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Melo sent these screenshots.

Photo: Homer in the British Museum. From Wikipedia.

For our grief we’ll need the strong stuff. We’ll have to go back, all the way to the beginning, to Homer.

This is from War Music, Christopher Logue’s account (not an exact translation) of Books 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad. While prowling around the bookstore yesterday I literally tripped over the Logue. If not for the pain in my foot I might never have opened it, but I did and it was like being shocked into full consciousness. This is what literature is for. I don’t want to hear that everything is going to be fine and dandy because that would be a lie. I need to be reminded that although life is cruel and full of sorrow, it holds out the possibility of the sublime.

from War Music (an account of books 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad)
by Christopher Logue

Down on your knees, Achilles. Farther down.
Now forward on your hands and put your face into the dirt,
And scrub it to and fro.
Grief has you by the hair with one
And with the forceps of its other hand
Uses your mouth to trowel the dogshit up;
Watches you lift your arms to Heaven; and then
Pounces and screws your nose into the filth.
Gods have plucked drawstrings from your head,
And from the templates of your upper lip
Modelled their bows.
Not now. Not since
Your grieving reaches out and pistol-whips
That envied face, until
Frightened to bear your black, backbreaking agony alone,
You sank, throat back, thrown back, your voice
Thrown out across the sea to reach your Source.

Artwork by Jay Lozada

When we’re through being stoned on grief and nostalgia, what will we do?

If we go back to whatever we were doing before Saturday—varying degrees of drudgery and self-absorption—this will have been just another dramatic spectacle (and we’re good at staging those).

If we resolve to make the recent national catharsis mean something, what should we do next?

Somebody? Anybody?

Photo: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

Tie A Yellow Ribbon is historically significant, but its bounciness mocks our sadness. As to the Jose Mari Chan song, let’s just say I’ve never been a pacifist. These songs and the rest of the 1986 Edsa playlist (Mambo Magsaysay, Handog ng Pilipino, the Apo discography) except for Bayan Ko make the Edsa Revolution seem a quaint and distant memory. We need to bring the spirit into the 21st century.

I believe in the importance of the music surrounding an event. In the future when you look back on this day, you will hear that song in your head. It is best to hear a song you can stand. I’m not a Coldplay fan, but their song Yellow is entirely appropriate to this occasion. In the present context try to listen to ‘Look at the stars, look how they shine for you’ without blubbering. Younger people with no memory of Edsa 86 would feel it more. So I texted everyone I know who might know someone involved in choosing the playlist and suggested they include Yellow. There’s always been something dolorous about Coldplay anyway. I think it would work.

First there was her reply to Malacañang’s offer of state honors for President Aquino. Powerful, a bit overdone, but effective. Then she was asked, ‘If President Arroyo comes to the wake, will you welcome her?’

Kris—looking fabulous and refreshed, no eyebags or dark circles, luminous complexion—half-smiles at the questioner. And pauses. Pauses. Paaaauuuusssssseeeessss…The audience is waiting, and she knows it, and she hooooolds it…Then she blinks and says, ‘That’s a very difficult question.’ And adds, ‘I’d rather not answer that.’

Brava!

You can count on Kris Aquino to say the things other people cannot say. Whatever she’s done, she does not tell lies.

Start writing.

*****

Dead Again
Review of Tirad Pass: The Last Stand of General Gregorio del Pilar
Directed by Carlo J. Caparas, Starring Romnick Sarmenta
In Twisted, TODAY, 8 July 1996

. . .The movie itself is untainted by historical authenticity. It is 1898 and the Katipuneros are armed with amazing rifles which require no reloading whatsoever. At the climactic Battle of Tirad Pass, the Pinoys fortify their positions with sharpened bamboo stakes which serve no conceivable purpose but to impale them as they get shot. It certainly gives new meaning to the term, ‘suicide troops’.

There are loud explosions which cause no perceptible damage, and there is a three-second differential between the blast and the flying bodies. At one point a corpse comes back to life, then dies again.

I am told that during the filming of an earlier Carlo J. Massacre movie, the actress pointed out that since she had been stabbed in the back, she should have a bloodstain in the general area. ‘We’ll add the blood in post-production,’ the director said. In the finished product you can see the bloodstain following the actress across the screen.

You cannot accuse Caparas of being limited by genre: somewhere in the middle, Tirad Pass turns into a documentary, with hazy video footage and pictures from grade school textbooks. Narration is provided by the guy who must’ve been the elocution coach for the classic electric fan commercial with Pia Moran (‘baaahks paahn, eestaahnd paahn, colored mood lights. . .’).

The writer-director offers an interesting insight as to why we lost the war: at the secret meetings of the Katipunan, everyone talks very loud. Not only do the characters yak too much in a mock-formal Tagalog like rejects from a balagtasan but they actually provide a blow-by-blow account of the action. Gregorio del Pilar (Romnick Sarmenta) and his brother discuss the meeting at Biak-na-Bato. ‘Pinag-uusapan nila ang Biak-na-Bato,’ proclaim the kibitzers. Gregorio and his brother start fighting. ‘Mukhang nagkakainitan ang magkapatid,’ they chorus. How very thoughtful of the director to think of the visually-impaired members of the audience.

. . .The Spaniards are played by assorted white people who look like they were rounded up from some sleazy bar in the red-light district. When the Spaniards are booted out, they get to play Americans.

At the core of the movie is the relationship between Del Pilar and his commander-in-chief, Emilio Aguinaldo (Joel Torre). . .Caparas may not be aware of it, but Tirad Pass suggests an intriguing motivation for del Pilar’s bravery and eventual sacrifice. . .There are protracted sequences in which Torre and Sarmenta exchange lingering looks and passionately declare their loyalty to the flag. When they bid each other goodbye before the Battle of Tirad Pass, the person sitting behind me said, ‘Kiss! Kiss!’

. . .History tells us that General del Pilar and a few dozen men were assigned to hold Tirad Pass to buy time for General Aguinaldo. In the movie Del Pilar’s sacrifice is pointless because Aguinaldo wastes his time hanging about his campsite. When he finally gets on his horse it staggers forward at 1 kph. . .mukhang naghihingalo ang kabayo.

. . .This is how our heroes are honored—they become the subjects of stupid movies. They’ve already given their lives for this country, let’s not kill them all over again.

*****

In the original review I said that in Tirad Pass Joel Torre gives the worst performance of his career. I was wrong. His career nadir has to be the role of the grieving OFW father in another Carlo J. Caparas masterpiece, The Lipa Massacre (Lord Deliver Us From Carlo J. Caparas Movies, I mean Evil). On the plane back to the Philippines, his character discovers that his family has been murdered. Gushing tears and snot, he crawls on the floor, eats the carpet, and tries to force the plane down with sheer bad acting. For that he won the Famas Award.

Poster from Video 48.

Joel you know we love ya, although Butch will never forgive you for breaking your foot on a Banaue rice terrace so he couldn’t use his backstage pass to the Santana concert. Years later, Uro directed Joel in a horror movie. He said, ‘Joel, remember what you did in The Lipa Massacre? The big acting scene? For this sequence I want you to give me. . .five percent of that intensity.’

Alright that’s enough fun at Joel’s expense. Eat at JT’s Manukan, everybody.

*****

Danton swears that in the 90s Caparas was planning a movie on the Lucila Lalu story. The working title: The Lucila Lalu Story (God, Where’s My Head?).