Because I enjoy the regional texture of multiple voices speaking on one film, my thanks go out to Philippine critic Richard Bolisay for allowing me to adapt key sections of his Lilok Pelikula review of Yanggaw (Affliction, 2008), which has been programmed into SFIAAFF's retrospective "After Death: Horror Cinema From South East Asia." Richard is especially keen to director Richard Somes' nuanced characterization of the folkloric aswang, in contrast to its more clichéd depiction in low-budget Philippine horror films.
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In Philippine folklore, the aswang is generally used to describe different types of night creatures that feed on human innards and blood. From the popular manananggal and mangkukulam to the werewolves and shapeshifters that vary according to one's regional background, the aswang is understandably a striking and enduring facet of local belief. Suffering from cultural amnesia while continuously striving to achieve Western standards of living, it could be argued that the aswangs are doing Filipinos a favor by sustaining an aspect of their folkloric heritage. Interestingly, this bloodthirsty figure of the aswang remains the most exploited character in Pinoy horror stories, from short pieces of fiction to TV serials, in every Halloween episode of magazine shows and documentaries, as well as in news reports of terror in the provinces. But where else could it be given such esteemed overuse than in cinema? Specifically the annual Metro Manila Film Festival that fosters endless Shake Rattle and Roll flicks that scare less than they frustrate.
What has long been missing in these generic efforts is depth. The aswang's grisly exploits—the number of dead increasing every day; the intestines of children and pregnant women scattered in the fields—have been overexploited. Most filmmakers have failed to give these familiar stories fresh yet unconventional dimensions and only one or two serious filmmakers have embodied these genre films with any sense of maturity. One of the few who has is Richard Somes, whose prior experience in production design has lent a great deal of credibility to his first full-length feature. Somes has subverted the genre's customary and overused narratives to reflect on the harsh realities faced by an aswang's family. He achieves this by slowly building up the tension within the family. At first, they are an ordinary family who live difficult but happy lives in a remote town. Then the daughter becomes afflicted with a poison in her blood stream that makes her crave human flesh. Somes depicts the family's transition from a peaceful to disturbed household as the monster becomes full fledged, escapes through the window, and returns with her hair in wild disarray and her fangs drenched in blood. The family struggles to maintain a sense of normalcy, until the corpses in the town start piling up, until suspicions rise and guilt darkens, until the monster has to be tied up, until the father's ambivalence sets it loose, until the monster begs for its death, until the father decides to slaughter it with a force so severe it turns him into an animal, until every memory of the aswang becomes a nightmare that only the afterlife can erase. The pacing in that critical transition transforms Yanggaw from a lowly, piteous flick into an admirable effort that resuscitates the hackneyed genre.
The acute similarity of horror stories to crime fiction—let's say Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot series—is the emphasis given to murder. Whereas detectives are responsible for bringing justice in accordance with the law by solving clues that come their way, the principal character in horror—the murderer—creates the tension, provides the clues, and wreaks havoc on the community. In thrillers, we uncover the crime bit by bit until we reach the truth; in horror, however, the crime is right there in front of us, demanding our reaction. In this regard, the horror genre assails a psychological blow. Starting from the expected nightmare of the aswang, Yanggaw explores narrative threads revealed through personal relationships, touching upon themes of social betrayal, moral righteousness, and—most importantly—spiritual obedience. Though more the tragedy of a Filipino family—specifically in a town where faith is as unquestionable as the need for food on their table—Yanggaw admirably doesn't press too much on religion. Somehow that helps what happens become more tangible.
Fellow Filipinos will have multiple memories of previous aswang movies. There is no need to cite any specific one because, as any Filipino discovers, the idea is somewhat predictable. Traditionally, the aswang is a stranger, someone in the town whom no one knows much about, and her existence—right now I wish to bring to light the fact that every aswang in every aswang film ever made is a "she"—provokes nothing extraordinary. She is just like everyone, except for her nocturnal quench for blood. She may even be a figure of purity, like Aiko Melendez as the nun in Shake Rattle and Roll IV. Melendez's characterization was a clever twist because it increased her peril as a character, diverting suspicion away to anyone but her. But the usual problem is that the only thing that the story wants to deliver is the scare, the untying of the knot, the exposition and chase scenes often done in the sloppiest way possible. These films are tired excuses that stretch the vestiges of the genre, doing nothing good in particular.
