By way of special request, am posting this article I wrote on Bayaning Third World...which I have not posted on this forum, apparently...
This is not a Rizal film
Noel Vera
Bayaning Third World (Third World Hero) is Mike De Leons long-awaited film on Jose Rizal. It took over three years to complete, beginning way back in 1996 with the announcement by GMA Films of a massive, P70 million epic starring boy-toy Aga Muhlach as Rizal. Then Muhlach left, reportedly because De Leon was taking so long; eventually De Leon himself abandoned the production, to announce that he was making his own, independently produced film. No less than three other Rizal films were initiated and finished while De Leons picture maturated: Tikoy Aguiluzs Rizal sa Dapitan (Rizal in Dapitan); Marilou Diaz Abayas Jose Rizal (ironically, the same production GMA Films intended De Leon to direct, rumored to have an even bigger--P120 million--budget); and Mario OHaras Sisa. The picture was invited--sight unseen, mind you--to the Directors Fortnight at Cannes International Film Festival (which it failed to attend). There were long periods when no one knew what was happening--the project was shrouded in a secrecy as tight and mysterious, it seemed, as Kubricks own latest (and last) work, Eyes Wide Shut.
I finally saw the finished product last week, and can personally testify to the atmosphere of electric anticipation that hovered over the audience. Some eighty minutes later, when the films end credits began to roll, an image and six words popped into my mind. The image: Magrittes famous painting about a pipe, and its enigmatic label. The six words: this is not a Rizal movie.
Or, its not a Rizal film any more than Magrittes pipe is not a pipe.
The film follows two filmmakers (played by Ricky Davao and Cris Villanueva) as they attempt to do pre-production research on a film on Rizal. The two get into endless, impassioned debates; they propose all sorts of absurdities (Rizal Underarm Spray), and make witty observations (Rizal on a devalued one-peso coin is still number one). They go out and interview people from Rizals life--his brother Paciano (Joonee Gamboa), his sisters Trining (Rio Locsin) and Narcisa (Cherry Pie Picache), his mother, Dona Lolay (Daria Ramirez), his (reputed) confessor, Father Balaguer (a hilariously villainous Ed Rocha), and his (reputed) wife, Josephine Bracken (Lara Fabregas).
Their conclusion (people who wish to stay surprised may want to skip to the next paragraph--though doing so may ultimately prove pointless) after much hemming and hawing basically boils down to this: Rizals life is unfilmable. Its the long, shapeless and rather inactive life of an intellectual bum (something I concluded myself long ago, when I was involved in writing the screenplay of Rizal sa Dapitan). De Leon (with his scriptwriter and co-director, Clodualdo Del Mundo) go so far as to allow that many interpretations can be made from Rizals life--roughly translated, to each his own Rizal. But significantly, the film lacks certain basic elements of traditional narrative film: there is no dramatic story, and no recognizable dramatic characters--no one who is changed or transformed during the course of the film (the two filmmakers, who get star billing, are named filmmakers 1 and 2). Significantly, the last shot of the film shows filmmakers 1 and 2 (stand-ins for De Leon and Del Mundo?) throwing up their hands and walking away from the project. This is a Rizal movie about the impossibility of making a Rizal movie. In short, this is NOT a Rizal movie!
Possibly the single most brilliant director of the Philippines (alive or dead) and his closest and best scriptwriter have played a joke on the long-expectant--three years in the making, not to mention the waiting--Philippine public. And what a joke! Its long, multi-layered, and elaborate; its richly allusive--drawing not just on practically everything we know about Philippine history and our national hero, but also on everything Mike De Leon knows (which is considerable) about film and filmmaking. And the punchline works like a time bomb: you may find yourself laughing your head off hours after seeing the film, or--thinking about it a few days later-- chuckling irrepressibly. Or you may find yourself not laughing at all--to each his own reaction to the film.
The film is simply stuffed with jokes and references. The films structure, for example, models itself on Orson Welles Citizen Kane: the first twenty or so minutes is a fast and funny recapitulation of Rizals life and significance (a la Kanes life, recapitulated in The March of Time). Later the interviews begin, with the different people who knew Kane--I mean, Rizal--bringing up and debating various issues. One shot, of a Filipino declaiming in front of a huge banner, recalls a similar one in Welles film, where Kane is giving a speech; several times we catch the filmmakers poring over a huge blow-up of Rizals execution, a direct quote from Michaelangelo Antonionis film Blow Up. De Leons favorite German Shepherd makes several appearances in the film--gently mocking Alfred Hitchcocks tendency to make personal appearances in his films.
Other jokes: Cris Villanueva, talking to different people and concluding that their lifes story would make a better film than Rizals. Father Balaguers testimony of Rizals last days in prison, which De Leon mercilessly lampoons in all kinds of subtle ways (having read part of Balaguers testimony, I can say that De Leon manages to make fun of him without once exaggerating him). My personal favorite, however, is the moment when the filmmakers finally confront Rizal himself (played by Joel Torre): his replies to the filmmakers questions prevaricate hilariously, as befits a true student of Jesuits (What did you do the night before your execution? The Spaniards did what they had to do; I did what I had to do).
Some reservations: despite the astonishingly wide range covered by this relatively short film, De Leon fails to bring up the matter of money--the difficulty of funding a Rizal film, or any film for that matter (De Leon in the years after his GMA debacle should be more than familiar with the subject). Lara Fabregas ruins the fascinatingly unreliable character of Josephine Bracken (did she marry Rizal, or didnt she?) with a cartoon English accent straight out of Repertory Philippines--I mean, neyewbahdie tahwks loyk thaht! And De Leon blunts the sharpened point of his joke with a voiceover statement at the very end of the film--to sit through all that ambivalence and ambiguity, only to have everything cleared up at the very last second! Del Mundo admits, though, that that final voiceover is still tentative, and may be removed during the films final sound remixing (heres to hoping they do).
Where does De Leons film stand in comparison with other recent Rizal flicks? I cant comment regarding Rizal sa Dapitan for obvious reasons; for equally obvious reasons, though, I think Bayaning Third World is a far superior film to the monumental Jose Rizal. The first in its eighty short minutes covers more of Rizals life than the second does in three hours, with more clarity and historical accuracy. It gives proper--that is, primal--importance to the question of Rizals retraction, framing the issue thus: if Rizal didnt retract, then he stuck to his principles and died a hero (and a heretic). If Rizal DID retract and returned to the Church, then he went against everything he had written and said and died a coward (or, as I would put it, a recognizably human being). Jose Rizals implication that Rizal retracted and is still somehow a hero is, as De Leons film so eloquently points out (without once directly pointing it out), a complete contradiction in terms.
I cant quite call De Leons film superior to OHaras Sisa; both recognize the difficulty of filming the life of Rizal, both use diametrically opposite approaches--Bayaning Third World filling up the gaps with wit and intellectual speculation, Sisa with imagination and heart. Bayaning Third World displays remarkable ingenuity in trying to make what should have been a dry historical debate lively and involving; Sisa displays equally remarkable ingenuity in trying to make a coherent and even moving historical drama out of an impossibly small P2.5 million ($25,000) budget, shot in ten days (Bayaning Third World, though I cant be sure, must cost at least P5 million or more, shot for over a year). Calling one better than the other is probably a matter of taste (personally--and I think you can see this coming a mile away--I plunk down in favor of imagination and heart). Both films, however, should be a matter of modest pride for all involved: Rizal finally, brilliantly deconstructed on film--twice. This may not be a Rizal film, but its a remarkable Rizal film nevertheless.
(Comments? Mail me at <
[email protected]>)
