Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
Haden Guest 0:01
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Harvard Film Archive. My name is Haden Guest, I'm the Archive’s director and I'm really pleased to welcome back for the third consecutive night, Philippine master director Lav Diaz. And tonight, we are screening his 2013 film Norte, the End of History. And this film marks something of a breakthrough for Lav Diaz, in the sense that it brought him a kind of international recognition that while very much deserved, he had not until that point received, and this film was screened in festivals around the world. And it made many top ten lists, including my own. It also however marks something of a departure for Lav Diaz. Among his more recent films, it's the only one in color and it finds Lav Diaz exploring a different kind of expressive camerawork than the other films which are really known for the sort of signature sequence shot and the largely fixed camera who's architectonic dimensions are given even more strength by the stark black-and-white cinematography with which he most often works. And yet this film continues to explore many of the themes that have been central to Diaz’ cinema. It is an indictment of class inequity. It is a cautionary tale about delusional ideologies that quickly transform themselves into dangerous forms of tyranny. And it's also an adaptation—like a number of Lav Diaz' works—of an important literary work, of course, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Perhaps we should say it's inspired by that work rather than a direct adaptation. The second title, of course, comes from another source of inspiration, The End of History. And I’m thinking of Francis Fukuyama’s controversial work declaring a sort of triumph of neoliberalism and its capitalist expressions. And in this film, we can clearly see the grave consequences of that rampant reign of free market capitalism.
We are so honored to have Lav Diaz with us tonight. And he'll be joining us for conversation after the film. And so please stay for that. Lav Diaz is here, not only as a guest at Harvard Film Archive, but he's also a Baby Jane Holzer Visiting Artist in Film. This is a fellowship that was given to the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Department of Theater, Dance & Media, by the Warhol superstar, Baby Jane Holzer. And, under this title, Lav Diaz will be here, not just for this long weekend—which is coming to a close now—but he'll also be visiting classes through the early parts of next week and giving a masterclass on Wednesday. So it's an exciting time for us. We're really honored to have Lav Diaz here. And also to welcome him back. He was here in 2015 for a major retrospective. And then he was back shortly after, as a Radcliffe-Film Study Center fellow. I should also thank the Film Study Center, as well, for their support and partnership on this visit. I'd like to ask you to please turn off any cell phones, electronic devices, please refrain from using them. The film runs for four hours, and there will not be an intermission. And now with no further ado, please join me in welcoming Lav Diaz.
[APPLAUSE]
Lav Diaz 4:07
Thank you for coming. It's just 4 hours, so if you endure, we’ll have some talk later. Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
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Lav Diaz 4:20
Sorry for the long credits!
Haden Guest 4:23
Oh no, we needed a little time to catch our breath. And so, Lav I wanted to– We’ll definitely take questions from the audience, but I wanted to start with a little conversation up here.
Like artists, intellectuals in your film have a special place. Oftentimes they have a kind of–
Lav Diaz
They’re wasting their time. Talking and talking.
Haden Guest
Well sometimes they have a kind of insight that allows them to be figures of resistance, for instance, as in Season of the Devil that we saw on Friday, but here l want to talk about the figure of Fabian who's this man with these big ideas and yet, we see that they lead him down this really terrible path. So I was wondering if you could talk about this, he begins, even by praising Marcos, and then says nations don't exist. family doesn't exist, history doesn't exist.
Lav Diaz 5:21
Yeah, two figures are the inspiration for Fabian. Yeah. Raskolnikov, of course, from Crime and Punishment, and the young Marcos, the president dictator himself. So I molded the character based on these two figures. And when I was shooting the film, because there was a really radical change in the script, it was a different script when we started the shoot. I was revising the script while doing this shoot, so it became that I was obsessed with the idea of how fascism started in the country. And I realized it was Marcos, the young Marcos, so Fabian was the young Marcos. So we shot the film in the places where he grew up, Marcos. We were shooting there.
Haden Guest 6:22
Was this something that was obvious to audiences in the Philippines?
Lav Diaz 6:27
No, no, no. The daughter of Marcos helped us a bit. She was the governor of the province. She didn't know that we were shooting a film about her father. But when she saw the film, she was so mad at me, of course.
