Lets Talk About Lav Diaz

How do we start objectively talking about the sense , quality and art of a film?
I would like to hear your opinions, criticisms and observations about the works of this Filipino Filmmaker.

A Prophet in His Own Land by Noel vera

BY NOEL VERA
A prophet in his own land
MOVIE REVIEW Heremias Directed by Lav Diaz
(Heremias is one of the films included in the ongoing 8th CineManila International Film Festival which runs until Nov. 15 at the Greenbelt Cinemas, SM Digital Cinemas and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts Auditorium. For details, log on to www.cinemanila.ph)
Lav Diaz’s Heremias (2006) is 540 minutes long, an hour shy of the length of Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family,2004), presently the record holder of the title "longest single Filipino feature" — but then this picture is only part one, titled, or so I’m told, Book 1: The Legend of the Lizard Princess. Ebolusyon spans a broad canvas, featuring not just the story of two families (rice farmers in Tarlac, wood gatherers aspiring to become gold miners in the Benguet Province), but the recent history of the Philippines, as represented in a series of documentary footage, from Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972 to the EDSA Revolt in 1986 to the massacre of the farmers on Mendiola Bridge in 1987; along the way Diaz stuffed the film full of all kinds of conceits, from film critic Gino Dormiendo playing Lino Brocka in a series of televised interviews to a plot to assassinate Brocka (?!) to a series of hilariously melodramatic radio broadcasts that the families listen to religiously, as if they were Sunday Mass. Heremias is radically different — it’s the odyssey of one man (Ronnie Lazaro) from his village to the city and back; more, it’s his journey from a state of absolute innocence to knowledge, disillusionment, guilt.
Diaz had told me once that he was interested in making a film about these people — traveling peasants who pile their covered wagons high with bits of handicrafts (rocking chairs, brooms, baby walkers, and so forth), make their painfully slow way into town, and sell their wares for remarkably low prices (you wonder: if their products are so cheap, how much did these people spend acquiring — or making — them?); here is the film he talked about, in all its implacable glory. For a time we see nothing but Heremias and his wagon, pulled by a carabao (we get to know that carabao quite well), rolling from one end of the screen to another; the road — dirt as often as asphalt, stretching past houses and hills and trees — often forms a diagonal on which the small figure and his wheeled vehicle ambles (slowly, slowly) along. At one point a typhoon rages while the wagon goes down a forest path — diagonally situated, as usual, this time from right to lower left — and we wait for the wagon to reach the path’s nearer end before Diaz cuts, as he’s done so often before. Suddenly a sapling falls across the way; the path is blocked; the slow and steady motion we have come to expect from so many hours’ variation on this particular composition cannot be completed — cannot be fulfilled, if you will. We watch in mounting frustration as Heremias gets off the wagon, chops the sapling up, pushes it out of the way; eventually, he manages to clear the path and move the wagon forward, reaching the lower left corner of the screen; you’re almost thrilled at the accomplishment.
(That scene and the ones following — endless images of whipping wind and whirling rain — makes one wonder: did Diaz use several firetrucks with an infinite supply of water, or did he just shoot in an actual typhoon? The latter, I suspect, having an idea of Diaz’s style of filmmaking and the budgets with which he usually works — he once ordered a shoot in the middle of a blizzard in Batang West Side [West Side Avenue, 2001], to the chagrin of his largely Manila-based crew).
