The Halt (2019)

 

Director: Lav Diaz

Screenplay: Lav Diaz

Cast: Joel Lamangan as President Nirvano Navarra; Piolo Pascual as Hook Torollo; Shaina Magdayao as Haminilda Rios; Pinky Amador as Jean Hadoro; Hazel Orencio as Martha Officio; Mara Lopez as Marissa Ventura; Noel Miralles as Father Romero

Canon Fodder

Lav Diaz from the Philippines is a director I have had an erratic relationship with. A great deal of this is, honestly, being prepared to watch a director who is very bleak in his work, which frankly is also something to emphasis with Diaz for as he has placed it upon himself to chronicle his country's history - an American colony, even after its independence it went under a military dictatorship and, referred to herein this dystopian sci-fi narrative, the future of his country - all whilst with just this film also writing the script, editing it, being a co-cinematographer, the composer and the production designer. The other issue is more subjective and an artistic issue which I do struggle at times with, that Diaz's trademarks include films beyond the conventional confines of running time. Directors, unless they devote themselves to epics or get the status of a Martin Scorsese, do not necessarily make films even up to three hours frequently anyway, but Diaz has been able, with the sacrifice a larger access until streaming, to make seven plus hour films throughout his career, to the point those under three are the surprise ones of note. The issue has been whether Diaz can sustain this length for me, but as a five hour plus theatrical film, The Halt has a worthwhile sense of expanse, over multiple characters, to work with.

Unfortunately coinciding in production just before the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, a combination of a devastating flu epidemic called the "Dark Killer" which decimates Asia, and a permanent darkness over the Philippines due to a volcanic eruption has left the country weakened in its setting of 2034. These are background to the real narrative, how in the midst of these circumstances a corrupt political leader named President Nirvano Navarra (Joel Lamangan), a mentally unstable and violent figurehead, has taken rule, bolstered by generals including one of his seconds Martha Officio (Hazel Orencio), a female second in command who leads the soldiers that execute and rid his enemies secretly. Contrasting them, in night scenes shot in regular urban areas in Diaz's trademark monochrome, are government drone bots patrolling the streets, cyborg sex workers and women like Haminilda (Shaina Magdayao), a former history teacher, working as one herself, and the underground resistance, including Hook Torollo (Piolo Pascual), a former musician who is called on to help cleave Navarra away even by trying to assassinate him.

This is still a Lav Diaz film, slow cinema drama with prolonged scenes of dialogue, picking here as much at the current day through a hypothesised world not dissimilar to the one this was made within, dealing with how one overcomes authoritarianism whilst having a very obvious but significant referrals to his nation's history and existence he has been documenting in his career, such as a female psychologist Haminilda goes to specialising in the idea that the Filipino people have forgotten their pasts in a form of amnesia, one with political ramifications. This is yet curious in how genre tropes have been broiled down to their perception within a Lav Diaz film, altered by his template. Sci-fi tropes are moulded to fragments, of mentions of sex robots but not seen, normal flying drones used for scenes alongside extras in military fatigues and staged explosions to represent the military's skirmishes on enemies. An attempted sniper assassination by Hook is a key event in his change in attitudes, questioning the true way to save people, and skirting a knife edge, Lav Diaz even has a lot more explicit sexual content here then other films as, seeing even the lives of the villains as complicated emotional people, Martha and her lover/female assistant Marissa Ventura (Mara Lopez), the later becoming conflicted by Navarra's actions and hiring Haminilda constantly, are explicitly gay.