Haden Guest 6:42
And in terms of what brought you to Dostoevsky in the first place…. I know Russian literature is important to you. But this novel in particular, what was it that...?
Lav Diaz 6:54
Yeah, Dostoevsky has been a part of my life, because my father was a reader of Russian literature. So we have all those books. I always [saw] these big books when I was a kid. On the shelves of my father: all these big books. And I see Dostoevsky, all the Russians: Chekov, Tolstoy, [UNKNOWN]. When I grew up and started reading them, I loved the works of Dostoevsky. My works are very much informed by the spaces of the Russian novels. If you read Tolstoy, there's a lot of that: spaciousness and spaces. And if you read Dostoevsky, there's a lot of psychoanalysis and psychology involved in his works in human nature, especially human suffering. So they've been with me growing up.
Haden Guest 7:51
One of the things that's so fascinating about this and thinking about it in relation to Crime and Punishment is the shift away actually from Fabian–
Lav Diaz
It was just a take-off.
Haden Guest
But, you know, he’s absent from the film for quite a stretch where we're actually with Joaquin instead. And I was wondering if you could talk about how this decision to make Joaquin such a central figure and his passion–
Lav Diaz 8:16
I want to also follow the trajectory of Joaquin and the wife. You know, there's dual, parallel histories of these people. It's not just about the battle of good and evil, but some studies of [UNKNOWN] nature. Yeah. So I just don't want to just focus on Fabian, because whatever happens to Fabian in the film, there's a continuum. The fate of this whole family is connected with what he's gonna do later.
Haden Guest 8:56
I mean, in talking about the end of history, just thinking about the end of the film, having Fabian in that lake. We're waiting for something terrible but this decision to leave him quite literally floating...
Lav Diaz 9:10
It’s foreboding. He’s sitting, he’s waiting. He’s ready, actually. For me, that image of him sitting in the boat is an image [showing] that he's ready to take the world. He’s ready to impose his twisted ideologies, his twisted perspective.
Haden Guest 9:28
I'm thinking of floating... This camera is really fascinating. And it's doing things that we don't really see in your films before, and not just these slightly creeping and gliding moments, but also these sort of floating visions or dreams. And then, of course, we see Joaquin floating at the end as if that camera is part of his world, and I was wondering if that's something you could talk about.
Lav Diaz 9:58
There's a big struggle on that thing about the [?issue?] of metaphysics, dreams and how our mind works when we're detached from things, the issue of spirituality. And I can't escape it because I’m discussing a very particular culture, the Filipino culture, and it's very much a part of that culture, Catholicism, Islam. So there is that. You cannot detach away from that. So I have to integrate that into the struggles of these people. And the use of the camera, of course, we struggled with that because there was no drone yet then. So we had to find somebody who can do those things. It was expensive. [HADEN LAUGHS] Took a lot of the budget, and suddenly after a few years, there's the drones and they’re cheap.
Haden Guest 11:02
We've also been talking over the last two nights about not just the different kinds of spiritualism and also the idea of indigenous beliefs. And it feels like that moment when he's floatingat the end seems like it's coming from some different almost sort of mythic place.
Lav Diaz 11:24
Yeah, Filipinos are animus before Islam and Catholicism came, so we have gods: the sun is a god, the moon is a god, the storm is about an evil god. The trees are god, comforting gods. The fields are giving gods. The volcanoes, they have dualities; they're generous, they're beautiful, but they're also deadly. We have all those gods. The metaphysical perspective has always been with us. Of course, there's also a lot of people will say, “Oh, it's an homage to Tarkovsky.” Yes.
Haden Guest 12:02
Well, certainly thinking about all the fire… Again, this seems to be coming from this idea of spirits in the land. But then I was, of course, thinking about Tarkovsky as well. And just the whole scenes where they're burning the side of the road, for instance, and there's almost like a path of fire that they have to...
Lav Diaz 12:25
But those things, like the fires there, they just happen. We were riding [in] the production vans and then “Oh, there’s fire! We shoot!” And you know, they're part of the film. Those are accidents that give more things to the film. We’re very open [to] those.