When Heremias stops at an abandoned house near the town (called Barrio Hapon in the film), his wagon is burnt and carabao stolen; he goes wandering about the nearby forest, squatting silently in the undergrowth, watching the house in the hope that whoever stole the animal will somehow come back. At this point a group of teenagers arrives; Heremias listens to them drinking and yelling and urinating (often writing their names on the already vandalized walls); the effect of the booze and drugs seem to vanish, and they discuss the kidnapping, raping, and killing of a girl.
Much of this scene is captured in a single shot almost an hour long, where the camera (assuming Heremias’ point of view) hides behind the leaves of a nearby plant and watches the young men in their profane and casually brutal talk. We remember how skillful Diaz was at writing the stoned dialogue of Filipino-American addicts in Batang West Side, how they seemed so funny, even hilarious, until they turned murderously, frighteningly psychotic; here, Heremias has no choice but to cower and hide (the leaves trembling for him) from the youth’s malevolent attention.
When the teenagers go, they leave Heremias with a considerable burden: what to do with his new-found knowledge? Diaz’s names for his various characters are never randomly chosen; they often have an allegorical function. Heremias comes from Jeremiah, one of the Bible’s three major prophets, much of whose career was characterized by the fact that few people listened to him. Heremias is not lying, nor does he have any real trouble getting people to believe him; it’s just that the gang’s leader is the son of a powerful politician who owns the town, and anyone getting involved would literally be in danger.
The rest of the film is in marked contrast with the first half, with the teenagers’ drunken night (an allusion to Walpurgis Night, perhaps, where witches revel and youths go about playing all kinds of harmful pranks?) dividing the two pieces. Diaz’s camera shifts from passive onlooker to mute witness of Heremias’ increasing distress, the lighting scheme going from daylight gray to headlight glare to a kind of pitiless clarity; Heremias’ shuffle has if anything become slower, his back stooped even lower. We watch as Heremias finds himself every bit as helpless with the girl as he was when his wagon was burnt and carabao stolen.
Which brings us to the question: does Heremias justify its extreme length? Diaz apparently finds nothing wrong in applying such intense focus on an ordinary character; if anything, the character is made extraordinary by said focus (Diaz either subscribes to the notion that anyone is of inherent interest [we just need to look hard enough], or that anything the camera looks upon is interesting [we just need to train the camera on it long enough]). After what felt like hours of watching Heremias’ carabao pull his wagon, I felt the man’s sensibility had seeped into my head, that I was counting minutes much the same way as he does (drip after drip, by the gradual liter), that I was looking at a world often harmful and depraved, eventually learning that things can be so very much worse.
It’s important to keep in mind that Heremias is just the first half of a film, that Diaz is even now busily planning to shoot the second half, reportedly in part about the 40 days of walking and fasting Heremias promises to undergo, if only God will save the girl. Though narrower in scope I think this first half (a nine-hour film on the problems of one man) is a braver experiment than Ebolusyon; unlike Ebolusyon, which veered wildly from 16 mm to video camera to documentary footage (much of the time, thanks to dire budget constraints, without rhyme or reason in the shift between mediums). Heremias is visually of a piece; if the film’s tone shifts (from ultra-realist to diabolical) it’s according to the filmmaker’s intentions and the needs of the story. The film was a struggle to watch, especially the first hour, but I’m hooked; I badly need to learn what happens next.
(Comments? E-mail me at noelbotevera@hotmail.com

