The Short Films of Kidlat Tahimik

Orbit 50: Letter to My Three Sons (1992)

The Short Films of Kidlat Tahimik

For the 12th edition of the Jeonju International Film Festival, the focus was on Kidlat Tahimik, a rare talent in filmmaking whose works are beacons of uncompromisable vision. While most famous for his long works like Mababangong Bangungot (1977) and Turumba (1981), he has made several short films which attest to the singularity of his creative process and the integrity of his perspective and creativity, traits which have become essential in the Philippine's burgeoning new cinema.

Ang Balikbayan (Memories of Overdevelopment, 1980-2011)

Perhaps one of the greatest films that will probably never get made is Kidlat Tahimik’s account of the first circumnavigation of the globe by Enrique, Magellan’s Filipino slave. Ang Balikbayan (Memories of Overdevelopment), a thirty minute collection of scenes from what could have been the film, is, for the moment, the closest the world will ever get to the non-existent film. Kidlat Tahimik narrates the events of Enrique’s voyage in a surprisingly straightforward fashion, more descriptive of how the final film would be than anything else, lacking the usual fanciful and humorous wit that defines most of his films. The film is a work that is too long in progress. Enrique’s circumnavigation of the globe is hardly a product of skill. It is however a mixture of many things, of skill, of ingenuity, of friendship, and of luck. The film that is in progress, as seen from this narrated version, showcases everything of those traits, except, sadly, luck.

Orbit 50: Letter to My Three Sons (1990-1992)

Made for his fiftieth birthday, Orbit 50: Letter to My Three Sons reveals the source of Kidlat Tahimik’s filmmaking powers. He is a father first, and a filmmaker second. Structured like almost all of his films where found footage are playfully edited together and provided sense and substance by his honest and often humorous narration, the short film appears to be a dedication to his three sons, Kidlat, whom he acknowledges to be his creative father considering that his filmmaking name is borrowed from his son’s birth name, Kawayan, whose artistic impulses rival his father’s, and Kabunyan, whose youthful playfulness reveals his father’s own joyous unpredictability. Seen today, the film performs as an enduring ode to the beautiful simplicity of family life in the midst of the more alluring world of arts. That he chose to honour his children instead of his career in his fiftieth orbit around the sun reflects the very unique attraction of his life’s creative work.

Celebrating the Year 2021, Today (1995)

In the year 2021, it will be the 500^th anniversary of the circumnavigation of the world of Magellan’s slave, a Filipino. Starting from the Philippines where he was captured, he was brought to Portugal via the Indian Ocean, sailing off the coasts of India and Africa. When Magellan went to the Philippines from Portugal, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to South America and crossing the Pacific Ocean to the island of Mactan where he was killed by the island’s chieftain, he brought with him his Filipino slave, who at that moment, is the first person to have circumnavigated the globe. The story was supposed to have been a film by Kidlat Tahimik. However, budgetary limitations have halted the project. A few clips from the terminated project make their appearance in this short, a testament to Kidlat Tahimik’s creative resourcefulness. Undaunted by the hindrances to making his film project, he instead has planted trees in various places around the world. By 2021, the trees would have all grown, and would be steadfast testaments to Filipino ingenuity as well as markers for the historical footnote of Kidlat’s filmmaking fantasy.

Bahag Ko, Mahal Ko (Japanese Summers of a Filipino Fundoshi, 1996)

The tragic tale of the bahag, then a garment of respect and now a mere costume that is treated with ridicule and shame, is one that has colonization and its effects of extreme Western influence as antagonists. With Bahag Ko, Mahal Ko (Japanese Summers of a Filipino Fundoshi), Kidlat Tahimik takes the garment as a symbol of everything we have forgotten as a result of being the subjects of imperialist powers for more than three hundred years. The film starts as a conversation between Kidlat and his son, Kabunyan, where idle chatter about Marilyn Monroe’s immense sex appeal transforms into a discourse on the malleability of concepts of beauty. The film then transports the discourse to Japan, where the tragic tale of the bahag, or fundoshi, is shared. At that point, Kidlat Tahimik, makes the adverse effects of modernization and its requirements of cultural homogeneity, an international concern.

