected to the soldiers and a few characters - a poet and activist who travels to the central village where his wife, a doctor who takes the risk to tend to the sick in the small village in spite of the soldiers marauding within it, an actual witch not impressed by the soldiers' strategy, and an older man in the village. As a result, the village exists as a vague entity, possible due to Diaz working on a restrictive budget filmed outside the Philippines, filming in Malaysia, but probably deliberately. You rarely see this world beyond, say, an early scene showing the poet's urban life of poetry reading and costumes, and as a result a lot of missed out in terms of world building.

These figures mentioned in the last paragraph, then, are our centres, their songs elaborations of emotion but also analogies of the conflict at hand between the oppressive forces and the ordinary populous. There's an issue too here in that, whilst the horrors are felt for what is in store for these characters, they're not particularly distinct either. They have emotion, they feel pain, but as the dialogue is instead a lot of poetic and concept based, not a lot of four hours is truly felt for them to flesh them out. They are props in a political film which discards a psychological depth over four hours, and thus the misery of watching the film, which doesn't end wonderfully with almost everyone you'd want to care being dead, leads to a nihilistic note that feels pointless. It's vague, which raises questions when Norte, The End of History (2013), which I keep returning to, had this same length and imbued greater depth. Is it, dare I say it, a case where Norte was a deliberate attempt at being more commercially accessible, or an attempt with multiple screenwriters including Diaz, a deliberately narrative and plot heavier production. In comparison, is Season of the Devil unfortunately where the director has full freedom but cannot focus himself as much as he should?

The singing itself proves an issue too. When it succeeds, it truly succeeds, the most potent lyric just the sound "La la la" which is the mantra of the soldiers, an ominous mantra which is used to incredible effect. Other times the singers chosen, even if raw due to the production, stand out. But many of the lyrics, which replace the vast dialogue in his other work, are repetitious or don't register at all. The irony is that trying to not be a conventional musical in structure is a greater detriment than if this was to compromise as it doesn't feel fully connected to each other, the exception being mainly whenever the soldiers sing. It's strange, that the soldiers are the most interesting characters but at the same time they as they are the most interesting part of the cast, as they have the most grounded and distinct lyrics, openly understandable and evocative of their blind worship of dictatorship. They also have the one aspect where Diaz is really actually trying anything remotely unconventional in this entire film and creates a powerful image - that of the soldiers' leader, a man who babbles in an incomprehensible language, not translated in the subtitles I had probably on purpose, who has an entirely other face on the back of his neck, a grotesque piece of flesh wearing glasses that adds to the horror of this figure's evil power.

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The issue that our villains, the real life tyrants, have more interest in their horrifying behaviour than those we are supposed to care for is a huge failure for Season of the Devil even as a bleak metaphor of this historical event. The only other song of note is “Talampunay Blues”, which is over the drugging, rape and eventually murder of a female character by them, mostly depicted off-screen with the song a hypnotic trance as they drug her. Its horrifying but actually with reason, where you have utterly care for her and feel your gut as a viewer entangle in revulsion. Everything else however falls into a problematic issue with a lot of art cinema, from the 2010s especially for me, that it's deemed enough to show the worst of humanity to win awards or be "great" without a greater psychological context or insight. Even in context of non-linear, experimental cinema, a vein of trajectory should have a credible logic to it. It is very bad sign when I felt that the village could've easily ganged up on the soldiers and disposed of them, only to procrastinate against a tiny motley bunch of thugs, a far more problematic thought for me to have had as this is based on real history with actual death of innocents involved.

Undeniably, the film looks incredible, but that in itself feels dangerously a crux to fall back behind as a defensive shield. There is a potential backlash with this type of "slow cinema", which has already been talked of, whether it is truly inspired. I am a huge defender of the likes of Tsai Ming-liang or Bela Tarr, who used this style to absorb a world especially as fall all the long takes of nothingness there was still activity being held onscreen. There's a question to ask if shooting long takes in forest, as I have seen from Lav Diaz a couple of times now, is actually profound or just indulgent, a completely subjective answer to make as artistic opinion is not technological fact, but with a sense that one (I) have to ask whether four hours plus of misery actually teaches me about the worst of Philippine's dire, complex history. To be subjective, compare it to a fellow artist like Nick Joaquin, an author who paints numerous histories of his home land of the Philippines in a more expressive form, and it has to be asked whether this extreme minimalism can work as well or have we swallowed a placebo by accident?

Slow cinema definitely succeeds, but you take a huge risk even going up to three hours. Four hours is in cinema still viewed as an epic, eight hours plus a mini-series or an art installation. We build over four hours here with one character left in the bleakest way possible, alone and crying with a loaded gun left to them, but has the film before that strong final image actually used its form well enough to built towards it? It is not a practical concept to spend time watching an audio-visual construct called cinema over three hours let alone more physically but also in the sense that the focus needed for such a construct is difficult to maintain even for the most engaged of cineastes. Unless you intend to make a cinematic equivalent of a trance, length demands justification, and to be honest I'll give Lav Diaz much more grievance over his films just for this fact when over "difficult" cinema is significantly shorter than this.

Is Season of the Devil abstract? No, because far from the length and style creating an unconventional and emotionally relevant mood for this important material as a result, it instead creates instead a very matter-of-fact tone which is paced with extremely long per scenes. Beyond whether you could've told the film in half its length, does the length imbue resonance either? Sadly, even when my viewing experience was unfortunately cut up into awkward sections, as Season of the Devil's length even for one of Diaz's shortest films is a lot to take in, I have to say no. It feels, worse as I have seen this filmmaker make a legitimately incredible film, like an artistic dead end. Not the work, but the sense that a backlash could transpire one day the more his work is made available beyond film festivals and film critics. Even for fans of tough cinema, it has to be asked whether this as is radical as say Satantango (1994) in terms of structure and meaning behind it as, for me, it really feels miscalculated.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Minimalist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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