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Three Opening Scenes of Lav Diaz

By Adrian D. Mendizabal

[MA Media Studies (Film)]

October 9, 2015

First two opening shots of Death in the Land of Encantos (2007)

Introduction

In the opening scene of Death in the Land of Encantos (2007), a ruined earth

emerges. A river flows through a barren landscape. Beside it is an abandoned tree,

leafless, engulfed and darkened its shadow. The tree sits on a mound of the soil carved

from its initial form by a brutal force of raging water. Against this melancholic space is a

wailing stretch of clouds, darkening the vast landscape. In their solace, the tree and

landscape becomes the subject of this opening. This land is empty, the image says.

The filmic image presented itself without preconditions. We have no idea what

happened to the tree, to the mound of soil or to the landscape. There was no ‘before’;

only a ‘present’. It is as if image’s duration and spatiality consolidated with the reality of

its object.

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Has Lav Diaz captured the end of the world? Nothing in the image is left of use

value. No formal trace can reify its concept of beauty. This image inscribes the tenuous

force of destruction, of a world ruined, of the absence of ‘before’: an array of a bustling

greenery, with rows of trees stretched across its horizontal plane. Now, as it appears,

nothing remains.

This description of the opening is an exhaustion in itself. Lav Diaz’s films works

this way, a metonymical inscription of space and time. His opening scenes are

invitations to space in which one participates in the stylistic inscription of, for Diaz,

Andre Bazin’s photographic reality.

This paper shall converse with the notion of the photographic reality in three

opening scenes of Diaz’ films: Heremias (Book One: The Legend of the Lizard

Princess) (2005), Death in the Land of Encantos (2007) and Florentina

Hubaldo, CTE (2013) in relation to Diaz’ (re)appropriation of Bazin’s approach to

style and ontology.

Lav Diaz has, in many ways, (re)appropriated the idea of Bazinian space/time in

his films after Batang West Side (2001). Along with Andrei Tarkovsky, Bazinian film

philosophy served as Diaz’s main framework for deploying his stylistic device of the long

take. However, this sustained use of Bazinian ontological process must not be

discounted as Diaz’ only aesthetic reticence. Ideological, figural, philosophical, and

genealogical (as opposed to historical) forces are imbricated within this active

(re)appropriation of Bazinian-Tarkovskian world. All these take part in the shaping and

(re)inscription of Diaz’ cinema as an active site of emancipatory discourse in the realm

of the political. Due to the limitation of the paper, the thrust of the argument shall only

focus on Diaz’ (re)appropriation of Bazinian space/time in his three opening scenes.

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Bazin thru Diaz

There were many instances that Diaz mentioned the French film theorist’s

influence in his film-making. Recently, during his interview for the Norte, Hangganan

ng Kasaysayan (2013) for the 66th Cannes Film Festival, he was asked the question:

‘What type of cinema has influenced you?’ Diaz straightforwardly answered: “[…] A huge

influence is Andre Bazin, whom I consider a great filmmaker even though he didn’t

make a single film.” (Festival de Cannes, 2013) Diaz’s straightforward positioning of

Bazin as an important influence to his aesthetic schema settles somehow the

foundations of this writing. His treatment of Bazin as a filmmaker manifests a mirror

itself: that he, as a filmmaker himself, is enunciating the dream of ‘Bazin-becoming-a-

filmmaker’ within his mimetic strand of filmmaking.

In a way, Diaz’s aesthetic turn after Batang West Side (2001) can arguably be a

Bazinian turn in itself – Diaz returns to Bazin’s notion of photographic reality. It seems

that his turn to Bazin is not only a stylistic turn but also an ontological turn in itself. For

Diaz, the question of ‘what is cinema?’ is entwined within his post-Batang West Side

aesthetics.

In his conversation with Michael Guarneri of La Furia Umana, an overlap of

Diaz’ stylistic framework and ontological reframing - to find return to ‘the origins of

cinema’ – is observable. He said:

“[…] One of the greatest texts about cinema I ever read is by André Bazin,

The Myth of Total Cinema. According to Bazin, we don't know cinema yet,

but every development, every progress in this medium is a step towards

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the origin of cinema. The technological progress seems limitless, but at the

same time every development brings us back to the question on the nature

and the origin of cinema – so “Where is cinema going?” actually means

“Where does cinema come from?” I don't have an answer to that question.