In Yanggaw, however, the aswang is among us, we see her transform, we see her chase children, we see her as she rocks the bed with chains on her arms and legs, we hear her cry and scream, we know her, she is familiar. Somes has made her so recognizable that we forget she is a monster. The aswang has been given a depth of character through her family—her father's decisions and her mother's misgivings—the subsequent terror in the community when she runs loose, even the details of her murder. The illusion becomes truth. Yanggaw prefers depth to schlock, and the longer you watch it the more you realize that it is not so much about the aswang herself but the family that adopts her new persona even as they struggle against it. Once that belief has been suspended, there is really no turning back.
Ronnie Lazaro and Joel Torre don't have to do anything to prove that they are indeed the greatest Philippine actors of our time. Yanggaw makes you feel honored just by their presence. The volleyball game between the two camps has that flinch of unsettling strangeness; it makes the remote town feel even more remote. That it is in Hiligaynon (in an unspecified place somewhere in Panay Island, particularly where aswangs are predominant) does not seem to put any pressure on its mix of professional and new actors; Tetchie Agbayani is regal and utterly convincing. Erik Matti as the violent whip healer is surprisingly effective. Gio Respall and Monet Gaston add credibility to their family's demise. And finally, Aleera Montalla is appallingly menacing, she is the vamp of our nightmares. Claravall and Sacris fashion a distinct eye for visual character, their light and darkness are moving as if they are part of the story themselves.
It is agonizing that this brave trailblazer will be neglected by most. As for my part, I tell you, Yanggaw is peerless. It has a terribly magnetic vision almost close to Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan, the godfather of horror films.
Cross-published on Twitch.
"I wish Francis 'Oggs' Cruz, Richard Bolisay, and Dodo Dayao would get space in the broadsheets, because they're far more interesting than anyone writing there regularly."—Alexis Tioseco, "Wishful Thinking for Philippine Cinema"
When he was a boy, Richard Bolisay's father told him that he had "a peculiar pair of eyes", which no doubt accounts for his meditative gaze into the heart of dreams and—by extension—cinema. A self-described "dreamer from Manila", "Chard" Bolisay administers his own site Lilok Pelikula / Sculpting Cinema, his alternative to a dreamt-of Philippine magazine that would focus on film criticism. Indeed, Lilok Pelikula's intelligent writing seems shaped from the discipline of dreams. In his wistful Criticine "Love Letter" to the films of Mike De Leon, he described Lino Brocka as "a dream fighter of the common people." That word—dream—thrums throughout Bolisay's writing like a bass beat. One senses that this young writer has harnessed the language of dreams to "raid the inarticulate". I am grateful for his willingness to respond to my questions.
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Michael Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Filipino cinema?
"Chard" Bolisay: Sometimes it's distressing that when I read foreign writers writing about Filipino cinema, the very first thing I notice is that they misspell our name. Filipino takes its shape as strangely as Philipino, Philiphino, Philipinno, or even Filiphino. So maybe I would like to make that clear first—it's Filipino. As much as we appreciate interest and admiration, annoyance can't be helped when such carelessness, whether unintentional or not, is committed. When in doubt, anyhow, one can always go for Philippine cinema.
As any national cinema, ours depicts a certain truth about our condition. Themes of poverty and violence are not surprising to see because our society is indeed poor and violent. It is something seen everyday, felt everyday, though not maybe by the filmmakers themselves but by the subjects they choose to tell. That's why local films that tackle such themes gamble on finding an audience. Why see a film of your own life? Why see a film while you can see such poorness on your own without paying for the price of a ticket? (The price which is more than enough to feed a family a day for those who live below poverty line.) There's a reason why Brillante Mendoza, like Kim Ki-duk to South Korea, is not popular in his own country.