Our Film-grimage to Guimaras (2005)

In August of 2006, an oil tanker sank off the coast of Guimaras, an island famed for its pristine beaches and nearly untouched natural beauty. Almost immediately after, the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of the Philippines spearheaded a project where several of its filmmakers, which include Khavn dela Cruz, Raya Martin, and Roxlee, are to make a film in reaction to the oil spill. Kidlat Tahimik’s contribution, aptly titled and brimming with the director’s trademark levity amidst the heaviness of his themes and topics, humorously starts off with his promise to his cat to bring home fish from Guimaras. The “film-grimage” is documented with hardly any frills, and fuelled primarily by Kidlat Tahimik’s unrehearsed and therefore veritable wit. The resulting film has all the marks of an impromptu project. Notwithstanding its obvious simplicity and probably all the more because of the unlikely humour that surrounds the humble production, the film resonates with a mature understanding of the gross repercussions of the oil spill.

Some More Rice (2005)

The Philippines and Japan are linked in so many ways. However, Kidlat Tahimik, ever the idiosyncratic artist, explores the connection via rice, staple food for both nations. However, what Kidlat Tahimik explores in this short documentary is hardly relegated to rice as food, but rice as a way of living. Narrated by Kidlat Tahimik from letters he wrote to a Japanese rice farmer and Akira Kurosawa, whose Seven Samurai (1954) serves as starting point of the film’s discourse and also as the source for its curious title, the film details the several similarities and differences between the two cultures. As the film goes on, as its discourse moves from the facile to the intimate, it reveals a sympathetic heart for farmers, and more importantly, a fluent understanding of the human condition. Notwithstanding physical, cultural and economic distance between the two nations, Kidlat Tahimik convinces that the connections are more real than hypothesized.

Bubong (Roofs of the World! Unite!, 2006)

Kidlat Tahimik’s always curious creativity is now focused on shelter. Starting with a hike up the Himalayas where he notices his guides carrying heavy roofs to the villages up the mountains, the film moves around the world, depicting various roofs, from the ornate bronze domes of Buddhist temples to the humble bamboo structures of Kidlat Tahimik’s Baguio home. Much more than a document on anthropological details on roof-building, the short film only makes use of the detail to forward the resilience that is shared by humanity, no matter how different in terms of culture. Although carried heavily by the utilization of the roof as a metaphor to the virtues that connect cultures, the film, like most of Kidlat Tahimik’s works, is fuelled not by a need to prove a logical flow or predictable sense. Thus, the film follows no structure and instead persists like a collage made from footage collected through the years. Despite its lack of form, the film is a masterfully conceived and joyously executed essay on the fundamentals of human living, as seen through eyes that have travelled and witnessed the world.

(The reviews in this article were commissioned for the programme of the 12th Jeonju International Film Festival)

In the Name of Love (2011)

In the Name of Love (Olivia Lamasan, 2011)

The first fifteen minutes of Olivia Lamasan’s In the Name of Love is that sort of uncharacteristic greatness that comes from an otherwise unspectacular director. Hinting of a narrative that is darker than what is expected from a mainstream studio, Lamasan confidently lays the pieces of her masterpiece-in-the-making. After spending seven years in a Japanese jail for being caught transporting yakuza money in the airport while on his way home to visit his son, Emman (Aga Muhlach) has become old and modest in his ambitions. However, an unlikely meet-up with Mercedes (Angel Locsin), the prostitute-turned-girlfriend of a politician’s son (Jake Cuenca), pushes him in the middle of a dangerous love triangle involving a murderous political family and a province struggling under its control.

Lamasan introduces Emman as the irreversibly old and wasted man who is fated for doom. Mercedes is the irresistible femme fatale, sexy beyond compare but seductively mysterious. The little town they live their sad lives in is clouded with discontent, with the prospect of the coming elections only exposing the town’s unmistakably rotting core. The first fifteen minutes set up a film noir that never was. After building up expectations of gloom, Lamasan succumbs to the allure of drowning the set-up with paltry romance, completely wasting whatever’s built up to confused schmaltziness.

Lamasan stages the most heartbreaking of dramatic moments in her films (such as the painful dinner scene in In My Life (2009) where the recently broken mother suddenly realizes how she destroyed the lives of her children, or the melancholic scene in Milan (2004) where an abandoned husband finally finds his wife in a worse condition than his, or the very angry scene in Sana Maulit Muli (Hopefully, Once More, 1995) where an illegal immigrant furiously bursts upon seeing the maltreatment a Filipino employer treats his employees) hinting of some sort of depth in her work within the usually shallow mainstream. In this film, she pits then matinee idol Muhlach with his inevitable old age, in one heartbreaking scene where his character, after being imprisoned for several years, stands in front of the mirror, realizing how he has wasted his youth, his life.

