SARI-SARING SINENG PINOY

Daluyong At Habagat

History is the very stuff of Celso Ad. Castillo's Daluyong At Habagat (The Associates And Celso Ad. Castillo Film Company). The film is concerned with events that actually happened. Daluyong aspires to being a documentary of a specific decade in Philippine history. Castillo's concern with producing the documentary effects sets the mood and tone of the film. We are presented with an authentic and very evocative sense of setting, Manila recovering from the wreckage of World War II. The documentary technique is used to provide verisimilitude to the plight of Filipino workers. In early sequences, the workers are presented as not yet integrated into the organization and assembly lines of factories. They work in the junkyard salvaging scraps of iron and bombs, one of which explodes, killing the father of Igus (Vic Vargas). From here, the film's focus concentrates on Igus, his wife Cielo (Pinky de Leon) and brother Andy (Rez Cortez). It becomes their burden to bury the father but with post-war poverty, they find themselves unable to raise the amount needed for a decent burial. Igus' inability to raise money for the funeral becomes the sole motivation for Cielo going into prostitution and Igus forcing himself into the home of Don Anselmo Tuazon (Joonee Gamboa), the junkyard owner. Igus goes to the bar where Cielo works, drags her out in the rain and beats her up until she contracts pneumonia. This pushes him to disrupt the wedding of Ella (Alma Moreno) to Jake Araneta (Ricky Belmonte), in his effort to collect compensation from Don Anselmo for his father's death, this time to be used for Cielo's hospitalization which subsequently forces him to kidnap Ella whom he uses as a shield to escape from the police who have surrounded him. With Igus in hiding, more problems arise. Cielo is compelled to return to prostitution while Andy becomes a tong collector in the marketplace.

Within the framework of such a story, Castillo develops and introduces other forms of antagonisms and conflicts which enhance the film's tension but detracts from the logic of the development of its content as they take Igus from the life of the workers. In the shoot-out during the delivery of the ransom money for Ella's release, Jake is hit in the spine rendering him impotent. This impotence increases his hatred for Igus making him thirst for sadistic revenge. It also becomes a source of tension between him and Ella who reveals that she has remained a virgin for ten years in spite of their marriage. What is amiss in this development is that the workers' problem in which the film starts and ends with is forgotten and instead it pursues a series of actions quite peripheral to the central and controlling theme. Castillo's genius is in realizing, on film the glaring actuality of place. The lush countryside in Asedillo (1971), the beaches and sunlight in Ang Pinakamagandang Hayop Sa Balat Ng Lupa, the noise and anarchy in Daluyong. In these instances, Castillo more than revises the sense of reality of a setting but authenticates it in terms of the aggression of color, sound and familiarity on our senses. In Daluyong, he goes beyond this simulation of virtual reality in favor of a more detailed documentation, a close-up of a Victory currency and the playing of Liberation Day songs. These details, however, are not sufficient to complete our sense of the real. Reality here has to be sought in the very logical development of the workers' situation during those decades. Carelessness in research led to the distortion of the characters of the workers and the imposition of soap-operatic melodrama on historical facts. Putol (Lito Anzures), for instance, was presented as a labor leader. His behavior, however, is controlled by the ethos of a lumpen. He acts as some sort of counter-terror to the violence which the rich gratuitously indulge in. In one scene, he frees Igus from misfortune by massing a group of armed men against Jake and his henchmen. Jake's hatred for Igus becomes more focused on his impotence and phallic envy than on what should have been logical. That Igus and the workers constitute a threat to their privileged position as members of the bourgeoise.

Any story on the plight of the worker as a class during the mid 40's would inevitably have to ask the question of how the workers lost political power. Such would have been the logical development of Daluyong, which was certainly within the power of Castillo as director to execute. Only by tracing the development of labor, as Castillo has chosen to begin his film, could he have provided the proper material support for the conclusions presented in teletypes at the end. Conclusions which are those of the reporter who had interviewed Putol and Cielo at Igus' funeral. Having disregarded history while pretending to be faithful to it, Castillo goes on to disregard other technical aspects. There is his failure to observe point of view. Although the film is a reconstruction of two angles of vision, that of Putol and Cielo. Their viewpoints are never respected in the development of their testimony. There are portions in Cielo's narrative which she could not have witnessed as she is not a participant or observer in the scenes. For instance, Igus' capture by Jake's henchmen is contained in Cielo's narrative which should not have happened. Towards the end, Castillo achieves a triumph. Through a series of intercutting, he shows three related series of sequences. Igus rushing headlong to meet Jake, his adversary. Andy standing at attention in a courtroom listening to a judge render his sentence and the laborers going on strike. Castillo managed to show these sequences relating to three forms of violence namely, the organized workers against an exploitative system, institutional violence against the individual and the type of anarchistic violence that man within a given context of society perpetuates against his own kind. These are a testimony to Castillo's power as an artist and his capacity to make a profound understanding of social issues. Given this equipment, he really did not have to evade historical truth.

Directed By: Celso Ad. Castillo
Screenplay: Mauro Gia Samonte
Director Of Photography: Ricardo F. David
Music: Ernani Cuenco
Film Editor: Abelardo Hulleza
Produced By: The Associates And Celso Ad. Castillo Film Company
Release Date: March 26, 1976