Philippine cinema is as diverse as you can imagine: there are serious dramas, poor slapsticks, tried-and-tested romantic comedies, art house orgasms, and—once in a blue moon—interesting historical pieces. Sexually explicit films that were popular in the late '70s and '80s, and that remained steadily in the '90s through Seiko, are being revived now through the popularity of gay films, whose unsurprising number of audience is keeping Philippine cinema a little more of its (rather fittingly) gay life.
Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Lino Brocka?
Bolisay: Lino Brocka is a Filipino filmmaker, as Filipino as the first Filipino may be. He knows the Filipino life, speaks the Filipino language, eats Filipino shit, breathes Filipino fart, fights for Filipino freedom, tells the Filipino experience ... and that doesn't come close to exaggerating his image, or to overrating his merits. Simply put, he is the Filipino that we never feel bad about representing us, no matter how bad he chooses us to be seen. His bad, sometimes, is even far from the others' good.
I am no expert on Brocka but I must say I like his family dramas more than his political pieces that made him an icon of the movement. A matter of taste and upbringing this preference may attribute to, but as I always argue, his family dramas are as political as much as his social realist works are. For instance, Tubog sa Ginto [Dipped in Gold, 1970], which may only pass off now as "the macho man's admission of his possession of a vagina", is practically the most entertaining movie to address homosexual relationships, with all the killer dialogues and naughty framing that Brocka unrelentingly provides. That's the quality of an important filmmaker—relevance not only during his time but even several years, or decades, after.
Guillén: How do you situate yourself within Filipino cinema and Filipino film criticism?
Bolisay: I have always been a lurker, a passive moviegoer. Blogs just happen to be public—and their being public just happens to be fun and interesting, that's why I find myself in it. Other than that I'd still be writing in my journal, cursively, selectively scribbling thoughts. Allow me to share a laugh but that phrase "Filipino film criticism" is just preposterous!
Guillén: If there is one Filipino film that you don't think gets enough attention, what would it be?
Bolisay: Gerry de León's Ang Daigdig ng mga Api gets a lot of attention but only a handful have truly seen it, apparently because no print of it exists. To be honest, it wouldn't be of much help to recommend Filipino titles to foreigners considering, confronted with our own embarrassment, we don't know where to find a decent—more so, English-subtitled—copies of them. That, my dear friends, is where our history always finds itself going: disposed to disappear.
Cross-published on Twitch.
"I wish Francis 'Oggs' Cruz, Richard Bolisay, and Dodo Dayao would get space in the broadsheets, because they're far more interesting than anyone writing there regularly."—Alexis Tioseco, "Wishful Thinking for Philippine Cinema"
According to Dodo Dayao's MySpace page, he is 102 years old and chasing pavements. He further describes himself as "writer, filmmaker, infrequent painter, random komikero [i.e., comic book enthusiast], heartthrob in a past life, monkey gone to heaven." We should all be so prolific. Not only does he administer two film sites—Is It Safe? and Piling Piling Pelikula—but, he's a team contributor to Geeks United, Korean Bug and Unspoken Cinema.
In similar collaborative spirit, his oil paintings have been featured in group exhibitions at various galleries in the Philippines (examples can be seen at Quezon City's West Gallery website as part of three group shows: "12x9", "Them!" and "2010: The Year We Make Contact"). He's also collaborated with Khavn dela Cruz as "translator" on such films as Ang dagat na nalulunod (The Drowning Sea, 2008). His film writing—especially as reflected at Piling Piling Pelikula—is hot with incendiary irreverence. I find his poetic insights brave, searing and addictive. It's no wonder that Alexis Tioseco wished him a wider audience and I'm delighted that he was quick to respond to my set of email questions.
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Michael Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Filipino cinema?
Dodo Dayao: That it's not all social realism and exoticized poverty. That it is multi-colored and many-flavored and more often than not—especially these days—goes on adventures. And that there's more where all this came from.