Haden Guest
Are they burning the fields for agricultural purposes?
Lav Diaz 12:49
The one with the [UNKNOWN] and he went to his sister, they’re just cleaning the tree. But the field was– I don't know what happens. It’s the other side of the river. So I just saw the fire and said “We shoot that.” So when you're doing film, you also take stock of accidents like that. And they give more.
Haden Guest 13:15
Of course, the fires that we see then forbode the crash of the jitney, then… Did you respond to that or ...?
Lav Diaz
We designed that, of course.
Haden Guest
I see. No, of course.
Lav Diaz 13:27
Accident of the wife? We designed that.
Haden Guest 13:30
Right. No, no, but I was wondering if that was already in the script when you saw the other fires?
Lav Diaz 13:35
No, I didn’t know how to end the film, actually. You're thinking of 1001 answers to end a narrative like that. And if you think of the political, the trope would be very different, you know. It's the radicalism of Fabian; it shouldn't be the metaphysics. I want to be more random and I want to check social reality more than just [following] a trope of the perspective of the protagonist, which is Fabian, so I veered away from it. I want to make it more poetic or more philosophical, the randomness of life, the little things, like I said, “Oh! An accident would be good.” But it's hard. It's a hard decision, of course, and Fabian will just be walking carelessly along the beach and he found his boatman asking for the boat, and then he just sat there. And I thought it would be more poetic that way; it would be more foreboding, rather than doing rhetorical politics about “Oh, here I come. I'm going to trace your world now. I am Fabian. Here’s my ideology.” That's the easier trope, of course. But he had to make decisions.
Haden Guest 15:07
So in general, though, is this true of your screenwriting process that you're always open to making this kind of radical change as you're shooting?
Lav Diaz 15:17
Yes, yes. Every day I wake up and write the script down and then that's what we shoot for the day. Always. I keep revising and revising. It’s always the hard part. You're losing a lot of sleep. You can't enjoy, right? The guys are drinking and having fun at night; you're writing, you're thinking of the next shoot. So it’s been that process.
Haden Guest 15:39
But I also heard that with this film, there was particular pressure, because some of the production costs were higher, because you were using different kinds of equipment, and you're shooting in color, and stuff like that...
Lav Diaz 15:49
There's a producer and there’s little money, so...
Haden Guest 15:52
And you were still doing this waking up at dawn…?
Lav Diaz 15:54
There was a big fight in the middle of the shoot, I didn't know because the associate producer is my friend. He’s the one who took me in. And I didn't know that the producer didn't like the film already. He didn't like what I was writing, the direction of the film. But I didn't know. He only told me after the film. And by the end of the film, we're already killing each other, the producer and my group talking… There's a lot of like, “We're gonna burn the film,” or something like that. But I persisted in editing it. And then when Cannes accepted it, there was a little bit more calm. [HADEN LAUGHS] But anyway, he sold the film to some other guys, because he hated me so much for changing the narrative, changing the characters. It was very different script when we started the shoot. It was just the story of a lantern maker who was incarcerated. It was just the life of Joaquin at first...
Haden Guest 16:57
And Fabian wasn't in it.
Lav Diaz 16:59
There was Fabian, but [he’s] just a killer. But it's the life of Joaquin and his wife. It's the story of a lantern maker who, every Christmas he waits for the wife to come and makes this lantern because the wife loves lanterns. That's the original story. But I was just silent when we were doing it. “I’ll just change this when the shoot comes.” [LAUGHS]
Haden Guest
You changed it quite a bit! [LAUGHS]
Lav Diaz
That made him really mad, the producer. I'm sorry for him.
Haden Guest 17:28
Oh, well, I'm not sorry, at all.
Let's take some questions from the audience. Questions or comments for Lav Diaz? And if you just wait for the microphone, it's just coming to you right now.
Audience 1 17:42
Hi, congratulations for a wonderful film. The four hours went by really nicely. But I was wondering about your process with the actors. It seems like, particularly where there are separations in the narrative... I was wondering how much time you spent with them? And whether they were professional actors…?