Heremias 1 by Yvette Pantilla

Heremias…

by Yvette Pantilla
Heremias was screened at the Greenbelt theater November 15, 2006 as the closing film of the CineManila international film festival.
I've been going to all these different film festivals in Shang and Greenbelt by myself for maybe ten years now and all I can say is, Lav Diaz has balls, man. Heremias was brilliant.
I sat through nine hours (except for five minutes when I got up to pee) along with JP and maybe twenty other people whom others would probably consider stark raving mad.
I'm not going to give you a prim-and-proper review because you can always Google search Noel Vera or Alex Tioseco anyway if you want more information.
Some notes:
Opening shot and closing shot being reversals of each other...brilliant. The things you think are fireflies in the distance are actually those caravans of handicrafts sellers coming toward you. Brilliant.
On the actors: Ronnie Lazaro as Heremias. Brilliant. The whole fucking cast. Brilliant.
Even the cows were brilliant.
The Buddhist idea of slowing things down is evident and serves its purpose. The jarring effect of rock music after days of silence waiting in the forest. Brilliant. The prolonged drug trip of the teen-agers and the way they come down off it, truthful. The shift in POV in the forest was brilliant. Lav Diaz is reinventing the medium.
I have always wondered about those guys who sell handicrafts on those carts. You may have thought in passing them on the way to Baguio or wherever, that they probably take several days to get to where they have to go. Well, now we know. People who live in the city want everything now, now, now. It's a good exercise to try to slow things down. Pay attention, and then act with purpose when you are sure about what you want.
I wish more people had the balls to just say fuck it to everything else and do what their heart tells them to.
I am learning to do that a little bit each day. Lav Diaz has shown the way, and not just for filmmakers, but all those who create and see it as a lifetime (pre)occupation. Just do what your heart tells you, man.
He is not just a brilliant filmmaker, he is questioning how films are made and viewed. Perhaps we should also rethink the way we do reviews, and why we read them. Why spoonfeed the audience? I prefer not to rely on the reviews or approval given by people from abroad. I am invited to a screening by filmmakers or their friends, and I attend. I don't wait to see first if it's won some award in all the festivals. I see it ahead of most people, so it hasn't done the festival rounds yet. I don't like reading the reviews because I like to enter the theater without any preconceived ideas about the film. I sit and go blank. Waiting to be astonished.
There isn't any Filipino filmmaker alive who is exploring and pushing the form, challenging the audience not to be lazy, the way Lav Diaz is.
Who was the guy who recently sent out an e-mail saying independent cinema in the Philippines is dead? (Siyempre dineadma siya ng community) Was that a call to action or a call for attention? First of all, independent cinema has nothing to do with the funding. In all the arts, if you want a project done your way, you fork out the money, understood. Unless you're a mighty good asslicker and schmoozer, you and your parents will provide the funds. It's about the idea. It is possible to be in the mainstream and use studio resources, as long as you hold on to the integrity of the idea and see it through. And we cannot single out film because it holds true for dance, music, design, theater, architecture, and all the arts.
If you read The Fountainhead, Howard Roark would pay for building works out of his own money, just to realize his idea and keep his integrity. It's the same with film.
Why are we such a lazy audience? I try to attend as many exhibit openings, theater plays, and film premieres as I can ( I get a ton of invites in email and text) and even though I hate schmoozing because it's tiring to weed out who is being sincere and who isn't, all while balancing my glass of wine and pica-pica and making sure I look good in the photo opps, I still make the effort to go. If I didn't get off my lazy ass last Independence Day and didn't go see Indio Nacional, I would've never met JP (much to the chagrin of a few other women who probably wish I hadn't showed up that night, but that's another story).
Have you had to deal with a lingering illness that forces you to do what you need to do before it's too late? This is where Lav Diaz is coming from, the perspective of someone who got a second chance.
I am fortunate to be in love with someone who has a manifesto taped to his wall to remind him everyday he must act now. Not tomorrow. Not when you have the money or the time. Now. Do what you need to do now. And that's not the hurry hurry now of the city people I am talking about. I believe in slowness in appreciating things: like how you appreciate and savor your food, make love, take a long walk, etc. But doing things that matter Now is about a quiet urgency. It should dictate your entire being and permeate your life. Your compass is different from others.
There are the people who live that way who I am very drawn to, and there are the people who don't do things they really want to because of fear. If it means saying No to many people to pursue our selfish passions and try out new things, then so be it. I see that people are happier when they take this advice and tell their bosses to shove it, apply to jobs they really want, and travel to places they have always wanted to go to. They stick to the people they know will stand by them.
Just do what your heart tells you, man.
In reading about Buddhism and in other spiritual writings we learn the law of nature. Fish don't try to swim, they simply swim. You don't try to act happy, you just are. You don't try to breathe. You just breathe.
Lav Diaz doesn't try to be brilliant. He just is.
What an inspiration.

