A transcendental power

Had "Mga Anak ng Unos, Unang Aklat" been your "usual" or "traditional" documentary, it would most probably feature an authoritative or dispassionate voice-over that narrates or explains everything we see onscreen and interviews with resource persons or with the subjects at hand themselves, giving their own insights and opinions about the matter being tackled. But then, Lav Diaz, having his documentary for the first time in the 16 years that he's been making full-length narrative features, would have it in a radically different way. The method that he employs in the 143-minute black-and-white documentary is essentially no different from the kind found in his lengthy narrative features ("Batang West Side", "Siglo ng Pagluluwal", "Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan", "Mula sa Kung Ano ang Noon"): the long, static shots and the austere compositions. Yet, the filmic style of the documentary invites a different kind of participation or involvement from the viewers. 

In the narrative features mentioned, there's a discernible plot or story that we can at least follow, something we can anchor on regardless of the cinematics utilized by the filmmaker. From a philosophical standpoint, an a priori knowledge is already provided by the filmmaker to the audience. In "Mga Anak ng Unos", viewers are encouraged to make use of the other aspect of this philosophical knowledge - a posteriori. Thus, viewers take a more "active" participation. In an intriguing combination of a Vertovian observation and a Lockean empiricism, it now becomes the viewers' task to provide coherence, meaning and substance to what they are seeing onscreen. This time around, we aren't merely there to observe, but to interpret as well. We may have been given something unifyingly familiar to focus our attention to: having to live through a year-long cycle of strong and destructive typhoons, notable among which is the typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) which caused such a massive and devastating impact when it hit our country in November last year, something which many of our fellows have been reeling from up till now. 

Yet, the manner in which the internationally-acclaimed filmmaker shows the monochrome images onscreen is something that can beguile us (not that Diaz hasn't beguiled in his previous works): the images are dispassionately and objectively slow-burn, nearly-bereft of a spoken word. So much so that the film runs the risk of ultimately not eliciting any sort of affective emotion from the viewers, filling in the kind of position that a documentarist is supposed to take in regards his subject. The empiricism that the film embraces prompts us to approach the realism/naturalism being presented in a way no different from how a scientist would do so: observing without pre-formed conceptions and sentiments, assessing the facts without a clouded judgment. "Mga Anak ng Unos" isn't an attempt at a miserablist eco-disaster docu-drama, unbearably wallowing in the bathos of a tragic scenario. Rather, it's a naturalist evocation of lives trying to re-build themselves from the aftermath of a destructive force of nature, the camera's eyes quietly focused on these people in whatever they do and wherever they are. 

Take for instance the image of two young boys scavenging whatever there is from a flooded creek somewhere in the metropolis. The camera films them extensively and extendedly from various angles, with each frame showing the two boys in essentially the same repetitive activity, nearly evoking Beckett in its seeming meaninglessness and absurdity, with a few strangers coming in and out of the frame somewhat breaking the monotony. From this virtual banality, an unexpected transcendence emerges, subtly showing a resilience and perseverance in the face of a calamity. In a lesser-minded effort, such depiction of resilience would've become contrived and pat. Another is the striking image of a wrecked ship washed ashore in a provincial seaside town. We initially have no idea about the significance of this object;we stare at it almost blankly. But through a series of austerely observed mise-en-scène, we come to learn a shattering story behind the ship. 

Method-wise, Diaz' rigidly observational approach in his documentary isn't entirely a novel one as it dates back to the works of, say, Allan King and Frederick Wiseman. But regardless of that, the power that "Mga Anak ng Unos" gains in its naturalism and minimalism is hard to ignore. 

(In Lav Diaz' documentary "Mga Anak ng Unos, Unang Aklat", viewers are invited to take an active participation.)