SOMETHING has changed in the film of Lav Diaz. I like the shift. It is a tremor underneath the story, a trembling within those frames. A nervousness is felt—a fear more terrifying than any fear—and then it comes, the breakdown happening inward and outward, threatening all moving images on site and on sight. The film: When the Waves are Gone.
The novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas is mentioned as the takeoff point for Diaz this time (Dostoyevsky is said to have fueled the sweep of Ang Babaing Humayo). Does this explain why the proportion in its plot is massive, sometimes exaggerated at certain points? Monumental, each character arc takes on bigger-than-life personas in operas, the plot moving on a track that borrows from storms rather than from screenplays. I see here a film that has freed itself of many things—from time and space and their impositions of control as well as their gratuity. Remember, we are dealing here with a filmmaker whose past visions were embedded in cinemas that went from 10 to nine hours, then settling for the four hours, and now this—a three-hour presentation and a bit more of parables.
Indulge me: this review has been urged by Verdi’s opera, La Forza del Destino, a favorite opera and an obsession for me. As with all operas, La Forza is huge. It romances the notion of destiny as relentless. It binds star-crossed individuals to love or its extreme opposite.
Destiny is a force as well in When the Waves are Gone. But while the characters in Verdi’s opera are caught in destiny, the individuals in the film face fate as a disclosure, not a contract.
There are three acts in When the Waves. One moves around Hermes, one of the best investigators in the organization. He has the burden and honor of having sent his mentor to jail. Out of duty. Primo is the mentor. He does not forget what his protegee has done to him. He crosses the sea, a demented Acheron out in search for souls to ferry. He converts the first follower, a lowly boatman.
Primo has to deal with vengeance while Hermes is tortured by the most difficult place in his biography, his home. There, his sister stands to remind him of the filial duties he has forgotten.
In the confrontations of these three characters are the most amazing mise-en-scene in the history of Philippine cinema and an application of chiaroscuro reaching a point of indulgence. Using a 16mm camera, Larry Manda, the director of photography, encounters a similar exciting problem the great Romy Vitug did in the third segment of Lino Brocka’s Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa. Rendered in sepia, the cinematography of Bukas, Madilim, Bukas has lights breaking out, dissipating shadows and lines, and yet coming out of this monochromatic experience in gothic splendor.
In When the Waves, direction, production design (many “found” landscapes and seascapes) and cinematography work to present the darkest of darkness, the blackest of black, and a washed out background to three actors who have thrown caution to the four winds. We begin with Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino, a presence. Known for her calculating artistry, Buencamino in When the Waves delivers a frighteningly new characterization, negating all restraint required before a camera and acquiring this spread-eagle gestures, ready to fly and pick with her talon from the ground any request for forgiveness or expression of regret. As sister to Hermes, she frightens her own brother. Centenera-Buencamino is a thespian of great majesty here.
The avenging investigator, Primo, is played by Ronnie Lazaro. The actor, an old reliable, has always been self-effacing but this time he choreographs his cruelty to the rhythm of madness and silliness. He comes to this island and seeks the company of women, to perform and minister for them. He is a pastor without a cult. The truth that consumes him is his desire to kill Hermes because that will make the latter real and his recrimination proper.
Finally, John Lloyd Cruz is Hermes. Essential. Compelling. He arrives in front of their home in the village, a wayward angel at the portal of hell and heaven. His sister drives him away as he falls to the ground. The next scene, Nerissa is Pieta—a tableau vivant of an earlier reference to the photographs of Raffy Lerma of victims of the Duterte drug war—cleaning the scabs from the scalp of her brother. Hermes speaks of the disease as guilt and conscience. In one of the most unforgettable scenes in the film, Cruz’s Hermes steps out of the dark into the street and dances a jig, on and on. Grace and absurdity cloak this man whose despair is another man’s redemption. Primo comes down to seek Hermes, who has then ran into the night.
Hermes and Primo would find each other eventually because for them death and destiny are merely two sides of the same coin. With the sea behind them, sensed but not seen, the two men settle a grudge, natural and narcissistic. The beauty of negation is disclosed as we learn from this film upholding meaninglessness lessons not necessarily moral, but physical—in our guts, as all good works of art do. Given the relative brevity of When the Waves, Diaz has a piece that will enter our consciousness not because the tale is told with forever as an ideal but because of its ephemera held in moments of lucidity and fantasy, how we have this capacity to kill, then to understand and be in love again.
When the Waves are Gone was part of the recently completed 35th Tokyo International Film Festival. I want to express my gratitude for the festival for allowing me access to the films in the festival.
The production companies behind the film are Sine Olivia Pilipinas, Epicmedia, Films Boutique, and Rosa Filmes. Listed as film producers are Bianca Balbuena, Bradley Liew, Joaquim Sapinho and Jean-Christophe Simon; with Eva Jacobsen, Mikkel Jersin and Katrin Pors as co-producers.
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