A Journey towards "Heremias" or a story of Four Cities and three Films by Jurij Meden

a journey towards "heremias"
or
a story of four cities and three films

by Jurij Meden

the following lines should not be read as a piece of film criticism ... it is rather a very personal account of a certain, more or less chance journey through a cinematic landscape created by lav diaz. now for all of you who don't know who mr. diaz is: he is, simply put, one of the most interesting and perhaps even one of the most important filmmakers of our times. of course i have zero intention of convincing you and proving that via this writing – you'll just have to see one of his films by yourself to see that i'm telling the truth – but i do hope that my enthusiasm will be enough to actually convince you of doing so. to be perfectly honest i have had serious intentions of writing something more coherent and perhaps even more relevant, but pressed by the lack of time and a rather scatterbrained state of mind (the sooner i finish the sooner i get to kiss my ladylove again) all i can amount to are the following bits and pieces. but, as i have already said, perhaps still enough to convey my enthusiasm.

my story begins in the rainy spring of 2004 in vienna (austria) when, sitting in a dimly lit restaurant just around the corner of the viennese cinematheque (one of the finest establishments of its kind in europe, by the way) i heard the name of lav diaz mentioned for the first time. a troika of good friends, passionate cinephiles, was discussing their experience of seeing lav diaz' "batang west side" earlier that year in the aforementioned cinematheque. their excitement was thicker than the cigarette smoke above our heads and this in spite of the fact that we had each already plowed through at least one box of cigarettes that evening. strangely enough i wasn't able to gather anything specific from their passionate exchange. they all seemed to have reserved a special place in their hearts for "batang west side" but i learned (or perhaps remembered ... as the cigarettes weren't our only poisonous pleasure that night) practically nothing apart from the fact that the film is of filipino origin, more than five hours long and a certifiable masterpiece.

enough at least to remember the title and its creator and be on the lookout in the days to come.

i didn't have to wait long. an opportunity offered itself by the end of the same year when "batang west side" was shown in zagreb (croatia) as one of the highlights of the local human rights film festival (again, one of the finest establishments of its kind in europe, by the way). the screening was announced with little pomp ... still a respectable number of people showed up and filled almost half of the large venue. well, i didn't and don't want to sound cynical, but i nevertheless suspected that most of the people came only to satisfy their curiosity over this monstrously large piece of work ... fully prepared to bail out as soon as the mechanics would reveal themselves. following my good friends' heartfelt recommendations i was not only determined to sit through the film but to recognize it as a masterpiece. still not being entirely sure of myself (had a long, cold and sleepless week behind me) i smuggled a bottle of cognac inside to keep me alert and warm through the evening. i could have easily done without it. "batang west side" fulfilled all the sky-high expectations and upgraded them into a truly unique cinematic experience. where was the catch?

"batang west side" tells a gripping story of how history is never something you can completely escape from ... but needs to be studied, digested, dealt with and incorporated into the present in order to make that same present function in a manner worth living it at all. history as a concept both personal and national ... which is not to say that the two aspects are not irrevocably entangled. an universal truth, that is, but diaz makes the experience special through his very own visual vocabulary and storytelling abilities. it is not an easy task, after all, to hold the viewers' attentions for over five hours straight (diaz insists – and justifiably so – that all his films should be experienced in a single sitting), especially if you are operating with a small army of fully fleshed characters, each treated with equal care and concern ... but diaz succeeds smoothly. it is above all this care, the director's immense love for his characters and their situations (filipinos in new jersey haunted by their pasts, struggling to assemble their identities) that blesses the film with an almost palpable sense of urgency, passion and importance. stuff that transcends any spatial and temporal boundaries and borders, the magic evidenced only in the works of the greatest: dostoevsky, dylan, dreyer ... and now diaz. love that trusts, love that respects, love that understands and, above all, love that never loses hope, no matter how harsh the circumstances. as a wise man put it: the pessimism or reason assumes the necessity of the optimism of will.

oh, and did i mention that nobody left the hall during that screening in zagreb?

