Originally
planned as a one minute short for Nikalexis.MOV,
a program of short films dedicated to the memory of slain critics Alexis
Tioseco and Nika Bohinc that featured short works by directors like Raymond
Red, Rico Maria Ilarde and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lav Diaz's Elehiya sa Dumalaw mula sa Himagsikan (Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution)
grew both in length and concept, turning into a film that is ponderous and
perplexing but is still grounded on very familiar emotions of melancholy and
despair. It is undoubtedly a film that sprung from spontaneity, with Diaz
literally writing the film as he was shooting it with a cast of actors and friends
who are willing and ready to take in complex roles in a very short period of
time.
Walang Alaala ang mga
Paru-paro (Butterflies have no Memories, 2009),
Diaz's one-hour meditation on the moral and environmental changes in an
abandoned mining town in the island of Marinduque, is evident in its struggle
to communicate the spare and pained aesthetics that Diaz is most famous for
within an hour. As a result, the film feels unduly hurried, rushing to arrive
at its beautiful conclusion. On the other hand, Elehiya sa Dumalaw mula sa Himagsikan, despite clocking at only one
hour and twenty minutes, is deliberately structured and less beholden to its
narrative. The film is told in three parts, with each part pertaining to each
of the three visits of the time-travelling visitor from when the country was
fighting for independence from Spain.
The
three parts are themselves divided into seemingly incongruent storylines. A prostitute
(Sigrid Bernardo) patiently waits for a customer. A musician (Diaz) plays
various melodies for nobody. Three petty criminals (Dante Perez, Evelyn Vargas,
and Joel Ferrer) are preparing for a heist. A woman (Hazel Orencio) from the
country's past suddenly appears in a busy marketplace, venturing then to fountains,
rivers and other watery places. The storylines eventually converge, revealing
characters whose lives are consumed by desperation, forcing them to venture into
territories that compromise relationships and whatever remains of their
fractured humanity.
Clearly,
the prostitute and the petty criminals, with their botched attempt to drift out
of their sorry lots, are only victims of a country that has sadly devolved from
what it was originally intended to be by the revolutionaries who risked lives
for freedom. Diaz does not create characters that are evil by nature. Like the
trio of kidnappers of Walang Alaala ang
mga Paru-paro, the ox-cart driver of Heremias
(2006), or the displaced farmer and miner of Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family, 2004), his characters are drawn to
extreme actions naturally by an evil society, corrupted by systems that have
remained unchanged or adopted through several years of abject complacency or
lack of identity.
In
one of the rare close-ups in Diaz's entire filmography, the visitor from the
past directly looks at the audience, her face aching with heavy emotions of
regret and sadness, the same regret and sadness that pervades the musician's
solitary strumming. It is a hauntingly beautiful dream sequence, unsettling in
the way it directly confronts with images bursting with the most wistful of
emotions. Dreams are said to be products of unprocessed memories. The dream in
Diaz's film seems to be the product of a nation's unprocessed memories,
burdened with a decades' worth of tireless but unmerited struggles.
Elehiya sa Dumalaw
mula sa Himagsikan is
clearly Diaz's lament to what the country and its citizens have become. More
importantly, it is also his ode to those who continue with the revolution,
notwithstanding their songs being unheard, their images being unseen, and their
impassioned calls being unfelt. It is everything Diaz stands for. It is
everything Tioseco stood and wished for.
(Cross-published in Lessons from the School of Inattention.)