The Wily Filipino

Evolution and Time.

So I've got tickets to see Lav Diaz's Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino (Evolution of a Filipino Family), showing at the NAATA filmfest here in the Bay Area next month. While I've long wanted to see anything by Diaz -- in particular, Batang Westside, which as far as I know never showed anywhere near here -- Ebolusyon should give one pause, since it's 10 and a half hours long.

That's right: 630 minutes, and it isn't a typo; the zero's really there. While the film itself sounds fantastic -- it traces the life of a Filipino family from 1971 to 1987, both before and after the martial-law years -- I must confess a curiosity about what a ten-and-a-half hour long film might be like. (I've never seen Shoah or Berlin Alexanderplatz; the longest film I've ever sat through was Frederick Wiseman's Near Death, which will test anyone even in the shorter version shown on PBS.)

Will it be like a wayang performance, where people chat and sleep and walk in and out? Or will there be a hardy few left in the theater when the movie ends, everyone congratulating each other for making it through? Will it play like a soap opera, or will it be like Andy Warhol's Empire? I'm tempted to think of it almost like a Morton Feldman piece, but there has got to be more of a narrative... maybe a view of Philippine history as written by Fernand Braudel...

There's a great interview here made by Brandon Wee for Senses of Cinema, where he is asked about why he wants to "[mount] such provocative durations:"

In Ebolusyon, I am capturing real time. I am trying to experience what these people are experiencing. They walk. I must experience their walk. I must experience their boredom and sorrows. I would go to any extent in my art to fathom the paradox that is the Filipino. I would go to any extent in my art to fathom the mystery of humankind's existence. I want to understand death. I want to understand solitude. I want to understand struggle. I want to understand the philosophy of a growing flower in the middle of a swamp.

And read the last paragraph of the interview: art can wait indeed. Posted by the wily filipino at February 22, 2005 05:03 PM