a month later, in january of 2005, i traveled to rotterdam (the netherlands) to attend the european premiere of lav diaz' latest work "evolution of a filipino family" which took place during the international film festival rotterdam. the festival organizers were obviously unaware of the importance of this event ... how else could one explain the fact that they held the first out of the two screenings of this more than ten hours long film in a tiny blackbox equipped only with chairs made of friggin' wood! the few excited spartans who knew in advance that we were up for a treat – comfortable chairs or not – had no luck convincing the unconsecrated to give it a shot. some were disgusted by the film's length, others made fun of it, most kept rationalizing that in case of going for it one would miss five or even six other films which is apparently an inexcusable thing to do at the film festival. in vain we kept assuring them that "evolution" is probably worth any five or six other films ... that this screening here is an unique opportunity and that any hesitations related to the film's length can be nothing but a stupid prejudice forced upon us by the centenary rule of evil ideology equaling cinema with (nothing but) entertainment. a prejudice lav diaz buries in a single sentence: "for many /length/ is an issue. but not an issue anymore if we remember that there are small and large canvases; brief ditties and lengthy arias; short stories and multi-volume novels; the haiku and the iliad. this should be the end of the argument." indeed!

but if people consciously want to deprive themselves of great new things just because of such trivial things such a certain film's duration then that's their problem and not ours and there's not really much we can do about it ... as long as they let others do what they please. although it is more than just a bit sad to see that curiosity is becoming such a rare commodity nowadays. anyway, back to the stuff that matters: "evolution of a filipino family". needless to say, our man diaz delivered once again. delivered big time. over a decade in the making, "evolution" covers sixteen turbulent years in the life of a rural filipino family: from the declaration of police state by the notorious marcos in 1971 up until the fall of the dictatorship in 1987 (you can correct me if i'm wrong ... not really an expert on filipino political history you are reading here). thematically and temporarily "evolution" functions as a prequel to "batang west side" (reasons behind migrations to the states), but on a level of filmmaking and ambition it pushes all the qualities of the previous film into a yet-unseen dimension.

the whole issue of history as a looming menace that needs to be wrestled with in order to unearth true answers to all the whats and the whys and the hows and the whos is approached even more zealously and on a larger scale here. it's not only the history itself that is being subjected to a revolutionary treatment, even more important are diaz' attempts to redefine the usual patterns of representing history within the medium of cinema. he is interested in the notion of cultural identity as an imposed product of modernistic discourse violently opposing tradition as something archaic, something that craves to be deconstructed. but diaz understands that it is precisely this discourse that needs to be deconstructed, tamed and established on fresh grounds ... grounds that neglect and belittle no one and nothing on principle ... grounds that bear fruit along the lines of that famous pasolini's ascertainment: the scandalous revolutionary power of the past.

with equal revolutionary thoroughness diaz expands his modus operandi on a technical level of storytelling. if "batang west side" presented us with multiple characters within a relatively short and mostly linear time span and limited space, "evolution" in this regard literally explodes in all possible and impossible directions while constantly, as if by some miracle, remaining perfectly clear, comprehensible, suspenseful and engaging. the number of characters is at least tripled (and we are still talking people here, as complicated and complex as they get, never sketches, stereotypes or sidekicks); as the family disintegrates the space multiplies accordingly; on top of everything the story keeps shifting back and forth in time. but not a single one of the many cuts and cracks in space and time is there to achieve any particular, immediate effect. they never function as a cheap trick, never as a simple flash-back or a flash-forward, never in accordance to some rigid, established rules of scriptwriting or dramaturgy ... instead they represent the primordial, archetypical rules of any kind of poetic expression ... always in tune only with its own deeper meaning, a stubborn quest for truth in this case. a quest fully aware that no actual road leads to truth; that the road itself is the truth. in its volume and ambition the "evolution" recalls nothing that was ever done in cinema before, its nearest cousin being "the brothers karamazov" ...

diaz also makes a significant step forward in terms of visual representation. if shots in "batang west side" were carefully framed and organized together to the point that on top of all the verbal exchange almost each and every one of them expressed vital new layers of information and emotion solely through the visuals ... then "evolution" retains this principle but upgrades it with a very special understanding of time. almost every shot in "evolution" is a sequence by itself. these shots are long, very often lasting for more than ten minutes, but this formula is not used as some generic aesthetic device designed to convey some mystical somber meanings (as is often the case with lesser filmmakers). instead this technique springs in a perfectly natural and organic way from the treated subject matters themselves: the endless struggles, the long voyages, the steady rhythms of everyday existences. i often realized that i'm not watching your usual chopped-up narration but a very different (more truthful as bazin would have put it) approach to reality only five minutes into the take, sometimes even later, when the shot would suddenly end and make one aware of the breathtaking splendor that has just ceased to exist.