Guillén: What do you want San Francisco audiences to understand about Lino Brocka?
Dayao: That Brocka made around 65 movies and only around 10 of them have been elevated to the canon. And that the films that didn't make it to the canon—the melodramas, the comedies, the pop films—demand as much investigation, possibly even more, than those that did. Canons are moldy and rigid and play it safe and are no fun at parties anyway. I always thought cinema should be the opposite of all these (especially the part about being fun at parties).
Guillén: How do you situate yourself within Filipino cinema and Filipino film criticism?
Dayao: I'm a fan first, a writer second and a critic a distant third. I abandon myself to tone and voice and color, to energy of language and blood in the pulse and the beating to a pulp of all anonymity and objectivity. Cinema is all about wading knee-deep in the mud and getting your feet dirty and sometimes your heart broken. And I always thought film writing—or any kind of writing for that matter—should be as vivid and fervent and as misbehaved and as given over to the moment, not dry like a dissertation. Also, would-be film reviewers should at least know basic grammar. But there should be more film writers, if only to amp the volume of discourse. There are very few of us and the ones that are doing good work—and there are a good number of these already, mind—are either people I know or have met. I want to someday be swept off my feet with awe and envy by a complete stranger's piece. All this, of course, most likely situates me in the margins—which is really where I prefer to be.
Guillén: If there is one Filipino film that you don't think gets enough attention, what would it be?
Dayao: A trick question, as there can never be just one. But for now, let me just say that Joey Gosiengfiao's masterpiece is not Temptation Island (1980) as the world seems to think; it's Bomba Star (1980).
Cross-published on Twitch.
"What a title!" Michael Hawley quipped regarding the 1974 film Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting), one of the four films featured in the Lino Brocka mini-retrospective that comprises part of the focus on Filipino and Filipino American cinema in the 28th edition of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF).
The title is a Biblical reference to the Book of Daniel 5:1-31, wherein the last Babylonian king Belshazzar holds a feast at which sacred vessels confiscated from Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem are used to drink wine and further profaned when the revelers toast to the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. Suddenly, a mysterious hand appears and writes on the chamber wall "mene mene tekel upharsin", which defies interpretation until the prophet Daniel interprets it to read "you have been weighed and found wanting." This Biblical story is the source of the popular idiom "the writing on the wall" as a euphemism for impending doom that is so obvious only a fool would not see it coming. It also provides the origin for the similar expression "your days are numbered."
You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting lays out its impending doom in the film's opening sequence: a sepia-saturated flashback wherein an albularyo (traditional/folk medicine practitioner) performs an abortion on Kuala (Lolita Rodriguez), as the baby's father Cesar (Eddie Garcia) restrains her and covers her mouth to silence her cries. An example of feticide and not pro-choice—Kuala having been clearly coerced—the sight of her aborted fetus drives Kuala insane. Cesar then abandons Kuala to her fate as the village's scabrous idiot as he persists as an incurable lecher.
When Neil Young caught a revival screening of Weighed and Found Wanting at the 2009 Viennale, he reported to The Auteurs that Brocka considered his commercially successful eighth feature his "first novel", which prompted Young to envision "the sprawling nineteenth century fictions of George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell when watching this humanistic exploration of small-town prejudice, one which covers pretty much every stratum of society while relating a melodramatic, almost soap-opera-like story of sexual hypocrisy, abortion, jealousy and young love. As usual with Brocka, happiness is elusive and short-lived, and to be a sensitive or sympathetic individual is to be doomed to misery and/or death. But while the ending is typically downbeat, Brocka does offer a glint or two of optimism—for which, given the starkly grim finales of most of his oeuvre, we must be grateful."