However, Lamasan struggles with mood, shifting from light-hearted moments to gloomy episodes and vice versa with the flimsiest of motivations. That has always been Lamasan’s biggest fault. While Muhlach’s vulnerability is commendable, he remains unconvincing as a dramatic actor, most especially when delivering lines that require some sort of sombreness, which sadly, the actor seems incapable of. His perpetually youthful looks provide some sort of visual irony, making his expected corruption and demise all the more heartbreaking. Unfortunately, expectations remain that. In the Name of Love is not as dark as it should be to be effective in depicting the crookedness of its setting. Though it aspires to be a great love story (even making use of the theme song of Arthur Hiller’s Love Story (1970) to communicate the gravity and grandness of the film’s romantic aspirations), it simply fails to engage, remaining limp and overly simplistic in its portrayals.

Finally, in the name of escapism and sure returns, Star Cinema, the film’s producer which is arguably the Philippines’ most commercially successful movie studio, maintains the silliest and stupidest of traditions. Their movies (with the exception of their horror films which end with cliffhangers) are riddled with unnecessarily happy conclusions, making it seem that life, despite its gargantuan problems and unexpected tragic turns, are but fairy tales with predictable endings. While there is nothing generally wrong with escapist cinema, there is something glaringly evil about how films are haphazardly tacked with these happy endings, no matter how disgustingly illogical they are in the context of the film.

In the Name of Love is an ambitious but very flawed film. It could have been passable entertainment. However, with its completely irrelevant ending, the film devolves into some sort of insulting drivel, a confused marriage between untrusting capitalists and earnest artists, with the latter in the losing end. Like a poor man’s porridge with a piece of pubic hair proudly floating, the otherwise palatable film is rendered virtually inedible with that single unforgivable compromise.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Sino'ng Lumikha ng Yoyo? Sino'ng Lumikha ng Moon Buggy? (1979)

Sino'ng Lumikha ng Yoyo? Sino'ng Lumikha ng Moon Buggy? (Kidlat Tahimik, 1979)

English Title: Who Invented the Yoyo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy?

It’ is very tempting to acknowledge Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare, 1977) as an autobiographical account of an ambitious Filipino with a compellingly descriptive name who wakes up from his dreamy infatuation with the West.

A student leader in the University of the Philippines, a Wharton graduate and the son of his home town’s first mayor after the Philippines’ liberation from America, Eric de Guia, the real Kidlat Tahimik, although similar in curiosity and probably in destiny with the character he created, is hardly the poor and uneducated jeepney driver of his first film. Sino’ng Lumikha ng Yoyo? Sino’ng Lumikha ng Moon Buggy? (Who Invented the Yoyo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy?) although set in fictional Yodel Ville, with Kidlat Tahimik, no longer the same jeepney driver of Mababangong Bangungot but a character that is closer to the real man, spending time with children in his mission to launch a chicken to space via a makeshift vessel.

Detouring from those humorous flights of fantasy, Kidlat Tahimik opens up, detailing his personal history and circumstance, blurring further the lines between him and the characters he has created for himself. In that sense, Sino’ng Lumikha ng Yoyo? Sino’ng Lumikha ng Moon Buggy?, more than Mababangong Bangungot or Turumba (1981), his more popular works, represents the closest precursor to the distinct autobiographical wonderments that would define his latter video works. It seems that the film, because of its lengthy title, is a promotion of the inventive qualities of Filipinos which benefitted the entire world.

Without taking away from the unique delights of seeing a grown man treating toddlers as equals in discussions that should not make sense but actually do, the film, while utilizing the often inane resourcefulness of Kidlat Tahimik’s character as a wellspring for comedy, proposes that it is that trait, arguably endemic to Filipinos, that is the secret ingredient to genius.

(This article was commissioned for the programme of the 12th Jeonju International Film Festival)

Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? (1994)

Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? (Kidlat Tahimik, 1994)

English Title: Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow?

