Genus Pan (2020)

 

Director: Lav Diaz

Screenplay: Lav Diaz

Cast: Nanding Josef as Baldo; Bart Guingona as Paulo; Don Melvin Boongaling as Andres; Hazel Orencio as Mariposa; Noel Sto. Domingo as Sarge; Joel Saracho as Inggo

Canon Fodder

 

Three miners are returning home. Andres (Don Melvin Boongaling), the youngest, hates his job, that people have been buried alive, that his money goes to others, that his brother's death is clearly suspicious. Another older worker, Paulo (Bart Guingona), tells him to keep his head down, whilst the third, the oldest Bardo (Nanding Josef), who Paulo knows well from their upbringing, comes off as authoritarian or at least is clashing with Andres. The setting for this Lav Diaz film is Hugaw Island, where we learn invading Japanese soldiers kidnapped women for "R and R" camps, alongside certain generation of people calling themselves "sons of Japanese people", alongside the sense the island has been cursed by the corruption that has still transpired there since. The miners are being exploited, forced to pay for even their own equipment to be stored, and is ran by a corrupt sergeant and his company who will use evil means for money.

As to be expected with a Lav Diaz film, this is going to be bleak, in this case a slow burn split into two passages, before an incident leads to two of these three dead, and the aftermath where a figure named Inggo (Joel Saracho) tries to exploit this in his own corrupt need for money. The title is explicitly painted out when, abruptly out of diegetic context, a voice over of a man and a woman talk of how most human beings have not fully developed our brains from the pan, like chimpanzee, those who did the likes of the Buddhas and Christs who helped the world in benevolence, those who did not possessing the selfishness of the chimpanzee. This, even for what is still a nihilistic production for Diaz, is a curious touch, that a grain of positivity is to be found in his cinema even if a rare one. Most of this, set in the nineties, is an endless cycle of corruption and greed, but this touch looks to something profound even if far away.

For most of the first act, it is a character drama of these three miners walking through the forest back home. Hugaw Island has its own people, with their own pagan beliefs contrasting Paulo's Christianity, the history of these people being attacked and treated horrifically explicitly talked of as a belief of theirs haunts the three and will appear onscreen eventually later. This is when Andres sees a black horse by a river, which is a curse of death, even if Paulo believes it is caused by bala fruit in that case, delicious to eat but intoxicating when heavily consumed with hallucinogenic effects.

The island, talked of as having legends fabricated by smugglers to keep others away,  of the likes of being a leper colony or a place for those with syphilis to go to, becomes the subject of the film as much as the plot's point, an ecosystem of corruption all around. Alongside the bleak reveal of Bardo and Paulo's past - initially set up as a rare moment of odd humour, as they were in a circus as the "Gecko Brothers", in glued costumes to led to objects being stuck to them, only to have trauma implied from the "Clown" who ran the group - this leads to the tragedy that marks the second act. Here Inggo, simply for money, also entirely as a demonic figure who wishes just to hurt people, learns of this, and even kills one of the widows grieving in an impulse just for some money, whilst threatening the mentally disabled daughter of one of the dead men, Mariposa (Hazel Orencio), who is already as a grown woman having to adapt to this tragedy with anger.

It is here, truthfully, in a film which follows the trend of Lav Diaz's other films - monochrome, long though this one is only two and a half hours long, and the slowest of burns of character pieces, the auteur having found and honed his style fully - where I still have to ask whether his nihilistic view of the world is actually constructive in the end for Genus Pan or leading to nowhere. Do not come to Diaz's films for happiness. It is the thing which causes me to ask (even critique) these films - at which point is his career of so many films this intermittently bleak, many justifiably dealing with the horrible political history of the Philippines, that this loses the point to certain titles like this one without this context? Is this unfortunately the truth, and wishing his films have a happy conclusion, or the closest to one, is taboo, wishing to hide from this film's truth? Considering the reign of Rodrigo Duterte, the 16th president of the Philippines who between 2016 up to June 30th 2022 has been a deeply controversial one for his human rights record, sadly one realises why Lav Diaz made these films as they are, so any criticism of them being too bleak is equally absurd as a critique when real life around him is miserable to consider.

The idea of altruism here is the one thing which contrasts this. Considering the nihilism of a work earlier like Season of the Devil (2018), yet here altruism, sacrifice and ritual exist, the religious practices, from Christianity to paganism, all viewed with respect by the older director, which is fascinating to see. This is contrasted, dangerously close to a cartoon villain depending on your view of him, by how evil Inggo is, the ultimate personification of someone who is just monstrous and selfish, all his deeds purely for money, even just stabbing men mid-religious ceremony just because, the many he kills at one point making him less a person, more a deliberate personification of humanity's demonic side. This offering of humanity, even if crushed under all this corruption and greed, offers a glimmer of light even if the final scene, the precursor of a murder we never see but know will transpire, shows that pointless death and misery by human hands will still transpire. This is still uncomfortable as a viewing experience as a result, as with many Lav Diaz films, but he makes these films when you are prepared for them that are meant to hit with an impact to think carefully of these things.