Noel Vera—a writer and programmer based in the Philippines, and author of Critic After Dark: A Review of Philippine Cinema (2005), named after his influential blog—has contributed an informative profile of Lino Brocka ("Lino Brocka: The Heart of Philippine Cinema", abbreviated from a longer version) for the festival's program along with capsules for the four Brocka films in the retrospective. Of Weighed and Found Wanting, he synopsizes: "You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting was Brocka's rare attempt to do melodrama on a large-scale canvas; it's a panoramic view of society in a small provincial town, from its wealthiest citizen to its most wretched outcast. The film seems inspired by several sources: Federico Fellini's 1953 I Vitelloni, for one (the sensitive youth who leaves town to come back a celebrated artist), and also Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 The Last Picture Show (the mysterious older man who turns out to be the catalyst and mentor for the youth's transformation into manhood). Two other sources I should cite: 
José Rizal's social-reform novel Noli Me Tangere, which is the source for the mother (driven insane by the loss of her child) and her leprous husband, and also Brocka's own life: the town where he filmed was the same one he lived in as a bastard child. Mario O'Hara wrote the script from a story idea by Brocka, and gives a great performance as Berto, the leper. The film was both a critical and commercial success when it came out in 1974; it began the '70s golden age in earnest, and remains one of the period's key films."
Both Vera's profile of Brocka and the program capsule are abbreviated from earlier versions that expand in intricate detail the role Weighed and Found Wanting had in establishing Brocka's career in the mid-'70s and his eventual influence on Philippine cinema. "Tinimbang," Vera wrote in his earlier review, "was like a rock flung through a plate-glass window; the film was a herald call, officially the first in what was to be called the '70s Golden Age of Philippine Cinema."
After having abandoned Kuala, Cesar becomes one of the richest men in his village and sires a son Junior (Christopher de Leon in his first role). At first, Junior takes pleasure in all the privileges provided by his family's social position—an opulent home, popularity, good looks, a girlfriend who's the prettiest girl in town (shades of Cybil Shephard!)—but, then his pleasure curdles. His father reveals himself as a lecherous philanderer, his mother a hectoring shrew, his girlfriend fools around with another boy and is summarily married off, and his friends prove to be louts. Junior's perspective shifts and he recognizes everyone around him as "ignoramuses, hypocrites, spiritual grotesques", except for the town's outcasts—deranged Kuala and the leprous Berto—who he befriends, despite his father's admonitions. The film ends, Vera synopsizes, "with Junior acting out the action described by the film's title—he stares at every town folk in the eye, judges them, and finds them all wanting"; a dramatic moment helped enormously by the broad canvas and large ensemble Brocka employed to create his melodramatic epic.
Vera contextualizes that Brocka was essentially telling his life's story, drawing from his memories of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, and of the people there. "Junior was Brocka—the sensitive young man, disillusioned with the status quo and yearning for something different, something more; he was also Milagros [Laurice Guillen], the politician's bastard (Brocka himself was the illegitimate child of a political figure). You might say that the secret behind Brocka's intensity, behind his close identification with the outcast and oppressed, was that he himself was an outcast—painful knowledge that would make him more open to the plight of others, to fellow outcasts in life."
This is especially apparent in the sideshow narrative of the effeminate teacher who makes unsuccessful passes at Junior and is shown prissily skirting puddles during a rain shower. This makes the young men laugh and—relating the image to Berto—Junior says it was funny to watch a man acting like a woman. Berto does not bite. Instead, he asks Junior if he would laugh at Kuala for her idiocy or himself for his leprosy? As these two outcasts have been pictured as two of the most decent people in the film, the effeminate homosexual is thereby aligned with decency. For 1974, this was an amazingly brave alignment on Brocka's part.
In broad, overly-assured strokes Kane Wheatley-Holder reduces the psychological complexity of Weighed and Found Wanting to a socio-political allegory of resistance: the common man against the Marcos regime. I, however, prefer the more nuanced insights offered by Richard Bolisay at his site Lilok Pelikula. Bolisay observes that Brocka's filmmaking was "driven by his force and brilliance as a political observer than as a political activist" and warns against erroneously boxing him "into a solely political filmmaker which he isn't. His films show many faces of politics, and not just the one that drives people into streets to protest." Differentiating even further, Bolisay writes: "Filmmakers are not just makers of film. They are also makers of political discussion. It is like saying writers just write, they don't think. Brocka … made films not only to depict the tumultuous years of the Marcos regime and its after effects but also to awaken the minds of the people by not just being political, but by being real and honest. The seventies and the eighties were the years of unrest, but not all films made during those decades were expressions of dissent."