Perhaps because of its length, which is an hour more than the typical Hollywood fare that Filipinos have gotten chronically used to seeing, Kidlat Tahimik’s Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? (Why is Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow?, 1994) is criminally under-seen, and is therefore severely underrated. The film, which is effectively Kidlat Tahimik’s account of his personal life from 1981 to 1993, is perhaps the most personal work of the director whose films are intimately intertwined with him, his history, and his beliefs.

Because the film is essentially a collection of footage from various points of Kidlat Tahimik’s life during the timeline, the audience becomes openly familiar with the director’s private life: learning of the intricacies of his family, joining him in his creative and social endeavours, and reflecting with him on the political events that have been unfolding alongside his personal growth. It is perhaps the multitude of facets of an artist, all portrayed with the distinct generosity and modesty that Kidlat Tahimik is most famous for, that makes Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? such an invaluable and special film.

With the film, Kidlat Tahimik discusses alongside the difficulties of fatherhood, the birth pangs of the newly founded artists’ community he helped form in Baguio City, and the initial highs and impending disappointments of post-Ferdinand Marcos democracy. Considering the ostensible epic scope and ambition of the film, Bakit Dilaw ang Gitna ng Bahaghari? never feels burdened with self-importance.

The film moves and feels like a diary that he selflessly opens to his viewers, and in that sense, it never overreaches but instead comfortably sits in the midst of what Kidlat Tahimik is most knowledgeable of. Moreover, the film is laced with tangible authenticity. Shot and presumably made sans any script or creative intervention, the film evokes a sense personal, cultural and national histories unfold through the eyes of an active participant. In a sense, the film shows history as it is being made, raw but never confrontational, tender but never cowardly.

(This article was commissioned for the programme of the 12th Jeonju International Film Festival)

Turumba (1981)

Turumba (Kidlat Tahimik, 1981)

Turumba is arguably Kidlat Tahimik’s finest work. When compared to his other films, the film is handsomely produced, tightly edited, and sleekly told. Also absent in the film is Kidlat Tahimik’s physical presence. Instead, the film is told through the eyes of young Kadu, son of a craftsman who specializes in papier-mâché products.

Kadu, similar to Kidlat Tahimik’s character in Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare, 1977), is a curious creature, well-entrenched in his community but not without questions about his town’s customs and traditions. On the day of turumba, a festival celebrating the feast day of the town’s beloved Marian image, a German capitalist chances upon the papier-mâché products he is selling, leading to ever-increasing orders, and forcing Kadu’s father to turn what used to be a livelihood that is intimately connected with the town’s customs and traditions into a lucrative business, a source of immense profit.

Turumba seems to be Mababangong Bangungot’s spiritual sequel, although it can be argued that Kidlat Tahimik has spent his entire creative career tempering the allure of modernization. In the film, foreign capital is treated with suspicion. The German capitalist, a moneyed woman whose stately appearance is betrayed by her lack of grace and finesse, seems to be portrayed for laughs, not unlike the American in Mababangong Bangungot. The country folk, from Kadu’s keen grandmother to the resourceful blacksmith, are all depicted with reverence.

In that sense, Turumba does not dwell in complications. It is told with refreshing simplicity. Thus, instead of politicizing and complicating the discourses regarding Westernization, modernization, and economics, Kidlat Tahimik focuses on what is most intelligible in the arguments, and that is what is most tangible and visible, like the death of traditions, the sudden soullessness of craftsmanship, and the dissipation of cultural integrity. Turumba, without having Kidlat Tahimik, the vastly enjoyable performer performing onscreen, has the tracks of Kidlat Tahimik’s sariling dwende from start to finish.

(This article was commissioned for the programme of the 12th Jeonju International Film Festival)

Bagong Hari (1986)

Bagong Hari (Mario O'Hara, 1986)

English Title: New King

With the possible exception of Fernando Poe, Jr., no other actor who made a career as an action star can evoke that very rare mix of gravitas and ruthlessness in his characters as Dan Alvaro. Alvaro has a very pleasant and handsome mug, more befitting a matinee idol than a wronged crusader. Perhaps it is because of the incongruence of his angelic face, his stuntman’s body, and the diverse roles that the then unpredictable Filipino film industry has given him that turns Alvaro into such a wildly intriguing and probably underexplored screen personality.

