Weary crowd cheers Lav Diaz 8-hour epic

JOHN Lloyd Cruz (left) and Piolo Pascual perfectly executed the vision of Lav Diaz (center).

BERLIN—Filipino director Lav Diaz said movies should not be judged by their length, so he gave the Berlin Film Festival a historical drama about the Philippines that runs more than eight hours.

“Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis” (A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery) was shown in competition for the festival’s top Golden Bear prize in a screening that started at 9:30 a.m. and ended shortly before 7 p.m., with a one-hour lunch break.

The film is similar to the duration of some other past festival favorites like Hungarian director Bela Tarr, whose “Satantango” clocks in at about seven hours.

But at a post-screening news conference, Diaz rejected being labelled as a creator of “slow cinema.”

Like poetry music

“I don’t know why… every time we discourse on cinema we always focus on the length. It’s cinema, it’s just like poetry, just like music, just like painting where it’s free, whether it’s a small canvas or it’s a big canvas, it’s the same… So cinema shouldn’t be imposed on,” he said.

Diaz’s movie is set in the late 19th century at the period of the Philippine revolution against Spanish rule and focuses on the influence of Andres Bonifacio y de Castro, considered to be one of the main motivators of the uprising.

The film follows the lives of several groups of people, including Castro’s wife who is searching for his body on a mountain that is inhabited by people from the spirit world.

It also follows the lives of several young men who get caught up in the revolution, including the poet Isagani (John Lloyd Cruz), who is so overwhelmed by the bloodshed that he loses faith in his ability to write poems.

John Lloyd Cruz, Piolo Pascual, Paul Soriano and Lav Diaz. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Freedom in Berlin

Producer Bianca Balbuena praised the Berlinale for allowing the film to be shown in competition for the main prize despite its length.

“The Berlinale gave us the freedom, they didn’t ask us to cut down the length of the film,” she said. “Thank you, Berlin.”

The film is among the 18 films vying for the festival’s Golden Bear top prize, to be awarded by jury president Meryl Streep on Saturday.

Diaz had told Agence France-Presse (AFP) before traveling to the German capital that his historical epic would be a “struggle” for the audience.

But as the curtain closed at the 1,600-seat Berlinale Palace theater, more than half the audience was still present and rewarded the 57-year-old filmmaker with warm applause and cries of “bravo.”

Test of courage

Gerhard Reda, a German amateur filmmaker who said he watches 10 to 15 movies each week, called the screening a “personal test of courage.” He said he had started to watch another of Diaz’s notoriously lengthy films last year but had to give up after an hour.

“He can have a 45-minute scene that just has people talking or walking through a field,” he said. “Some love him, some hate him but he’s always a challenge.”

As the lights came up Thursday night, Taiwanese film critic Yun-hua Chen said that she was “doing absolutely fine.”

“The film really needed to be this long so the audience can submerge in the story.”

Enrico Cehovin, a 27-year-old Italian, said that playing long video games had prepared him for the experience, which he admitted was “only for cinema lovers.”

“Despite its length, I wish I had learned more,” said Development worker Carla Schraml, 36, criticizing a meandering story that was only partly accessible for an uninitiated audience.

But Hubert Speich, a critic for German public broadcaster SWR, called the picture “superb.”

“He needs a canvas this size to tell the story he wants to tell in all its complexity in its historical sweep there is not a single shot that is excessive.” AFP