Junior's story and his climactic act of judgment (resistance?) is not, however, what Vera finds to be the film's true point of interest. As type, Junior "is hardly original" and joins "a gallery of small-town youths who learn about disillusion and heartbreak." What's more, Vera characterizes Junior as "something of a self-righteous prig—de Leon plays him as if he's too good for the likes of his father and those hypocritical grannies. It's a superior stance too easily assumed; you feel he hasn't quite earned the right to do so." Vera criticizes de Leon's performance as "downright thin." No, the film's presiding power lies in "the intense yet simply told story of love found at the bottom of the world" between the town's most miserable inhabitants: the homeless lunatic Kuala and the leprous Berto, nearly lunatic himself in his loneliness. Vera considers that O'Hara may have written the best role for himself and mentions in his Senses of Cinema appreciation of Mario O'Hara: "In Brocka and O'Hara's treatment of the character, you see a rare (for Brocka's films) ambiguity—Berto in his loneliness and sexual hunger is a somewhat frightening presence; when he first looks at Kuala, it is with a predatory glint in his eye. We later learn of Berto's true nature—shy, sensitive (or rather, oversensitive), full of an affection for others that he doesn't dare express. It's a fascinating character, especially as Brocka had asked O'Hara to play him; O'Hara agreed, and does a magnificent job. Which is as it should be, because as people in the know put it, he was really playing himself." Vera concludes: "Rodriguez and O'Hara make the relationship that blossoms between them effortless, yet utterly real—Rodriguez as Kuala responding to Berto's attentions hungrily, even greedily (the way a child would); O'Hara as Berto suddenly finding himself functioning as guardian and father as well as lover. The couple are the most successful evocation of love in any of Brocka's films, I think, and by far the most moving."
Mario O'Hara and Lolita Rodriguez had worked together on an earlier Brocka film Stardoom (1971), which Vera describes as "a Jacobean melodrama (with great performances by Rodriguez as the backstage mother, and O'Hara as the unwanted son)", and later portrayed lovers again in Gumising Ka, Maruja (Awaken, Maruja, 1978), "Brocka's rare (and for the first half, well-made) gothic ghost story."
Vera likewise raises a provocative critique of Brocka, observing that the "intense identification he felt towards his characters is the foremost virtue of his storytelling; at the same time, [that] it was his biggest vice. If he had a tendency to like certain characters—to get under their skin and look through their eyes—he also had an equal tendency to shut others out—to condemn and deny them their full measure of understanding." He argues that Brocka has wasted the potential characterizations of Cesar and Milagros. After her seduction of Junior, Milagros simply vanishes from the film, Vera complains, "And you miss her; you want to know what happened to her, how she ultimately fared after her one-night stand with Junior." Eddie Garcia's Cesar "could have been a crucial role in the film, the correlative to de Leon's Junior—where Junior is a young innocent waking up to compassion, Cesar could have been an aged hedonist haunted by it, mirror images lit from different angles." These two characters "fall on the borderline that separates those who deserve Brocka's condemnation and those who deserve his compassion; they are either swept to one side of the border or forgotten, and the film's complexity suffers as a result."
03/15/10 UPDATE: Watching Lino Brocka's You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (1974) a second time projected and with an audience revealed a palpable discomfort with Brocka's melodramatic style (reminiscent of the overblown melodramatics of Sirk or Fassbinder). Though Dave Kehr noted at the New York Times that this "broadly popular cinema of sex and soap opera transformed itself into a vehicle for strong social commentary and a political force to be reckoned with" and further observed that "Brocka seems less interested in psychosexual conflict for its own sake than as a reflection of the inequalities and injustices at the base of the Philippine system", the SFIAAFF audience didn't seem to quite know how to take the film's histrionics.