In Mario O’Hara’s Bagong Hari (The New King), Alvaro plays Addon, the quintessential Filipino anti-hero, the bastard son of a corrupt police officer who purposely meddles in the very dirty political war between the governor (Elvira Manahan) and a town mayor (Celso Ad Castillo) in an unnamed province. Made for the 1985 Metro Manila Film Festival but only released the following year, the film left its producers, who were more used to producing comedies that are sure hits especially in a time when escapist entertainment was prime commodity, unable to recoup the capital put into the film.

The film has been lost for several decades, with the wild rumor of the remaining print of the film being thrown into the Pasig River by its frustrated producers surfacing every now and then, until a VHS copy was discovered by New York-based Filipino film preservationist Jojo de Vera, and through the efforts of the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film (SOFIA), was recently screened after a couple of decades worth of absence.

Bagong Hari benefits the most from Alvaro’s distinctly curious presence. Addon, previous to being forced into being deeply involved in the corrupting political state, exists within some sort of modest and humble paradise, where his conflicts are mostly personal and his pleasures are absolutely simple. O’Hara fluently paints that quaint existence, making use of the most sensual of visual and aural stylizations to enunciate sexual fantasies and other modest delights of Addon’s erstwhile peace. The marked difference between that seemingly idyllic life and the violent and bleak existence that he suddenly finds himself in punctuates the harshness of O’Hara’s not-so-fictional version of the Philippines. That the bearer of that entire world’s physical and emotional turmoil is a man of boyish features makes the bleakness of O’Hara’s vision even more poignant, more heartbreaking.

Deaths are so commonplace and only made momentarily significant by the strange sentimentality that the characters who seem to be enamoured with the pretence that there is something more to their lives than the hell that they have been living have reserved for them. Violence, on the other hand, becomes more than a requirement for survival. It is the way of life. The capacity to both resist and inflict violence becomes the barometer for one’s value. The country itself is moved by violence. The quiet decision-makers engage in gambles that involve brutal fights to the death. The struggle to the top political post is ridden with not only dirty dealings but also mindless massacres.

Bagong Hari, timely resurrected from a demise caused by both fate and neglect, proves to be a still potent portrait of a country wallowing in despair and hopelessness.

Kano: An American and His Harem (2010)

Kano: An American and His Harem (Monster Jimenez, 2010)

The easiest thing to do is to inform. What Monster Jimenez does in Kano: An American and His Harem may be the hardest thing to accomplish. She first informs, of the life of Victor Pearson, an American war veteran who relocates to the Philippines and establishes a household that is composed of him and several wives and paramours, of the criminal suit for rape, of his eventual image as sexual deviant and monster. Jimenez then opens a window for Pearson, who has been adjudged by all who knew him solely as a character in the newspaper headlines as an indefatigable pervert, to prove his humanity, and opens a bigger window for Pearson to display his undeniable charms and wit.

Pearson looks like a thoroughly unkempt Harvey Keitel and talks like a reflective but drunken Edward G. Robinson. He is an inevitable screen personality. His backstory, with the possible barrage of psychological torture from a hinted torturous childhood and Vietnam War experiences, could have been a Kubrick thriller. His present story, as embattled villain in a legal battle against all odds, could have been a clever Lumet court drama.

His harem, on the other hand, is composed of an eclectic mix of looks and ages. Probably the only uniting factor for the women is poverty, which leads supposedly to their attachment and dependence on Pearson’s sizable veteran’s pension. However, to simply regard their intertwined relationships as primarily economic is to disregard the complexity of human nature. Jimenez explores not only the cycle of financial dependency but also the continuously evolving emotions, no matter how misplaced, mutated and immoral they seem to be. She treats the relationships between Pearson and his women and among the women with light-hearted sensitivity, with a careful but delicious mix of humor and seriousness.

Kano: An American and His Harem is ostensibly about the most curious of domestic arrangements, where one man plays benefactor, lover, victimizer, and a whole lot of other roles to the women who are voluntarily or involuntarily under his wing. Yet, the documentary also pushes perception despite the norms and moral boundaries that have set in place how we normally perceive what is human and what is not. Pearson, through Jimenez’s peerless and very involved investigation, has become the perfect example of the most misunderstood man, considering that his much-publicized and now legendary devious acts are too glaring to gloss over. And despite the initial disgust, the momentary fascination, and the lingering intrigue with Pearson, he becomes familiar, perhaps overly familiar to the point of discomfort.

