Batang Westside

Lav Diaz is the film equivalent of Fyodor Dostoevsky or Leo Tolstoi on the cinema scene. Just as the Russians needed someone to read during the long all to Siberian winters. Filipinos need to watch something on their long haul flights from Manila to New York City. (Which means, Lav Diaz might be making movies one day, that last 24 hours! ; ) .

And so just like Brothers Karamazov and War and Peace, Lav's movie is tedious yet rewarding. Filled with fascinating characters with unenviable traits and destinies. Batang Westside begins with the death / murder (?) of a young man played by Yul Servo. The plot of the movie is to find out who killed him or is it? As the movie plays out, we are introduced to a whole milieu of interesting characters who represent the different aspects of Filipinos searching for the American Dream.

So the power of the movie is in the characters themselves. We are introduced to shabu dealers, and shabu addicts, married nurses and hip-hop pinoys, Filipino cops and other exiles. One observation I would like to make is, are the actors in this movie really great acters? Or is the writer/director, just brillant? My conclusion is that Lav is a brillant director and writer, because even though there was some really bad acting in the movie, the story shone, and you empathized with everybody, even the bad ones.

So in conclusion, did I like the movie? Did I not? What can I say about it? What did I not like?

What Lav has here is a cinematic tour de force, as one Variety review said here. Though I liked the way the characters were played out, I feel the characters had no redemption. Lav comes from a time, when Filipinos were very cynical, and were all sitting around, waiting for a Messiah to save them. What Lav and many others have to figure out, is that one must be one's own Messiah, and if one just succumbs to one's emotion and illogic, this is what can happen.

The problems of the Philippines are caused by nobody but ourselves. And even if foreign invaders has persecuted as long ago, that was a long time ago, and we must move on. But before I pontificate any further, I'd like to return to the movie. Did it deserve to be 5 hours? Yes, it did. It was worth it. But it is not a film, in the typical sense, but more of an art work. Nice to be viewed, but perhaps not more than once. It could be edited down to two hours, but Lav didn't, and that's his prerogative.

I think it is a great piece of work, and everybody should try to at least view it once, whether in installments or one full sitting. And Lav is a great man. But as one viewer in the audience said today, he has to learn to laugh more. Coz life is not as cynical, as he makes it seem. And once in awhile, we do smile. If not a lot even.