As mentioned, The Halt even humanised the villains regardless of their moral evil. This, in contrast to a work like Season of the Devil (2018), a "musical" based on the era of Ferdinand Marcos which yet felt like prolonged anguished work which could have been more focused at a shorter length, marks The Halt with great weight especially its longer length, both in how it is willing to do this without hiding the fictional characters' evil, and contrasting the other side in Hook facing an existential crisis. Navarra is still a dangerous egotist, who claims to speak to God, but is here a more complex figure close to reality. The way Diaz and actor Joel Lamangan depicts him, even if Navarra could speak to God, the voices in his head overburden him so much in their negative views to him, maybe even as forms of all those he has had killed haunting him, that he has to put on noisy rock music to block them out. His stability is certainly to question, with a scene showing his mother in a mental health clinic and Navarra is emphasised as a child man, psychologically immature but tragically become a dangerous despot than an innocent. With his own private zoo of ostriches and crocodiles that are fed the meat of his victims, he represents the leader who, despite many eccentricities that would question their appropriateness, becomes the head of a violent institution, practical as the lynchpin for military figures who wish to gain power to support his violent impulses to lash out. Martha is arguably more evil, a sadist, and even she has a humanity in her own love for her assistant Marissa, who tragically to her own undoing develops humanity as well as a one-way emotionally connection to Haminilda after she and Martha hire her for a threesome. Criticisms can still be made, honestly, of these villainous characters, as morally irredeemable figures, being attempted to be fleshed out in a way that may prove crass in themselves - involving LGBTQ characters as evil or involved, how mental health is depicted - but at the same time the banality of these figures, the result of when people follow others on ideals regardless of whether morally good, is a really complex and bluntly honest concept for director-writer Lav Diaz which is not simplistic at all. These people are not defined by crass stock archetypes - their sexuality or their mental stability - and the scary thing is that any of these figures, as Diaz and the performers who play, could have been good human beings but, obsessed with nationality, the agenda to improve the country, the desire for power or infantile disregard for human life, all of them became tyrants.

For a director who wishes to have these long form documents of his country's scars, The Halt is a surprise in how it effectively a dystopian drama but he is being more upfront in even questioning how those who fight the morally evil should do so as well, where even Hook, a diehard radical, ultimately finds his own original ideas, or the notion of violent rebellion, as ultimately useless when helping the victims, especially children, grow up well and wiser than those before is a harder yet morally more powerful weapon he considers better to use, one that may actually break the cycle he is part of. This film was made in the late 2010s when a series of reactionary cult of personality figures were elected across the globe, including Philippine's own Rodrigo Duterte, a controversial figure whose decisions and opinions, including his approval of extrajudicial punishment (and execution) of drug dealers and criminals, does make him a figure whose influence on Lav Diaz, if there, becomes one of tiredness, a sense of an endlessness parade of figures who claimed for a greater path for their country under their ideas only for many deaths to happen, regardless of if justifiable or not. The Halt, for all the dystopian content and his history of documenting the worse in his country's history, has Diaz showing some hope, even if exasperated, for the ordinary person wanting a solution that breaks the cycles and constant deaths in real life even he has documented. The poignancy is found early on when a Christian priest Hook is friends with, a true hero in his empathy who will be crushed by Navarra's forces, wishes there were people playing angry metal songs to exorcises their frustrations. Diaz here even feels sick of the constantly dethroning of dictators, who can still be replaced, when growth of humanity to save people, to connect and learn from the past, is what he clearly wishes for. From Diaz, the philosophy from The Halt is as wise as you can get.

His filmmaking, as can be previously seen in other films before, are glacial still scenes between actors, almost always shooting in black and white in his career, which here adds emphasis to the nocturnal world, not hiding he shot in the streets (with real advertising around the locations) but playacting a scenario of the Philippines just a few years ahead being stuck in darkness. As a result, there is more verisimilitude and realism in a dystopia where cafes still exist for characters to dine within, but ever a chance of the military to stop your car and take you to your tragic end. Really only accessible by streaming due to the lengths of his films, I split viewings of Diaz films up, and yet never was there a director, whether he actually succeeds in each film or has had one that has not worked for me, where the novel structure really makes sense. When he succeeds as here, the lengths are for a good reason for numerous characters to be fleshed out. This is a shorter film for him, and even in five plus hours this feels as if there is nothing which feels like an expansion but still as concise as he could be with the narrative. Even how this resolves its narrative, where this concludes not through a revolution but Navarra trying to return a ball to children, adds a sense of greater weight in reality. This ends with a new beginning, but with an election talked of an radio, the end is open to suggest nothing changes and, even in mind to real life, killing for the sake of killing even if to punish enemies of the country will still happen, already too much as Lav Diaz has covered in his career. That there is a semblance of hope, and the final image is of a young boy dragging Navarra poster alongside a rural road, is not mainstream closure to the narrative, but instead looking on, as before, to those hopefully as for Hook in this narrative has wanted who will have a better life. The Halt is optimistic for the director-writer, but still is not going to ignore the bleakness of its ideas.