Yet, Jimenez does not flinch. In fact, she confronts Pearson with only some apprehension, maybe some suspicion too, but never with disdain or an already made-up objective as to how the documentary will move. Instead, the documentary takes a life of its own, rollercoasting on emotions ranging from anger to amusement, and frustration to delight. It moves seemingly without direction because the director itself is moved by her subject, gravitating only to the business of exhibiting Pearson’s life and dilemma. As willing companions of Jimenez in her creatively crafted and deliciously enjoyable attempt to simplify the complexities of Pearson and his women’s unique situation, it is best to enter Kano: An American and His Harem with an open mind, totally unresisting of the probable charms of Pearson and his bountiful love.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Deadline (The Reign of Impunity) (2011)

Deadline (The Reign of Impunity) (Joel Lamangan, 2011)

In the morning of November 23, 2009, a local politician who was on his way to town to file his certificate of candidacy for the upcoming elections, his family, his supporters, lawyers, and several journalists were ambushed and cruelly murdered. The massacre, more popularly referred to as the Ampatuan Massacre not only because it happened in the town of Ampatuan but because the suspected perpetrators bear the same name, became the much-needed signal that would alert the public of the systematic murder of journalists, a practice that has long gone unnoticed. Joel Lamangan’s Deadline (The Reign of Impunity) clearly takes its cue from these recent events that shocked the Philippines.

Ross Rivera (TJ Trinidad), a writer whose cynicism has converted him into a government apologist, is suddenly forced to reassess his role as journalist when he finds himself right in the middle of unearthing a conspiracy linking Muntazir Ghazi (Tirso Cruz III), a local warlord, with election fraud and the sporadic killing of journalists in various parts of the country. While Ross wrestles with his conscience and attempts to convince Greta Manarang (Lovi Poe), television newscaster and grieving girlfriend of a recently murdered journalist, of his newfound integrity in Manila, Azad (Allen Dizon) and Claire (Ina Feleo), local journalists who are deep into the tracks of Ghazi, are hunted down by Ghazi’s henchmen. Their stories eventually intertwine, revealing a more frustrated than concerned outlook of the state of free speech in a country that supposedly fosters democracy.

The film is obviously fuelled by anger and alarm, necessary emotions when the government itself, through its inaction and inattention, perpetuates these heinous activities. Lamangan’s activism however seems more reactionary. The film, instead of gnawing deeper into the cultural defect only dramatizes, probably for the sake of infecting viewers with the same disgust over the current corrupted state of the country, the social malaise.

There are attempts at exploration, as when Ross converses with a peasant walking along the dirt road where his vehicle stopped and gets told of the promises of the government of bountiful land in Mindanao that are broken for the sole reason of the fact that the lands promised weren’t the government’s to be given away. Unfortunately, the narrative cannot afford any time for idle talk that is only tangentially related to Lamangan’s agenda. The film moves on, interrupting possibilities of depth with the furtherance of its heavy-handed agitprop.

Lamangan, when impassioned by political themes, tends to substitute subtlety with forceful slogans and unsavoury didactics. Fortunately, in Deadline (The Reign of Impunity), the bluntness seems called for. Lamangan paces the film evenly, imbuing the briskly-told story with the same sense of immediacy that the still unresolved issues of media-related murders deserve. The film, armed with a rousing musical score and other commendable technical values, communicates its advocacy without necessarily surrendering the requirements of entertaining and intelligible cinema. Deadline (The Reign of Impunity), with its unrelenting thirst to display only the most dramatic of scenarios, has the same appeal as primetime sensationalized news.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Kommander Kulas (2011)

Kommander Kulas: Ang Kaisa-isang Konsiyerto ng Kagila-gilalas na Kombo ni Kommander Kulas at ng Kanyang Kawawang Kalabaw sa Walang Katapusang Kalsada ng Kamyas (Khavn de la Cruz, 2011)

English Title: Kommander Kulas: The One and Only Concert of the Amazing Combo of Kommander Kulas and His Poor Carabao in the Long and Unwinding Road of Kamyas

Khavn de la Cruz's Kommander Kulas: Ang Kaisa-isang Konsiyerto ng Kagila-gilalas na Kombo ni Kommander Kulas at ng Kanyang Kawawang Kalabaw sa Walang Katapusang Kalsada ng Kamyas (The One and Only Concert of the Amazing Combo of Kommander Kulas and his Poor Carabao in the Long and Unwinding Road of Kamyas), or Kommander Kulas for much-needed brevity, relies strongly on pattern. After a prologue which details the existential account of the titular character's death in storybook fashion, Khavn spends little time to force his audience into a near-torturous cycle of depraved art, from spoken poetry of varying degrees of menace and perversion serving as soundtrack to several images (the most shocking of which has a heavyset woman sitting on a plate as if defecating), to long takes of Kommander Kulas riding his carabao in lush landscapes, to public domain Tagalog love songs serenading images of a makeshift grand piano stationed in different decrepit locations in the city.

