Lakbayan to Genus Pan

Genus Pan (2020, Philippines, Lav Diaz)

Genus Pan, Courtesy of Sine Olivia Pilipinas

As with any Lav Diaz film, the running time is often mentioned. Anything between 3-4 hours can be considered a Lav Diaz short film. So imagine the surprise that Lav Diaz’s new film Genus Pan is only 157 minutes long. But I came across an even shorter version of this in 2019. To be more precise, you can call it a 35 minute trailer.

In 2019, I was happy to discover Lakbayan (Journey), an omnibus of shorts directed by three Filipino masters, Lav Diaz, Brilliante Mendoza and Kidlat Tahimik, to mark the centennial anniversary of Philippines’ cinema.

Lakbayan

The first segment called “Hugaw" (“Dirt”, directed by Lav Diaz) depicted in luscious black and white is about three coal miners who make the long dangerous journey back home across an unforgiving landscape featuring a sea, mountain and a forest. Along the way, they encounter mystical visions which tests their nerves and sanity.  This 35 minute short is the seed which has grown into the feature film Genus Pan.

The second segment in Lakbayan, Brilliante Mendoza’s “Desfocado” (“Defocused”), tackles topics of corruption and justice by using a real-life story about farmers from Mindanao island who marched over 1000 miles to demand justice for their land. Kidlat Tahimik’s final segment (“Kabunyan’s Journey”) is a touching documentary about his son’s travels in their family camper van across the Philippine countryside.

Genus Pan is available to rent until July 7 via Projectr.tv.

I am not sure where Lakbayan is available to see via legal means. I had programmed this film back in 2019 and gotten the film directly from the distributor in Philippines.

Roy Andersson 2.5

About Endlessness (2019, Swedish co-production)

10 years ago, I laughed in delight while watching Roy Andersson’s double-bill of Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, The Living (2007). Both films are packed with plenty of deadpan, absurd scenarios, witty observations layered with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The two films are part of his “Living Trilogy” which was completed by 2014’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. Each film, spaced out by 7 years, contains similar style and themes, especially regarding death which hovers over the frame or is walking besides the characters in the first two films. Some characters can be considered as already dead (zombies, ghosts). While the first two films implied death, the third film in the trilogy shows characters dying in the frame. Even though the topic is grim, the playful music and absurd scenarios in A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence tends to inject some humour.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

The comedic style of the “Living trilogy” films stands in contrast to Andersson’s earlier films such as A Love Story (1970) which is why I am labeling the “Living Trilogy” as Roy Andersson 2.0. This brings us to his 2019 film About Endlessness which appears to be an epilogue to the “Living Trilogy” but has a more bleaker look due to the grayish palette complete with overcast skies.

 

The opening sequence stands out as two characters fly over a city in ruins. That is just one of a series of vignettes in the film which doesn’t interleave characters like the “Living Trilogy” did. Instead, some segments are linked together by an unseen female narrator’s voice-over such as “I saw a man…”. There is the expected deadpan, few gags, inclusion of religious elements and attempts to tackle contemporary issues. Although, one of the contemporary segments about honour killing doesn’t have the intended impact and comes across as tone-deaf.

The “Living Trilogy” and About Endlessness were released over a long duration of 19 years. The world changed significantly over these two decades yet Andersson has largely maintained a similar style over this duration with a few tweaks. Unfortunately, I find the last two films weaker in comparison to Songs from the Second Floor and You, The Living. That could be more due to the high bar by those two earlier films or perhaps my changing perspective.

I am labeling About Endlessness as Roy Andersson 2.5 because it shares elements with the “Living Trilogy” and came out 5 years after the last film in the trilogy (not as per the trilogy’s 7 year gap). Will a future Roy Andersson film move to 3.0 or will it be another 2.x variation? I look forward to finding out.

About Endlessness

Bruno Dumont 2.0

Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018, 4 episode TV Mini-series)

For a change, I started at the beginning. I was fortunate enough to witness Bruno Dumont’s films in order as they circulated on the film festival circuit starting with La vie de Jésus (1997), Humanity (1999), Twentynine Palms (2003). I was shocked, puzzled by what I saw because back then I was still searching for a film vocabulary to comprehend things. I started forming a clearer picture with his next films Flanders (2006) and Hadewijch (2009) and figured I had understood his style and what to expect next. That is why the arrival of Li'l Quinquin (2014) was such a surprize and forced me to recalibrate. 

The 4 part TV series Li'l Quinquin was also presented as a full length feature film which I was lucky enough to watch in a cinema. On purpose, I had read nothing about the film in advance and was able to go through a whole range of emotions while watching the comedic bumbling adventures of Commandant Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) and Lieutenant Carpentier (Philippe Jore) as they attempted to solve an inexplainable series of gruesome discoveries. Van der Weyden’s character was certainly a delight and the closest assessment was his character was a cinematic offspring of Jacques Clouseau and Tati’s Mr. Hulot. With Li'l Quinquin, Dumont showed a new side to his filmmaking by taking aspects of French town life depicted in his previous films in a different direction. While the work felt like an auteur’s variation of True Detective, it also seemed to suggest Bruno Dumont 2.0. That belief was strengthened with the arrival of Slack Bay (2016). 

2.0 is firmly enforced by the arrival of Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018), another 4 episode TV series that features the same characters from Li'l Quinquin, albeit grown up. The title character from Li’l Quinquin (Alane Delhaye) is now grown up as Coincoin, as are Eve Terrier (Lucy Caron) and Kevin (Julien Bodard). Delightfully, both Bernard Pruvost’s Commandant Van der Weyden and Philippe Jore’s Lieutenant Carpentier characters are back although they don’t appear to have grown any wiser.

This time around, Dumont tries his hand at the sci-fi genre using the similar comedic framework developed by Li'l Quinquin. Van der Weyden is still fumbling his way across the countryside while Carpentier is still driving on two-wheels. 

The duo are woefully unprepared for the arrival of the….aliens. Of course, this being a Bruno Dumont film, the aliens are not what Hollywood has given us but are instead an oozing gooey sludge that can fall from the sky at any given moment.

The mysterious sludge also has some powers that I will not give away but safe to say, it results in plenty of comedic situations akin to slapstick and mistaken identities. There are some other delightful comedic touches such as the broken lights on top of the police car. At the start of the episodes, there is a single unbroken light but after multiple crashes and alien sludge falling from the sky, an additional light is added by Van der Weyden as the story moves along.

By the end of the film, there are 4 broken lights on the passenger side of the police car while the original light is also broken on Carpentier’s side. There are multiple cinematic references as well that serve as wink-wink jokes for those in the know although this time around Carpentier’s name works perfectly for the material as it is just a single letter away from Carpenter (ahem John).

Near the end of the film, Dumont slightly shifts into another genre before closing things out with some music. The song and light-hearted music doesn’t feel like a coincidence because Coincoin is book-ended by Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017) and Joan of Arc (2019), two unique musicals. The drift to musicals may be Dumont 3.0 although with his upcoming film On a Half Clear Morning (2021), Dumont may go back to 2.0 or perhaps 2.5.