Heremias - Lav Diaz
3 January 2008If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Nine hours and I was glued to my seat as I watched the world premier (final cut) of Lav Diaz’s Heremias, Unang Aklat: Ang Alamat ng Prinsesang Bayawak (Heremias, Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess) as the closing film of the 2006 Cinemanila International Film Festival held in Makati City. Whew! That was the longest movie I’ve watched but this still is an hour short of his other work, Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (2004) which clocks in at 10 hours but 4 hours more than his other critically acclaimed Batang West Side (2002). I really don’t know what to expect from a Lav Diaz work as I wasn’t really able to catch the other two. The lead actor, Ronnie Lazaro, was present as well as Tikoy Aguiluz, the festival director introduced the film while Lav was at the projection room.
Heremias, a handicrafts salesman, transports his wares on an ox-pulled cart between Metro Manila and a small provincial town in the north with other like salesmen, trudging slowly along its way. The circumstances of his life are not outlined and you would not know what really is eating him up or his disposition as he’s oftentimes deep in thought, silent, not joining his companions or not eating with them. But you would learn that it might be a very deep problem as he doesn’t want to go back to his barrio anyore. Alas and illogically, he decides to separate on his own to the consternation of his friends. This decision sends him to a separate road, a path his group haven’t been to before, a barrio called Hapon (Japanese) that has a storied past going back to WWII. There he finds shelter in an abandoned house one stormy night.
A mystery man appears. Three men come for shelter and they have a drink. He sleeps and the next day, his cow is gone along with his goods and his cart burned. This incident and his helplessness dealing with the village chief and the town’s policeman spurs him to try to catch the perpetrator himself by hiding in the forest just a stone’s throw from the abandoned house.
One night, while still hiding and observing the house, a group of drug addicted youths come where they drank, doped and hatched a plot to kidnap a girl and rape her. Shocked with this, he visits the nearest town the next day and tells the policeman and a priest about what he had discovered. Unfortunately, they were both resentful and also afraid considering that they will then be dealing with the son of the town’s congressman. As he finds himself in the forest once again, this time bruised and in pain due to the policeman’s brutality, he calls out to God, vowing to sacrifice himself, to walk for 40 days without food. As he says it, if he exists, to spare the soon to be victim’s life and get his instead.
The movie, done in black and white, is painfuly slow such that sometimes its a struggle to keep awake. Even Alexis Tioseco, noted film critic, seated infront of me, dozed off (he has a good interview of the director in his website at criticine). Most of the times, a scene is static. Just like a stage, the actors come and go, doing their stuff; or the caravan of handicrafts slowly winding its way along the road from one end of the frame until the other end, left to right, right to left. The road scenes keep on playing out, always a trudge, always from one visible end to the other end. But then, the cinematography is just beautiful. These static sceneries are a delight to look at, like watching a black and white photo exhibit in a gallery. The viewer’s eyes are forced to move around the frame, study the different elements that make up the scene, the way the blades of cogon (a type of grass) move when blown by the wind or admire the parched and bald landscape that is typically Philippine countryside.
The film is not for everyone or the traditional audience who wants the movie going experience to be handed on a silver platter. It takes a lot of patience of watching Heremias. The viewer would be hard pressed to understand his actions at first but, as the film progresses, one will learn to empathize with him. The tedium of the film might be overpowering at times but one is rewarded with a unique experience. Even at the end of the movie, you would be anticipating the next installment.
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