so, to make a long story short or at least shorter: yes, "evolution of a filipino family" is a masterpiece beyond any known major achievements in film history and if you ask me, the day is somewhere out there – perhaps not near but that's not really important – when it shall be officially recognized and hailed as such. we just need to keep screening it and keep talking about it and keep thinking about it and keep learning from it which is not really asking for much, right? after all, it's only us and the world who can gain, period.

not quite finished with the story, though.

a year and a half has passed and it is already the late spring of 2006. we are in izola (slovenia), an ancient small seaside town which hosts a lovely little film festival every may ever since 2004 entitled simply the isola cinema film festival. isola means island in italian, italian being the second official language in izola aka isola. but the name also perfectly rounds up the festival's policy of being an island, a resort for filmmakers and their films from all over the world that otherwise remain (unjustifiably so) overlooked, neglected or drowning in the sea of stupid commercial imperatives and stiffness of prevailing film discourse. it was right here that lav diaz had decided to show the eight hour cut (or was it nine? maybe eleven? i don't remember anymore but why care ...) of "heremias", his latest work-in-progress and the conclusion of the trilogy probing into his nation's soul which begins with "evolution of a filipino family" and continues with "batang west side". i later learned that "heremias" itself was to be split into two parts and that the work-in-progress on display in izola was actually the completed first part.

anyway ... walking into the theatre again with nothing but highest expectations, i crawled out again with trembling knees and all those expectations completely shattered and surpassed in ways unimaginable. holy diaz! truth be told, i was expecting the director to steadily progress in the direction indicated by the gap between "batang" and "evolution", meaning primarily an even more elaborate, complex storytelling in the vein of all the sprawl and the buzz and the riches of "evolution". what we get here is equally impressive(!), yet reduced to the very naked bare bones of cinematic expression in all possible meanings of the word. instead of a mass of key characters we get one and one only: lonely old farmer heremias. instead of rivers of words we get silence, silence and more silence; heremias barely speaks and the dialogues in general are reduced to the minimum. instead of multiple spaces we get but one: space around heremias who practically never drops from our line of sight. instead of fragmented time we remain linear here: time progresses strictly hand in hand with heremias' journey across his patria. long lasting shots grow into immensely long lasting shots, taking sometimes up to an hour while retaining that invisible quality and the feel of organic spontaneity described already above. perhaps most impressive is the fact that in spite of its totally stripped down nature film still manages to hold one's attention absolutely and without tolerating a single blink (not that one would have any desire to blink at any long time at all). because there still remains much and what remains is important.

what remains is actually something that was very much present also in both previous film. it's just that it doesn't have to shine through the surface here anymore because now it's embedded into every single grain of every single frame, into every single second and every single chirp on the soundtrack, into every single step an every single gesture heremias makes. what remains is a desperate – yet never despairing – search for truth and justice in an untruthful and unjust world. put even simpler: search for an answer to that fundamental question behind any human striving: what does it mean to be human? what does it mean to be a human being?
"heremias" doesn't just pose that question in such a clear and resolute way that one starts gasping for breath in amazement ... much like being fronted with the pyramids, the ocean or the love of your life for the first time in life ... it embodies this question with every fiber of its existence, reminding one, anyone, what cinema, what art, what life is really about. we can't ask for more, can we?

so thank you lav.