Lav Diaz 18:09
It depends… They're all professional actors. Yeah. But the prisoners are not the real prisoners. Some are real prisoners but we shot the film [UNKNOWN]. But with actors, you have to deal with them individually. They have their own processes. You're like a psychiatrist. You’re like a psychologist. You deal with them that way. Some actors didn't want to be told. Some actors, they want all the information. So you talk to them, they’ll be asking questions forever. Some actors, it will just be instructional. “You sit here. You go there.” That's it for them. They don't want to be told. So it's a different process, you know.
Haden Guest 18:49
But some actors you've worked with on many films.
Lav Diaz 18:52
So, they know my process; I know their process. It’s easier.
Haden Guest 18:56
And something else just to point out: one of your actors is also your assistant director [LAV LAUGHS] and works on the screenplay, another actor is an art director of the film.
Lav Diaz 19:05
A production designer, yeah.
Haden Guest 19:06
A production designer. So they actually know how–
Lav Diaz 19:09
We've been friends for a long time. We were like a family working. There's also that trust. It's important. You trust each other.
Haden Guest 19:19
We have a question right here in front. Here it comes.
Audience 2 19:31
Hi. I loved your movie. I was wondering if Joaquin was inspired by Dostoyevsky himself, because I know that Dostoyevsky was exiled to prison on false pretenses, right? And his philosophy was very similar to Joaquin’s. I mean, this sort of treating everyone you know, regardless of the crimes they perpetrated with humanity, treating them with love. It just struck me as extremely similar to...
Lav Diaz 20:02
Yeah, Dostoyevsky, for me he is the greatest novelist, one of the greatest. I read a lot of his work when I was in college, so it was all Dostoyevsky then when I was in college. This is the second film that's inspired by Crime and Punishment. My first film was inspired by Crime and Punishment as well.
Audience 2 20:26
Was the figure Joaquin at all modeled on Dostoevsky himself?
Lav Diaz 20:30
Yeah, he suffered. Yeah, of course. There are similarities there, but it's not really particularly about Dostoyevsky.
Audience 2 20:40
Can I ask you one more question? [INAUDIBLE]
Lav Diaz 20:51
I [was] a musician then. I don't know. But it just came. My dream then was to become a musician. And then suddenly, there's an epiphany. And I found this book. It's a very instructional book, How to Write a Screenplay. What is this? I can write this thing... And I started writing screenplays. But before that, I was writing poetry and music already and some short stories as well. But it just came naturally. Maybe it's because of my background, because when I was growing up, although we were living in the mountains, my father was a cinephile, a cinema addict. He would bring us to this town, it's like three hours away. And we will be watching every weekend, eight movies. So there's like a film school for us with all the mosquitoes around, we’re just watching and watching movies. Yeah, that's every weekend eight movies—from spaghetti Westerns to Hong Kong.. all the gamut of cinema, we watched them all. James Bond, Filipino slapstick comedies. So that's my film school. For me, yeah, cinema came naturally. I didn't wish for it. I didn't dream it. It just, you know, came naturally.
Haden Guest 22:25
But Lav, you started out making more commercial films. And I'm wondering how did that–
Lav Diaz 22:32
Well, commercial...
Haden Guest 22:33
Well, how did you– That epiphany that you wanted to make films... I guess I'm wondering did you know what kind of films you wanted to make?
Lav Diaz 22:41
No, I don't even know cinema really, to be very honest. I’m still trying to understand this medium, you know. It's just that I know that I can use it. Because I know how to tell stories, I have a lot of stories to tell, I can share my experience. And beyond that, there's the big responsibility to discourse on the suffering of my people as well. So I'm very, very careful and responsible with my stories. It must always represent the human struggle: sorrow, sacrifice, transcendence, all those things. It also has responsibility. It's not just doing art for art's sake. Fuck that.
Haden Guest 23:33
There's a question, yes....
Unknown Speaker 23:37
What would you say to the interpretation that Joaquin is a Christ-like figure in opposition to Fabian's rejection of religion or Christ and if you have a particular Christian perspective on the story? Or did it evolve or is something that's just embedded in this duality between these two characters?
