Refrains in a song

By Noel Vera

Video
Dung-aw
Directed by Lino Brocka

LINO BROCKA’S Dung-aw (Dirge, 1976), his musical adaptation of the life of Gabriela Silang, is one of the less acclaimed and least seen of his films and possibly for a reason: Brocka doesn’t quite have a knack for the genre. The drama swirls around this or that central figure and suddenly everyone pauses while the protagonist bursts into song; Armida Siguion-Reyna as firebrand revolutionary Gabriela Silang acquits herself well (even if you can tell she’s lip-synching to a recording of her own voice) but the darkly handsome Mario Montenegro as her husband Diego (also using his own voice) can only manage a cautious warble (as he should). The result is certainly different but not the kind of inspiring historical re-enactment you (or Armida who also happened to be producer) probably had in mind.

That said, Mario O’Hara’s script for the film takes what little is known of Silang and fashions a brief (75 minutes long) sketch of her life — her beginnings as a wife of some means (she married into wealth, married again when her first husband died), her support of second husband Diego’s decision to join the British against the Spaniards in the hopes of establishing a free northern province of Ilocos, her eventual takeover of Diego’s leadership in the rebellion when he is assassinated.

Difficult to determine what’s research and what guesswork, but O’Hara possibly added the detail that the Silangs often hoarded at least half their harvest, as the mayor (of Vigan presumably) invoking the “indulto de comercio” (or license to trade) often bought the Silangs’ rice at artificially lowered prices then sold it elsewhere for a profit.

Diego Silang at one point expresses to his men the sentiment that he’s not just the owner and they are just the workers; all are in this together, the rice and profits collectively theirs (he was an insurgent before he married Gabriela). But O’Hara’s script is hardly hagiography, nor does he portray the Silangs as weak-tea saints; when Gabriela confronts the man who betrayed the location of their stored rice to the mayor, she pulls out her bolo (a huge jungle sword) and whacks off his right arm (take that Joan of Arc!). Later Gabriela and her men come upon a deserted village and she asks an elder what happened: she tells them that the villagers have fled out of fear of her, for she is known to kill and burn down houses.

All this passes through the eyes of young Kulas (Boy Vito) who unreservedly worships Gabriela and at one point listens as she shares a confidence — you wonder if this would be the youth’s moment, though the camera is quick to cut discreetly away.

Armida isn’t always well-served by her films — her high cheekbones and haughty regal demeanor usually condemn her to contrabida (antagonist) roles, either the tyrannical stepmother or self-righteous town official. Here she seems to be in her element, eyes flashing when waving her bolo high, same eyes meltingly adoring when gazing at her beloved husband. She keeps the audience mostly at arm’s length, the opposite of a biopic’s usual strategy, so when she suddenly confides in Kulas or suddenly runs away to be alone, the camera following closely, these moments feel genuinely intimate, bits of character reveal all the more persuasive for being unexpected.

Brocka fashions a brief vivid palimpsest on which to paint Gabriela’s portrait — the beginning which recalls Eisenstein as channeled through Welles’ Othello, from dead heroine carted through the streets of Vigan to women crying mournful chorus (their darkly veiled figures looming vast in the foreground); the swearing-in ceremony with its feeble torches combining to form a blazing flame; the ending which evokes T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, where a legendary blade is passed on for future generations to wield in the next revolution. If I have a consistent complaint about Brocka it’s that his dramaturgy often outstrips his visual ability; with cinematographer Romy Vitug at his side the problem is largely absent in this film.

If we invoke the name of a Soviet filmmaker and note all the collectivist imagery in the picture, that’s not an accident: Brocka here (thanks partly perhaps to ‘70s politics, partly perhaps to O’Hara’s script) espouses an unapologetically socialist agenda, his most pointed image being of people gathered around Diego, and later Gabriela, while they lay out both the truth and future plans. As important if not more so than the rebel hero (or heroine) in these Filipino films is the leader-lecturer; the people are to have their consciousness raised, damn it, whether they want to or not.

O’Hara would in two years’ time write a far more expansive film starring a far more passionate Armida and Mario, an even more lyrical Vitug lensing them both. In Mga Bilanggong Birhen (The Captive Virgins) the lovers face not the relatively complacent Spaniards but ruthless implacable Americans (our history being a patchwork of foreign invaders). They’re married but not to each other — the prospect of extramarital love adds ardor and spice to Armida’s performance, leaving her (and us to be honest) not a little breathless.

Meanwhile we have this, one of Brocka’s odder, more interesting, works — and an unjustly forgotten peek into our nearly forgotten past.

Dung-aw is available online.