‘World Peace, Motherfucker’: ‘Kalayaan’ Review
Posted by Zig Marasigan on Monday, July 23, 2012 in Cinemalaya, Film Festivals, Images, Reviews, Trailers, Zig Marasigan
Kalayaan opens with a cryptic passage from the German opera The Emperor of Atlantis.
Though it doesn’t take a specialist of European musical theater to appreciate Kalayaan, knowledge of the opera itself does shed light on director Adolf Alix’s latest film.
The Emperor of Atlantis was a satire written during the second World War as a means of criticizing the Nazi regime. It was an opera wherein the Emperor of Atlantis had forced Death himself into resignation. What was first a blessing quickly became a curse, as soldiers of war were forced into eternal suffering, robbed of the release of death.
Despite being set on the picturesque islands of Palawan; the post card imagery is tainted by the haunting nature of Alix’s film and the inevitable fate of his characters.
Kalayaan strands its audience alongside Julian Macaraig (Ananda Everingham), a soldier of the Philippine army assigned to the isolated island of Kalayaan; a part of the often fought over Spratly archipelago. Having been left alone on the island for far longer than he cares to recall, Julian begins to feel the clutches of madness engulf him. But with only two full days before the end of his tour, it turns out that the biggest threat to Julian isn’t a foreign invasion force, but rather his own sanity.
The result is an art house psychological horror film that is both engaging and haunting – one that treats madness not as something that can be stayed but as something that is certain.
Julian’s eventual descent into madness is a slow one. He lingers in and out of his daily routine without fail. From his morning exercise to his solitary fishing trips, he doesn’t keep to his schedule out of duty, but out of survival. Even his masturbation is clock work, tugging at himself against an old stash of pornography. Julian is eventually joined by two more soldiers, Lucio (Zanjoe Marudoe) and Eric (Luis Alandy), but the additional companionship only proves to stem the madness, and not stop it.
Kalayaan’s pace is painfully grating, but the resulting effect is sympathy for Julian’s plight. Alix manages to convey the feeling of routine and suffocation by stranding his audience alongside Julian. However, his imaginative sense of framing and composition still breathes a sense of majesty into the islands of Palawan.
There is a strong hint of legend that surrounds Kalaayan. Tales of the haunted island unfold slowly, and we begin to discover the curse haunting Julian and the rest of the island. It is at night where the threat of madness is gravest, when Julian wanders to fend off unseen spirits with his flashlight and rifle. We realize it is only a matter of time before the island takes him as well.
What gives Kalayaan its dimension, however, is its backdrop. Set alongside the ouster of Former President Joseph Estrada, Julian manages to listen on as Manila works itself into the fever of Edsa 2. But the promise of political change, we now know, is nothing but a flash in the proverbial pan.
As the three soldiers struggle to ward off boredom and madness, Lucio and Eric parade themselves naked in front of a dazed Julian in what appears to be a mock beauty pageant. The three participate in a Q&A parody where Julian asks his fellow soldiers about the essence of the Spratly islands.
Lucio trumps his competition with an answer that is both satirical and brutally honest.
“World Peace, Motherfucker.”
Lucio’s answer, though outstandingly hilarious, carries with it a brutal honesty. The issues that have politicized the lives of common men are likened to the farce of trivial pageantry and meaningless spectacle.
As Julian and his companions listen in on the events of Edsa 2, we realize that there is indeed no end to the cycle of oppression. As Erap steps down, Glora Macapagal Arroyo takes his place. Another leader, another commander-in-chief, another day trapped on the hellish sands of Kalayaan.
Despite the inherent cynicism of Alix’s film, there is a morbid silver lining to the soldiers’ inevitable fate. Only death is the true release – the truest sense of freedom.
World peace, or not.
PARA SA TAMAD MAGBASA:
Art house psychological horror; if ever there was such a thing. Alix’s latest work successfully captures a man’s slow descent into madness, set against a political backdrop that is now only being explored in Philippine cinema.