Though writing about a separate Philippine film, Noel Vera's description of the audience reception applies equally here: "They were laughing throughout much of the film, but it wasn't easy, derisory laughter; if anything, it was a terse release of tension, the kind of laughter you hear from someone fully aware he should know better but feels nervous, nevertheless." This was especially apparent in the scene with the gay schoolteacher (YouTube segment 11, below), which elicited the loudest laughter. Knowing how this scene was a set-up for Junior's conversation with Berto in the next, I was amused by how the SFIAAFF audience became quiet and contrite once they realized that Brocka was chiding them for being complicit in ridiculing the effeminate gay man. This is a complicated dynamic, however, which raises a distinction between laughing at someone at their expense as opposed to laughing with someone in the sense of sharing a cultural in-joke. In the 35+ years that gay liberation has fought for its place at the table since Brocka filmed You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting, it would be absurd to assert that an effeminate male no longer elicits laughter—as, conceivably, any gender reversal elicits laughter—but, arguably that laughter has shifted in degree away from cruel judgment to savvy bemusement or—to a certain extent—a kind of "you go, girl" identification? The audience reaction to these two hinged scenes underscores a certain timeliness to Brocka's film that otherwise might be perceived as "dated." The struggle for human dignity among the marginalized remains timeless.
On second viewing, I also noticed the manner in which Brocka juxtaposed Catholic iconography—primarily images of Jesus—as backdrops against which the hypocrisy of his characters becomes silhouetted. This is especially noticeable in the film's opening flashback where Cesar reacts to Kuala's aborted fetus. He's positioned in front of a painting of the compassionate heart of Jesus. One visually absorbs Brocka's criticism of patriarchal veracity. Further, there's a distinct alignment of the film's narrative trajectory with the Catholic ritual calendar, particularly apparent with Kuala's baby being born during the Christmas season.
You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting is available on Netflix. Otherwise, it's available on YouTube in subtitled segments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.
03/16/10 UPDATE: Noel Vera and I have been exchanging comments on Facebook regarding Brocka and this film. He's synopsized our conversation at his site Critic After Dark. Essentially—based upon Berto's query to Kuala if that was her "real name"—I asked Vera if Kuala's name had a hidden meaning? He came up with this: "Might add that looking around, the name 'Kuala' might have some significance, other than being an unusual name for a Filipina, means in both Malay and Indonesian 'estuary,' that muddy region of a river where fresh water merges with salt water. Certainly Kuala in the film might be considered by the men in town 'muddy' or unclean goods, and that she represents a mix of innocent and hedonist (a hedonist rendered innocent by insanity), age and youth, mother and whore."
That's a fascinating riff, whether O'Hara/Brocka meant it or not. Unaware of linguistic demographics in the Philippines, it makes me further wonder if a Malay/Indonesian name for the character of Kuala would further set her apart and characterize her as an outsider? I wonder how integrated the Malay/Indonesian languages are in Philippine culture?
Cross-published on Twitch.
Because I enjoy the regional texture of multiple voices speaking on one film, my thanks go out to Philippine critic Richard Bolisay for allowing me to adapt key sections of his Lilok Pelikula review of Yanggaw (Affliction, 2008), which has been programmed into SFIAAFF's retrospective "After Death: Horror Cinema From South East Asia." Richard is especially keen to director Richard Somes' nuanced characterization of the folkloric aswang, in contrast to its more clichéd depiction in low-budget Philippine horror films.
In Philippine folklore, the aswang is generally used to describe different types of night creatures that feed on human innards and blood. From the popular manananggal and mangkukulam to the werewolves and shapeshifters that vary according to one's regional background, the aswang is understandably a striking and enduring facet of local belief. Suffering from cultural amnesia while continuously striving to achieve Western standards of living, it could be argued that the aswangs are doing Filipinos a favor by sustaining an aspect of their folkloric heritage. Interestingly, this bloodthirsty figure of the aswang remains the most exploited character in Pinoy horror stories, from short pieces of fiction to TV serials, in every Halloween episode of magazine shows and documentaries, as well as in news reports of terror in the provinces. But where else could it be given such esteemed overuse than in cinema? Specifically the annual Metro Manila Film Festival that fosters endless Shake Rattle and Roll flicks that scare less than they frustrate.