Heremias Book 1 Fil Review by: Olaf Moller

Heremias (Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess)

By Olaf Moller

After Batang West Side, his first complete work with a non commercial running time (The criminal of barrio conception as well as Jesus, revolutionary had had epic incarnations, the producer and Diaz had fights about it); after Batang West Side and with Evolution on the mind and a DV Camera in the hand Diaz began to talk again and again about a Filipino trilogy, where the different parts belong together without being connected by characters or stories, three films that stand for themselves and that overtop alone and together all ordinary filmmaking.
Messinian modernity, monochromatique meditations, grow out of the mud of the fields,( now follows Olaf Möllers own language, I can’t translate J)….)
an aesthetique measured by the life of peasants and beggars and shepard’s and pilgrims and driving sales persons…and…
Diaz didn’t know how this should look like. He would only find out while working on the actual film.The films-post Batang West Side (which followed the shooting script exactly), should develop organically from the topic and from the concrete situation.
Each of the film would become a model, three different stories, the exile, the home, the search, three different forms according to their needs.
…
Evolution got his singular form only in the editing process. Diaz thought for a very long time he would tell the story about a peasant family during the Marcos time chronologically. When he began to edit the film like that, he discovered that there was more to the images and humans than only the story. Its form should be different from classical narration. A highly complex knot, a mosaic. Each scene, an autonomous segment. Image to image and sound to sound bonds, free from all psychology, like weeping about the historical non-development of the Philippines. Also a requiem, carried by a vision, that a strong will is absolutely necessary to change circumstances of life.
The time and with it the story is moving forwards, because it cant help it, but the dead will rise one day, their bodies untouched by the time. Past, present and future stand unmerciful next to each other, tell and comment on different levels of reality. References are layered like materials, memories of the painter Juan Luna and Jose Rizal arise, on their visions and pictures.

In Heremias you only recognize later, hours later, how certain memories, fragments and moments relate to each other, narrative, on the chronology of the events.
The moments could stand on their own too, the story thinks it differently: A last change/shift in the last scene, a last story, and our mind is confronted one more time, because everything is different now, with the film.
A last creation of the mind and the character is there: Jean Vigo died, it is written as an epitaph, the director Tikyo Aguiluz named the Philippines according to the last state of emergency a bad remake of Evolution of a Filipino family.
A whole part of evolution was lost while editing: the beginning that was shot already in 1994 on 16mm. It is the story of the sailor Ray Gallardo who stranded in the US, remembering his home. It is a 5hour ghost story, which Diaz wants to tell one day as well, but first of all Heremias must be finished, because it is there, as material, as a once thrown-away effort, to the Philippines from exile, to tell the perspective of fleeing and searching, which doesn’t work, as Diaz found out, when he returned home with his material from the states, where he lived on the early 90s.
A paradox, that the Philippines refuse to be told out of exile, where the distance what means exile most of the time, is such an important trait of the country. In exile there’s the beginning of the Philippines, which stories were told and written by wanderers, emigrants and exile’s, who didn’t all return. Diaz did return, after years of unfinished films. The real subject of the story of evolution, their narrator, was dissolving more and more in the editing- The subject was banned, sacrificed. In his place steps a polyphony of voices and stories.
The Philippines and its people should be only the memories of one human and now they are there and remember themselves.
(The story of Batang West side….)
Batang West Side is Lav Diaz last film shot on film and in colour, the distances between things gloom and sparkle. But he cares about that in every images there is something edgy, but only for a moment, so that you don’t lose yourself in the film
The black and white make tabula rasa. Another quality of beauty is defined.
….

After a mind blowing masterpiece, a film from éclat ant individuality, a cine-earthy epiphany, we always ask ourselves what would follow next when it is obvious that this masterpiece has fulfilled already everything, that could be done...If things reached a kind of perfection and a definite peak, what then?
Something else, another kind of density, a vast field, another peak, steeper, sharper…more radical.
…
What is left over to tell after the epos of exile in Batang West Side and the epos of home in evolution? The epos about what connects exile and home. It is the story of someone seaking sense, a pilgrim, should he `meet`God.

