(Courtesy of Berlin International Film Festival)
Filipino auteur Lav Diaz may not be a household name, but among the film festival circuit he is held in high regard. This was clear at the first two press screenings at Berlinale 2018 that were so packed they turned away quite a few journalists. His rock opera "Ang panahon ng halimaw" (Season of the Devil) clocks in at almost four hours, but hardly feels that long, although those who left mid-screening might disagree. Taking place in The Philippines in 1979 during the brutal Marcos dictatorship, young doctor Lorena Haniway (Shaina Magdayao) vanishes and her poet husband Hugo (the remarkable Piolo Pascual) searches the depths of the jungle for her. Diaz's powerful storytellng tells of the harsh reality under martial law through a musical lens, sung in acappella and all written by Diaz himself. The conflicts between regular citizens and the militia isn't always easy to watch but even harder to look away. Although he may be known for his signature wide and long-shot takes, gorgeous B&W cinematography and long running lengths, with each new film he brings something novel to the table.
I had the pleasure to chat with the filmmaker, who was in good spirits the day after "Season of the Devil" premiered at Berlinale 2018, where it was in competition. Here is what he had to say:
Your film is a rock opera, quite a unique approach to showing the disturbing events during martial law in The Philippines in the late 70s. How and when did you start to think about this project?
LAV: Well, I was living at Harvard in late 2016. I was a fellow there. Then I started writing my project about The Philippines and the history. I was also writing a script for a gangster film that was supposed to shoot. And then while we were doing the script and the book I was reading and hearing what is going on in the country every day and I started writing songs, trying to appease myself. After a while, I told the producer maybe we can do a musical instead of a gangster film. Then the gangster film became a musical. So it's not a different story now. It's gonna be about that leader, about what's going on in the country, we try to hide but it's about the now. It's the closest thing that I get to doing propaganda work. And it's a straight forward fact of what's going on in the country.
(© Giovanni D. Onofrio)
"Season of the Devil" takes place in 1979 during the Marcos dictatorship. Can you talk about your life in the late 70s?
LAV: The late 70s...During college, the mid 70s, I was in a rock band. So that's the background with the music. Before I became a filmmaker I was a musician. I was a guitarist for some bands. I was a bad player. (Laughs). I was a bad guitar player, but I can write songs. I was the songwriter and the lead guitarist.
At the press conference yesterday, some of the actors were saying that you sang the last song during the end credits. Would you mind speaking more about the songs and the choice to forgo musical instruments?
LAV: Yeah, that was like, all of the songs; I recorded them in front of the camera. I just wanted the takes in front of a small camera, and then I was giving the songs to the actors. I adjusted the lyrics during the shooting. I recorded the songs, some of the songs have different lyrics than when I wrote them. But when I started doing the narrative and creating the characters I adjusted them. They are not the original lyrics. When we started writing finally, the framework of the so-called shooting script then I specifically changed the lyrics to the specific characters. It's a decision. I want to be primal with the film, to do away with adornmants, the musicals we know. The musicals there are a lot of calisthenics, the movement, instrumentations. I want to be primal, to be ancient to the work. I want to catch some soul with it. Silence is very ancient, it's the first thing that we have in the world. Before there are words, there is just the sound. That's what I explained to the actors. We need to do it acapella and no adornments, no instrumentation. You will be singing the songs as slow and long as you can without the movement, dig it from the soul. They said, "How can we do that?" I said, "I don't know. It's up to you." (Laughs). But it's about the ancient. So I said, like the choice for the storyteller Escalante (who beautifully portrays Kwentista), she's a very distinct voice. Her voice is very ancient. If you listen to her voice, it just comes from some old structure, some old graves.
It must have been harder to make dialogue that sounds like music. Having to take care of the rhythm, the measures and so on. Can you discuss more about that process?
LAV: It is difficult, of course. There is a discipline to songwriting. The writing points, the measures. It's not just free verse, especially if there is melody and beat and there is rhythm. So I struggled with that. There is the rehearsal, there is the careful measuring of the syllables, so you have to be very syllabic, you have to be very rhythmic. You have to sometimes go with the rhyme so that all the end of the lines are rhyming. So there is the struggle always with the structuring, measures, rhyme, rhythm, the beat, harmony. Then the editing is a different thing, so you can not make it longer than it's allowed because of the long cut, so you have to cut it, you have to destroy your mise-en-scene.