Khavn has done the same patterned film before. In Paalam Aking Bulalakaw (Goodbye My Shooting Star, 2006), he documents a date with a girl (Meryll Soriano) while cycling through love poems and love songs. Where the pattern in Paalam Aking Bulalakaw complemented the Khavn's unabashed meanderings on romantic love, in Kommander Kulas, the pattern only adds to the burden of the film, weighing the already weighty subject matter with the malady of predictability.

However, Khavn is not concerned with providing surprises or shocking twists. Right from the start, he duly warns his audience of Kommander Kulas' demise leading from his unresolved search for his heart which led to his meet-ups with various loves and their human representations. It seems that Khavn's goal is to wear his audience off, to make them feel the exhausting repercussions of a hopeless search for a hopeless heart. In that sense, perspective and agenda, he more than succeeds.

Khavn is much more than a prolific filmmaker who makes three to four feature length films and even more short films per year. He is also very unpredictable. His films, most of which bear the signature of being sensible and sometimes logical despite the palpable chaos of their creation, attempt to dignify the common vices of the inevitable ease of digital filmmaking and are most of the time, very successful at it. Mostly unplanned with only an idea that is probably germinated from random discussions over rounds of San Miguel beer in one of Manila's artists' nooks and probably a day or two to shoot and materialize the idea, Khavn's films, despite the obviousness of the probable ease and welcomed carelessness in their production, range from absolutely fun to curiously profound. Interestingly, with Kommander Kulas, it seems the hardworking director has unwittingly chosen profundity over fun.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)

Bombay Beach (2011)

Bombay Beach (Alma Har'el, 2011)

Salton Sea, a salt-water lake in the middle of the deserts of California, used to be the place to be several decades ago. Nowadays, it stands as a testament as to how time diffuses luster. The once pristine beaches that catered to the wealthiest of Americans are now graves to thousands of fish that perish because of the increasing salinity and toxicity of the lake. As it is, the area surrounding Salton Sea is that post-apocalyptic paradise existing in this pre-apocalyptic world. It remains to be this place of very elusive beauty, where glistening during sunsets are masked by abject sights of poverty.

Alma Har'el's Bombay Beach, without glossing over the pertinent issues that surround the subject surroundings, focuses on the lives of several individuals who seem to approximate the veiled charms of the place they call home. The film is loosely structured in a way that it does not follow any narrative arc but instead rides on an atmosphere of feel-good but never doubtful sentimentality. As a collage of portraits of various lives struggling in a presumably inhospitable landscape, Bombay Beach is joyously uplifting, which is somewhat pleasantly strange in this current cinematic landscape of popular doom and despair.

Music is an important element of Bombay Beach. The dances, mostly choreographed but performed by Har’el’s subjects with hardly any expectations of perfection, however, are essential. Volumes are communicated when a hard-boiled old-timer delivers a graceful gesture of unlikely romance in his awkward waltz, or when budding lovers interpret their newly formed affair with an evocative number. Benny, youngest son of the Parrish couple, whose story of being imprisoned for blowing up bombs in the desert as a pastime is an extraordinary subject for another documentary, takes part in this lovely group dance with other kids which summarize the endearing awkwardness of his fateful existence in the community. In a wondrously edited, lovingly executed and carefully directed sequence, the film transported its audience, although temporarily, to a place where innocence in the midst of immense adversity is not some lunatic’s fantasy.

That Har-el was able to draw inspiration from individuals who would commonly be regarded as the dregs of society, as pinnacles of human hopelessness, and jokes of cruel destiny, and was able to visually manifest beauty from a place where it has long faded is evidence of her ability to mix heart with directorial mettle. It is that unrestrained but sincere optimistic depiction of the human spirit that makes Har’el’s modestly produced but magnanimously crafted documentary such an indelible experience.

(Cross-published in Twitch.)