What has long been missing in these generic efforts is depth. The aswang's grisly exploits—the number of dead increasing every day; the intestines of children and pregnant women scattered in the fields—have been overexploited. Most filmmakers have failed to give these familiar stories fresh yet unconventional dimensions and only one or two serious filmmakers have embodied these genre films with any sense of maturity. One of the few who has is Richard Somes, whose prior experience in production design has lent a great deal of credibility to his first full-length feature. Somes has subverted the genre's customary and overused narratives to reflect on the harsh realities faced by an aswang's family. He achieves this by slowly building up the tension within the family. At first, they are an ordinary family who live difficult but happy lives in a remote town. Then the daughter becomes afflicted with a poison in her blood stream that makes her crave human flesh. Somes depicts the family's transition from a peaceful to disturbed household as the monster becomes full fledged, escapes through the window, and returns with her hair in wild disarray and her fangs drenched in blood. The family struggles to maintain a sense of normalcy, until the corpses in the town start piling up, until suspicions rise and guilt darkens, until the monster has to be tied up, until the father's ambivalence sets it loose, until the monster begs for its death, until the father decides to slaughter it with a force so severe it turns him into an animal, until every memory of the aswang becomes a nightmare that only the afterlife can erase. The pacing in that critical transition transforms Yanggaw from a lowly, piteous flick into an admirable effort that resuscitates the hackneyed genre.
Fellow Filipinos will have multiple memories of previous aswang movies. There is no need to cite any specific one because, as any Filipino discovers, the idea is somewhat predictable. Traditionally, the aswang is a stranger, someone in the town whom no one knows much about, and her existence—right now I wish to bring to light the fact that every aswang in every aswang film ever made is a "she"—provokes nothing extraordinary. She is just like everyone, except for her nocturnal quench for blood. She may even be a figure of purity, like Aiko Melendez as the nun in Shake Rattle and Roll IV. Melendez's characterization was a clever twist because it increased her peril as a character, diverting suspicion away to anyone but her. But the usual problem is that the only thing that the story wants to deliver is the scare, the untying of the knot, the exposition and chase scenes often done in the sloppiest way possible. These films are tired excuses that stretch the vestiges of the genre, doing nothing good in particular.
In Yanggaw, however, the aswang is among us, we see her transform, we see her chase children, we see her as she rocks the bed with chains on her arms and legs, we hear her cry and scream, we know her, she is familiar. Somes has made her so recognizable that we forget she is a monster. The aswang has been given a depth of character through her family—her father's decisions and her mother's misgivings—the subsequent terror in the community when she runs loose, even the details of her murder. The illusion becomes truth. Yanggaw prefers depth to schlock, and the longer you watch it the more you realize that it is not so much about the aswang herself but the family that adopts her new persona even as they struggle against it. Once that belief has been suspended, there is really no turning back.
Ronnie Lazaro and Joel Torre don't have to do anything to prove that they are indeed the greatest Philippine actors of our time. Yanggaw makes you feel honored just by their presence. The volleyball game between the two camps has that flinch of unsettling strangeness; it makes the remote town feel even more remote. That it is in Hiligaynon (in an unspecified place somewhere in Panay Island, particularly where aswangs are predominant) does not seem to put any pressure on its mix of professional and new actors; Tetchie Agbayani is regal and utterly convincing. Erik Matti as the violent whip healer is surprisingly effective. Gio Respall and Monet Gaston add credibility to their family's demise. And finally, Aleera Montalla is appallingly menacing, she is the vamp of our nightmares. Claravall and Sacris fashion a distinct eye for visual character, their light and darkness are moving as if they are part of the story themselves.