The melody is interesting and a bit unusual. What was the inspiration behind that? Were the songs inspired by Filipino folk songs?
LAV: Well, I listen to a lot of music. The structuring of the film, the melody is from Filipino ballad. That form of music is very much influenced by Spanish and Italian ballads. It's very, very sentimental, very melodramatic, very pessimistic, very suicidal. Just like the blues it's very pitiful. That kind of expression. But there's the structuring of rock n' roll, three cords, four cords. You have two verses and then the refrain and repeat again. That kind of structuring.
One of the most powerful moments in the film was when the soldiers were signing the same melody with someone they were interrogating and threatening. Different lyrics but the same melodies, one against the other. It says something about totalitarianism.
LAV: Yeah, that was very fascistic. The repetition, the bombardment...it's conditioning. You have to keep repeating it. That's fascism...that's fascist! It's very deliberate, the repetition. It's their character.
Mythology is ever-present in "Season of the Devil" as well as in your previous work. Could you elaborate a little bit on how exactly you worked with mythology in the film?
LAV: The owl, the ahas (Filipino slang for snake), the snake. These are all very much a part of our Filipino mythology. So just like in my 8-hour film two years ago here, the use of mythology or parable and the nautical theme is important in my work, especially with this work. There is a lot of mythmaking, there is a lot of the kind of cult-making that they do and when we have the demagogues they create this persona. The very nature of our culture is about that. We have a lot of demagogues and we have megalomaniacs. We have dictators because it is all about mythmaking. It's all about myths, we are prone to that, to believe all these hypocritical natures of these people. At some point they become like Marcos. He was created by myths, that he is this superhero. You know, he actually invented stories that he annihilated the Japanese during the war and he received twenty-nine medals. He created all these myths and people believed, without investigating. It's hypocriticial that lies became true. So we are so prone to mythmaking. We don't investigate. We are not a very dialectical culture. We are so prone to that.
Is that the reason why you chose as a storyteller, the poet who is not creating myths but simply telling stories?
LAV: Somehow anybody who deals with history, if you are a writer you deal with history, if you are a filmmaker you deal with history. There is an attribute of revisionism anyway because history can not be very objective. It is your own version of it (history). But you have to be very careful. You have to investigate, you really have to make an honest, an earnest research. You just don't invent it. You have to be very responsible. If you're not responsible, then yes the whole revisionist culture, you just destroy the tropes. Especially the masses, they are prone to, now we call it fake news, revisionism has become fake news. Mythmaking has become fake news.
What about your hero, the poet standing up against the militia? Why did you choose an artist? Is being an artist the only way to resist?
LAV: Well, I use a character because I am very familiar with it, I'm an artist...so for me, the ease of resistance is through engagement. And how can you engage? Through your work. Like me as a filmmaker. I can only engage through my work. For me, there is an urgency to use mediums. If you are a poet, then use your poems. If you are a journalist, then write something about the truth. Chronicle what is happening. If you are a songwriter, then write songs about what is happening. It's a responsibility now. There is an urgency to engage...and use your medium. That is your tool, that is your arm.
Can you talk about how you're using the light? In many of your films there is a scene where light panels mostly come directly towards the camera and there is some character in front of it. It looks like a painting. Do these scenes have some deeper meaning for you?
LAV: Cinema is light, cinematography is light. I'm the cinematographer of so many of my works. It's very intuitive. There is no deliberate, you know deliberate process. Sometimes it just happens. Again it is sourcing. I do the frame, I look for the sources. I see the window, that is a source. You see the light, the bulb. We call it the particular, the particulars are the real lights. Lights that are put there aren't real lights, that is the source. That's very immediate for us cinematographers. Where's the source? Where's the particular? So you have a gas lamp here and then the window. It's easy. What's the time of the day? It's afternoon. Where is the sun coming from? What's the weather? Is it rainy? Or if you want to be freer, then be expressionistic. Just put lights anywhere. Just flood it anywhere. Throw it anywhere, it will work, it will really work. Yeah, cinema can be that, very free.
All of your previous films are in one way or another about the past. Do you have any interest in doing a film about the present? Why do you have such a desire to turn to the past?
LAV: You can use all of the epochs to represent what's happening. When you watch cinema, even if it's 1896, or the year 2015. When you're watching it, it's not the past, it's not the present or the future, it's the now. You're in front of it.
