Evolution of a Filipino Family - Lav Diaz
At around 10:45 pm last night, I just finished watching the longest film I've ever seen in my entire life. It lasted more than 10 hours long. It started at around 10:45am but because of several delays of the tapes, which were arriving by piece in the theater, the whole viewing experience lasted to around half a day. Lav Diaz is a truly uncompromising director. His previous effort was
Batang West Side, a tale about a Filipino detective investigating the murder of a Filipino immigrant in the United States. That film lasted five hours long and although I haven't seen it, is probably the best Filipino film in recent years. Running twice the length of its predecessor,
Evolution of a Filipino Family tackles on a theme that is more at home, the experiences of a Filipino family during and after the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The central character here is Reynaldo (Elryan de Vera) who was picked up from a Manila trash dump by loony Gilda (Marife Necisito) when he was just a baby. Gilda returned to her agricultural province where the family matriarch Puring (Angie Ferro) resents her coming, blaming her for the death of her husband and all the misfortunes that have entered her family. Gilda's brother Kadyo (Pen Medina) is far more understanding as he has treated her sister and his adoptive nephew with love, almost equal to her three daughters. Because of several key events, Reynaldo is separated from the family and is again adopted by another family whose mean of livelihood are affected by the mixture of economic weather of the nation and the needs of the mother who is going blind. Kadyo, who although is strong in character has several lapses of insanity, sometimes falling into doing thievery for which he was jailed for several years. Upon release, he then searches for his long lost nephew.
Although the film's plot could've been encapsulated in 2 hours or less, the whole experience wouldn't be as effective. Lav Diaz here emulates Ozu as he populates the film with scenes of austere beauty where almost nothing happens. Five minute scenes of chickens idly chuckling around a provincial house or a farming family walking through the rice paddies are several. This in turn purposely drowns the viewers into a realistic connection with the family Diaz is tackling. These scenes also distill several scenes of melodramatic heights into reality creating a very un-Filipino Filipino film. Also, I've never seen a film that accurately presents the idle beauty and the eminent danger of the Philippine countryside. These peaceful shots of the Philippine countryside would often be disturbed by faraway gun blasts, a continuing reminder of the ongoing battles between government forces and the Communist rebels.
Another quite effective technique utilized by Diaz is the cross cutting of farmers relaxedly listening to radio dramas, which are very popular to the Filipino rural citizens as televisions would be too expensive, to the actual scenes of the radio drama voice actors recording those overdramatic radio melodramas. This technique, which provides for comedy to the otherwise serious piece, also creates that continuing connection of the rural farmlands to Metro Manila, where all the political happenings happen. That constant reminder of that connection is greatly needed in the film because aside from one newsreel of a provincial zoning (residents are put into one place, sometimes for days and weeks so that a crime can be solved: a human rights violation that is usually happened during the Marcos regime), the Marcos unjust regime has never evidently reached the farflung rice paddies of Puring's family. Lav Diaz also puts several real newsreels of actual happenings during the entire period of the film, from as I have said, those zoning episodes to the several farmer's riots during the Aquino administration right after Marcos was overthrown from the presidency. This provides an ample clue to what historical period the family is quietly reacting to. Especially because the film is non-linear, those newsreels provide for a sense of historical placing of the events as well as logical storytelling. Another interesting bit here is a staged interview with Lino Brocka, the Philippine film industry's most vocal anti-Marcos director whose films have entered the Cannes film festival and have presented realistic poverty and moral devaluation of the Filipinos during the oppressive regime. Here, Diaz teases the audience, who I assume would mostly be cineastes especially because of its running time, into relating to the level of oppression of the Marcos regime that not only affected the normal families but also the film industry, an especially important commodity to the Filipinos as compared to the nation's love for loud and emotional melodramas.
Evolution of a Filipino Family is nowhere a perfect film. The film's low budget roots are very evident. Lighting is sometimes unsufficient with several scenes completely undecipherable because it was shot at night, with only a candle for lighting or sometimes nothing at all. This creates an unbearable experience that because of well, evolution of our eyeballs to the lack of lighting, turns into an entirely new experience of actually feeling the farmers' actual experience of living in the dark. There are several anachronistic mistakes in the film, like vehicles and items evidently created during the 90's appearing suddenly. All these mistakes are merely nitpicking that cannot take away the power, and dry emotionality of Diaz's masterpiece.
Evolution of a Filipino Family is undoubtedly a very very important film. Its magnitude compliments the film's topic's level of intimacy. This is clearly one of the year's best films and one of recent years' most important additions to world cinema. *****/*****