....
In Heremias there is so far no past and no future, no memories and no documents, no references and no layers of time nor changes of materials, but perhaps there`s a miracle.
In Heremias there`s only the presence and the path of a single individual shown with slow moments in time- plan-opak-monochrome sound moving pictures.
Listen. Sketch the sound through the silence of sound/such that the syntax of nothing becomes speech. Says Ciriol F. Bautista in Sunlight on Broken Stones.
After the incredible breathtaking complex woven structure of Evolution of a Filipino family one really has to point out how simple Heremias Book One is. It is only about what will be. Heremias moves into the unknown.
Heremias does have a past. A former incarnation who carried the same name, but younger was at the end of the 80s hero of a TV series Balintataw, invented by Diaz also to free his mind of his Polio disease when he was eight, a prisoner of his body, when he had to learn again what the disease took from him.
But the remains of the disease stayed with him, memories that materialized and memories that changed their meaning, mutated and became invasions and the Philippines within Heremias the old one is imprisoned now.
Perhaps Heremias has a twin-sister. There`s an unfinished documentary named Nights of Alice, where he presented a first cut in 1994, she was like the female Heremias in US exile.
Already the first image of Heremias, even more powerful than in evolution sets a measure:
For minutes and minutes a bunch of carriers is coming closer along a winding road, until they disappear again. Cars drive through, pass by, they are too quick for the image, they vanish into pixel. Only the carriers in their slowness don`t vanish, their picture, their wholeness, their figures stay, they don`t have after effects, they just stay. The image is grey, although dusk is coming soon, It is the mysterious grey that also manifests in evolution, a grey that tells from absence… It swallowed something and is constantly swallowing something, the pictures become vacuum zones, in which everything dissolves, vanishes.
There are only wide shots, long shots and medium long shots in Heremias.. close ups are the extreme. Every image has a tension although it dissolves in every corner, it is free, more and more created by the wish to see, as by the surface. Everything is calm, the grey is tranquillising, at peace, the slowness, it is the image that creates, it gives the world the time it needs, a place with meaning and the necessity of art. When the rain changes the picture into a flowing darkness, a transparency as dense as rush that you cannot see anymore, than you know that there is a great danger. Total terror in the police station. Brutality in concrete, dictatorship of the 90degree, the human being, a prisoner of his own power, ability.
When the images become a bit rotten and you can feel cramps in the movements, too late, but Heremias is no longer his master of his life, is the light sometimes uninteresting and the composition vague, not fulfilled you see the slow decay of Heremias, a symptom of his downfall.
It is also an expression of rejection. Diaz seems to let the film collapse, something brakes, what cannot be fixed again., as if the limitedness of the film is not enough, the illness and decay need the same power than health and beauty and perfection

It is in such a moment that Heremias is challenging God.. In evolution the unstableness of the quality of the pictures get a dialectical dimension, also because of the time layers that are hidden in it, the different periods of shooting, the different materials...this own eternity within changes.
In Heremias they have something purely physical, like spots on a stomach, or blisters, an expression of exhaustion, the duration of things, their limitedness.
For the first hours Diaz doesn’t move the camera, only when Heremias is separating from the others, the camera moves too, something changes.
His life, it will be different, more complicated, therefore also the act of telling must be different, soon there will be subjective view, in it misery.

With such an subjective view Heremias is finding an apotheosis, a plan sequence for about an hour, one Mini DV tape, only for this shot. Heremias is watching a bunch of youngsters, like in a rite words and metaphors circle, words and words of disgust, without goal, words of social dislocation, drifting.
We can hear the persons that bring themselves into a state, lose themselves in moments.

Diaz who is with them in the ruins carefully pays attention to their words, that they repeat themselves, vary and reach a certain point in the improvisation, the camera films more the building than the actors. The performance is primarily for the sound, the opposite to the passages of silence, where we only listen to the sound of the wind, the leafs, the raindrops, a slow silence.

Lav Diaz' Heremias Book 1 (Ang Alamat ng Prinsesang Bayawak)

CineManila's Closing film Heremias Book 1 Ang Alamat ng Prinsesang Bayawak was shown in Greenbelt 1 last November 15, 2007 Wednesday.



Comments anyone?