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Thursday, December 30, 2004
Yap: Pastilan, Iset
By Januar Yap
Meanwhile
“Noy, ang sulat,” Bikay calls out to her brother Duroy towards the closing scene of “Panaghoy sa Suba” (“Call of the River”).
“Unsang sulata man?” asks Duroy, former guerilla.
“Kadto gung gipasulat nimo nako sa una gud,” replies Bikay. In this story, sa una means before the war, before the Japanese occupation, which sent waves of patriots into the mountains and villages in ceaseless terror.
“Pastilan nimo, Bikay,” says Duroy.
“Ako na mang nahatag niya, noy. Ganahan kaayo siya,” says Bikay.
Close-up: Duroy smirking as he wades gently on the river on his out-rigger boat. “Human na.”
“Panaghoy” thus says in the end. Human na, however, takes a shift in meaning with “Panaghoy.”
But we’ll get to that.
“Panaghoy,” a period flick set in a Visayan river village, is what happens when history interrupts a courtship, an impending romance. War, comrades, behaves like a mean parent hurling a chamber pot on a bunch of love-struck haranistas.
Although “Panaghoy” tries to tether the story as a spice-of-life tale of a poor boatman wading on a love he couldn’t put into language (It took him eternity to write a promised love letter), it bursts at the seams as an epic of the Filipino caught in history.
Oh, but that is only the story. The cinematic storytelling is even better. Cesar Montano knows subtlety, either cinematic or storytelling. He knows his characters well, they often recoil, falling silent or skirting an issue, at the hint of a hurt.
“Panaghoy” falls behind other entries in the current film festival. But that should be understandable.
It will fare better abroad, certainly. “The Call of the River” is the call of every self-respecting movie-going Filipino not to be duped by Lastikman or Kabisote.
Certainly, when “Panaghoy" says “Human na,” it takes an entirely different meaning. It ushers in Cebuano Cinema back into its proper place.
Oh, Iset, is played by Juliana Palermo. Just one word, “pastilan.”
(December 30, 2004 issue)
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