The only thing I know is that it's up to us to find out: we have to find...

cinema's DNA! ... So my idea is “embrace what is coming”, embrace the

new digital technology… This is why I am always happy to change my gear

and my approach to filmmaking, to experiment with new tools…”

(Guarneri, July 2013)

For Diaz, Bazin’s essay ‘The Myth of Total Cinema’ creates a productive and

creative opening through which the practice of (his) filmmaking manifests. The

statement “we do not know cinema yet, but every development, every progress of this

medium is a step towards the origin of cinema” shows his commitment to a type of

exploratory filmmaking that intertwines and infuses style with ontology. Exploration, in

this sense, is different from experimentation because Diaz’ mode of thinking is not only

based on style alone, but a persistent philosophical exploration – a return to ontology, to

thinking about the hard questions of life, of cinema and their inter-penetration.

Style, for Diaz, is not really a manifestation of self-expression or even of self-

philosophy as a filmmaker, but it must participate in the ontological inscription of ‘what

is cinema?’ in one’s work, a method for which he practices: “[…] This is why I am always

happy to change my gear and my approach to filmmaking, to experiment with new

tools…” (Guarneri, July 2013). Diaz’ ‘change of gears’ in Batang West Side set up this

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renewed notion of style as not only an aesthetic commitment but also a theorizing kind,

a discursive practice to push the ontological bounds of cinema.

The Limits of Bazinian Realism

Diaz’ (re)imagination of the long form narrative is contingent of the arrival of

digital technology. This positioning eminently catches the problematic quality of the

kind of ‘realism’ Diaz theorize. In a diagrammatic sense, Andre Bazin’s essay “The

Ontology of the Photographic Image” (1945, trans. 1960) proposes, according to

Henderson, a way of looking at realism with a seemingly ahistorical viewpoint.

(Henderson, 1980a) Henderson considers Bazin’s ontological claims about the

relationship of cinema and reality as “occur[ing] in the timeless realm of pure aesthetic

theory.” (Henderson, 1980a, p. 34). Bazin’s ontological claims about ‘what cinema is’

remains a baffling subject until now due to this complicities. Aside from the being

ahistorical, many critics like Henderson considers Bazin’s theory of photographic reality

as exclusionary – ‘an ontological principle… not as a critical tool at all but a narrow

canon of validity.’ (Henderson, 1980a, p. 37)

Bazin’s idea of photographic reality, as noted in his ‘Ontology,’ can be classified

into several characteristics. For Bazin, the nature of a photographic image ‘involves a

certain automatic process…a molding, the taking of an impression, by the manipulation

of light.’ (as cited in Henderson, 1980b, p. 37)

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Two opening shots of Heremias (Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princes)

(2006)

In orienting this first characteristic to three opening films of Diaz, we can come

up with numerous ways on how this Bazinian ‘molding’ can work within Diaz’

filmmaking. In the opening scene of Heremias (Book One), a certain ‘molding’ of space

appears. The first shot, which displays the movement of rural trades across a landscape,

is composed of two stylistic devices: first, the placement of the camera from afar, and

second, the lengthening of duration in image-recording. In the opening shot, the long

duration of the image plays an important role in ‘molding’ a seemingly Bazinian space.

As opposed to the opening of Death in the Land of Encantos, which channels the

ruinous, arid landscape of a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, Heremias is interested

on the human subject. In our third example, Florentina Hubaldo, the human subject

also appears in the foray of the opening. Diaz’ executes his long take with the human

subject as part of its aesthetic framework.

In Heremias, the human comes in the form of a row of rural traders. In their

traverse through the landscape, which reminded me of Abbas Kiarostami’s winding

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roads in many of his films, the rural traders mold the space in temporal realist mode –

the movement of the traders constituting the collapse of world time and event. This

brings us to the second characteristic of Bazin’s photographic reality as ‘resembling a

kind of decal or transfer’ (Bazin, 1960, p. 14) The transference of the event (the

movement of the rural traders across the landscape) in world time (the

phenomenological condition of the viewer witnessing the moving image unfolding) or,

on the other hand, the world time (of the traders making their way in the view) in the

event (the internal cognitive happenings in our brain) bring us closer to the Bazinian

epitome of reality.

