Close-ups in Philippine Cinema

Bembol Roco in Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag

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My contribution to The House Next Door's Close-up Blogathon:

(Note and warning: plots of both Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976) and Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon) discussed in close detail)

An article on the use of close-ups in Philippine cinema probably wouldn't be very long--Filipino filmmakers are mostly narrative storytellers that rarely use the medium in formally experimental ways. The close-up for a Filipino filmmaker--at least the classic Filipino filmmaker, the digital young turks may have been doing interesting work on it since--is mainly a punctuation mark, a means of pointing up the climactic end of a scene or film. Filipino films are a stew of intense emotions; close-ups are the filmmaker's way of shoving said stew into your face.

That said, my earliest memory of a close-up would have to be the ending of Lino Brocka's classic Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975), where Julio (Bembol Roco), having killed a man, is cornered in an alley by an angry mob; Brocka cuts to extreme close-ups of Julio's face as the men point at him, point out his icepick, and pick up various pipes and rocks and clubs. Brocka had been using long shots before this, of Julio running desperately away from his pursuers; now he's switched to a strategy of identification, as we see Julio's face register the significance of the rocks, and pipes and clubs, the determined expressions on the men's faces. The men approach; the camera zooms in past them to a gigantic shot of Julio's face, tear-streaked and trickling snot, as his mouth opens in a wet scream--a scream we never hear, because Brocka freezes the shot at the penultimate moment. Slow fade to the cause of all this violence--a silhouette of Ligaya (Hilda Koronel, one of the loveliest faces in all of cinema), the setting sun behind her filling the screen with a light that the film from title onwards has all along been promising, all along been threatening, to flood our eyes with. The end.

When I was a child my grandfather had been screening movies in his basement. Not mere 16 mm prints--he had two monster 35 mm projectors down there, and a man who came every Saturday night with cans of film to screen for us (and whoever else we invited). Jaws, The Godfather 1 & 2, even 1941 we saw before their commercial screening (which was if I remember right mere weeks after the American premiere (this was before the proliferation of video piracy, and the practice of pre-emptive commercial runs in Manila theaters days before pirates can copy them off of American screens)). One of the more memorable films he screened was Brocka's Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (Three, Two, One, 1975), and it shocked me no end, the shame and despair I saw in the figure of a man, head bowed, having all his hair shaved clean off (he was entering drug rehab).

Another was Maynila. There I was, ten years old and staring at Julio's wet, dripping face; for the first time in my extremely spoiled and sheltered life I knew violence, I knew hate, I knew terror, I knew suffering, I knew death. I knew, for the very first time, the power of cinema.

A similar though arguably subtler use of the close-up can be found in Mario O'Hara's Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976). Rosario (Nora Aunor) is about to hurl her baby, the result of rape by a Japanese officer, down a high bridge; O'Hara's camera slowly draws close till her face fills our view and we see, larger than life, feelings of hate, anger, horror--at the baby, at the man who created it, at what she's about to do--flit across the screen. Fade to a sunset (you can see the pattern: after dramatic intensity the filmmakers shift to a different, usually more serene emotional key). But the outcome is hardly settled; O'Hara cuts to scenes of mounting panic as the family searches for Rosario and her baby. Where has she gone, they wonder? Why has she gone? And what, exactly, has she done? 

O'Hara had honed his skills in radio, and with the sure touch of a veteran radio dramatist, he knew when to present a narrative hook then withhold information, withhold it, withhold it, withhold it till the maximum possible tension has been achieved. And then, simply and without fuss, allows release.

My story regarding this film is much less primal: I had met art critic Jolicco Cuadra back in 1995 in the offices of The Manila Chronicle. A man of eclectic tastes and outrageous opinions (the greatest American writer, he declared, was Philip K. Dick, and I found myself, well, not disagreeing with him (at least not vehemently)); he regaled me with stories of his bohemian life in Paris, where he met Orson Welles and Pier Paolo Pasolini ("he was so dirty--a dirty man!") and in Manila, where he met, among others, Gerardo de Leon. "Everyone is a thief and a fake," he informed me. "Celso (Ad. Castillo), Mike (de Leon), Ishmael (Bernal), Lino (Brocka), Gerry (de Leon)--all thieves and fakes."

"I don't know," I told him, "They're not bad."

Jolicco shook his head. "The only one who's any good is Mario O'Hara. I can't remember the title of the movie I saw of his--what's the matter?"

The matter was, I had just seen Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos and I was more or less thinking the same thing--not that O'Hara's the only one who's any good (he isn't, and I disagree--vehemently--with Jolicco's list of thieves and fakes), but that he's the best filmmaker we have.

The realization took a long time coming. I had been blown away by O'Hara's Bagong Hari (The New King, 1986) when I saw it on the big screen; I had thought it arguably the greatest Filipino action film I've ever seen (a huge flop, it disappeared from theaters the very next day). I sought out other O'Hara films, but couldn't find any.

I did see some of his collaborations with Brocka, which were easier to find--Insiang (1976), arguably Brocka's masterpiece, about an Othello-like drama set in an urban slum (O'Hara had written a near-perfect screenplay, and--blowing my mind a second time when I learned about it--had based his characters on his backyard neighbors of long ago in Pasay City); and Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Judged and Found Wanting, 1974), which blew my mind a third time: not only had O'Hara written the screenplay but also gave a great performance as Berto, the leper. The man, I thought, was a triple threat: he could direct (Bagong Hari), write (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang, Insiang), and act (Tinimbang)--what, exactly, could he not do?

Then I saw Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos, and was blown away for a fourth time.

Unsophisticated stratagems, perhaps; not for Brocka or O'Hara the almost exclusive focus on Falconetti's face in Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928), or the melding of faces (and by implication, of souls) of two faces as in Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966), which Brocka may have seen (O'Hara--probably not). The close-up in Philippine cinema is often just a punctuation mark--but the very force of that mark, as I can readily attest, can at times be a formidable thing.

Critic After Dark: a Review of Philippine Cinema