According to Lisa During, in her revisiting of Bazinian reality, physical space

depicted in neorealist films produces a ‘continuity that opens the habits of the sensory-

motor networks’ (During, 2009). During’s idea of physical space in neorealist films

during Bazin’s era can implicate the cognitive power of the long take as not only a

transference of world time to and from the event but also a reinforcement, or maybe an

opening, of the habitual process of sensing through seeing. This cognitive process may

not have been an eminent concern for Bazin. But it is eminent in Diaz’ cinema. Diaz’

cinema, due to its long form, poses a cognitive collapse between world time and event,

between phenomenological event and filmic event.

The third feature, among the many other characteristic features of Bazinian

photographic reality, is ‘the [state of the] object as freed from the conditions of time and

space that govern it.’ (Bazin, 1960, p. 14) For During, this rapture in time and space is

characteristic of Bazinian integral realism - a filmic philosophy wherein burden of

artist’s interpretation of the image is non-existent.

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Two opening shots of Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012)

In the third example, Florentina Hubaldo, CTE, integral realism becomes a

problematic constraint in our Bazinian reading of Diaz. In its opening, the notion of the

object free from the interpretation of the artist fails to hold because of image has

become a theatrical space. The actors themselves are protracted forms of artist’s vision

of the film. In the opening scene, a woman and an old man walk across the landscape.

This produces a particular theatricality in itself, but due to its durational length, in the

words of During, the ‘spectacle recedes’ from the theatrical (During, 2009)

Also, integral realism cannot, in some way, work for the opening of Heremias

because the expressivity of Diaz-as-artist is carved and imbricated in the movement of

the rural traders through space. On the contrary, in Death in the Land of Encantos,

integral realism plays a formative role in the figuration of ruinous landscape. No Diaz-

as-artist inscribes the formation of the landscape or the movement of trees and sky.

They are manifestations of the real.

In viewing Diaz’s realism, we cannot in some way say outwardly that it is purely

an appropriation of Bazinian realist film without accounting for the impact of digital

inscription within its facture. Digital inscription historically situates Diaz’s films into the

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present age, an era which cannot consolidate with the historical process of Bazin’s era,

which he invoked when he wrote “Ontology” and other essays on photographic realism.

Conclusion

Bazin’s photographic notion of cinema maintains its power due to the materiality

of the celluloid. Diaz’ photographic notion of cinema, on the other hand, draws its power

from the material aspect of the ‘digital,’ treated almost as if equal or even superior to the

celluloid for capturing an extended time. This media-specific argument tells us that

Diaz’ use of ‘Bazinian realism’ is more of a re-appropriation rather than a direct

appropriation of its major characteristics. He seeks to fulfill the promise of Bazin’s

realism in the present age. In a way, Diaz’ cinema is a becoming in itself, a becoming-

Bazin.

Lav Diaz’ re-appropriation of Andre Bazin’s ontology of cinematic reality

constitutes his stylistic turn after Batang West Side. In a way, Diaz found his way to

somehow forge his own notion of space/time and negotiate a new form of realism

inspired by his encounter with Bazin. Lav Diaz is indeed a post-Bazinian filmmaker

theorizing ‘what is cinema?’ with similarity to how classical film theorist would do.

Drawing out Bazin from Diaz may not constitute a full-elucidation of Diaz’s cinema, but

it can somehow start a pathway to Lav Diaz scholarship focusing on Diaz as a post-

Bazian film theorist and a philosopher of space/time.

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REFERENCES

Bazin, A. and Gray, H. (Summer, 1960). The Ontology of the Photographic Image. Film

Quarterly 13 (4). (p. 4 - 9) Berkely: University of California Press

During, L. (2009). Innocence and ontology: The Truthfulness of Andre Bazin. In

Trifonova, T. (Ed.), European Film Theory (pp. 257 - 270). New York: Routledge

Festival de Cannes (May 2013). UN CERTAIN REGARD RENDEZ-VOUS - Norte, The

End of History by Lav Diaz. Retrieved from http://www.festival-

cannes.com/en/theDailyArticle/60275.html#

Guarneri, M. (July 2013). Militant Elegy. A Conversation with Lav Diaz. La Furia

Umana, 17. Retrieved from http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/29-

archive/lfu-17/16-michael-guarneri-militant-elegy-a-conversation-with-lav-diaz

Henderson, B. (1980a). The Structure of Bazin’s Thought. A Critique of Film Theory.

(pp. 32 – 47) New York: E.P. Dutton.

Henderson, B. (1980b). Two Type of Film Theory. A Critique of Film Theory. (pp. 16 –

31) New York: E.P. Dutton.