Lav Diaz 24:00
I have faith in humanity. I still believe that human beings can be good no matter what place we're in now, we can still get out of it. You know, there's goodness in humanity. That's a struggle now, I think that's the biggest struggle now. How to balance that now. How to redeem or emancipate our souls from this abyss that's going on in the world. The issue of, you know, goodness, a man’s soul. Yeah.
Haden Guest 24:35
But the idea that Joaquin could be read as a Christ-like figure...
Lav Diaz 24:39
Could be that. Yeah, he's a good man. He's an absolutely good man. You see that he's in prison, but Fabian is more in prison. It's the reverse. He’s more free inside the cell actually, because he knew that no matter what, he’s a good man. The use of liberation can be simplified to that. Just be good and you can be emancipated.
Haden Guest 25:17
Yes.
Audience 4 25:30
[INAUDIBLE] … the jail scenes where I could have easily been transported to Dostoevsky’s times where being in jail is really airless. Really nowhere to go and yet Joaquin is like an angel, just like an angel of peace… And I was also impressed by the gentleness of the children, the women. There was no need for them to go into histrionics... Their gentleness [AUDIO CUTS OUT] … first by the poverty—just trying to make the daily living—and the pawnbroker lady was excellent. She could switch roles. She wasn’t that despicable because at the end she just said okay, she advanced $250 or .... And so it wasn't a movie of just deep blacks or deep whites. I really like the gentility of it. It is just…
Lav Diaz
Thank you. Thank you.
Haden Guest 27:20
I mean, actually on that note, the figure of Wakwak in the prison whose first of all, I mean, I just wonder where… just the whole thing about not looking and then at the end, it’s as if he can't see when he's getting the massage… This is one of the most sinister figures in the film, rivaling Fabian, but then there's this redemption. I was wondering if you could talk about any inspirations or where this figure came from, and this whole… He’s like a menacing Santa Claus when he comes in at first! [LAUGHS]
Lav Diaz 27:57
When we were shooting, there's no Wakwak character. But we were shooting in prison. And [we were] inspired by one of the guys, a prisoner. He was so amazing. He was just commanding and commanding. I said “I have to create a character like him!” So it started that way, but there has got to be some redemption somewhere. So simple inspiration, and then I started writing.
Haden Guest 28:24
I just want to ask one minor question... Some of your characters in a number of films have these most extraordinary tattoos, like Wakwak has one. I was wondering, are these all actual tattoos? Or some of these are ones–
Lav Diaz
No, we made them.
Haden Guest
Oh, you did! [LAUGHS]
Lav Diaz 28:40
You know, if you go to Philippine prisons, there's always Christ, the cross, Christ, the cross. And it's ironic, because these are criminals. And you can’t judge them, their faith is so strong. You talk to them, they’ll say, “Oh, I murdered a whole family,” really, but he has Christ in his... You know, the contradictions that you see. And it makes you question, how could they murder a whole family, but still have faith? And he talks about love and life? It's the mystery, the paradox of living, of existence, you see that with these guys. They murdered, they took lives, but they have Christ or they have the Prophet Mohammed, notes from the Quran and, you know, it changes your perspective or judgment of people. These are guys who live in the abyss but they have their faith, it’s very strong.
Haden Guest 29:55
Alright, well if there are no final questions... Let's take one last question from Bob right there.
Audience 5 30:06
Yeah, all of your films are really great. I was able to see a lot of them in the early retrospective as well. And now that I've seen some of them for a second time, I really see the strong social and political critique that's in your films. I don't want to use the word subtle, but it's also not hitting you over the head with your point of view. And you mentioned the other night that so far Duterte has not really reacted strongly to criticism coming from artists and writers. But obviously, that could change pretty quickly. He’s just a horrible person...
Lav Diaz 30:49
There's that danger. Yeah.
Audience 5 30:50
So I mean, I don't know how often you, for example, speak out in the media. I mean, you speak through your films, of course, but through interviews or magazine articles, have you come down on him? And if so, are you putting yourself in danger by criticizing him or are people in the Philippines holding back from pushing too hard against him? Because he's just a violent person. So, you know, you're putting your life on the line.
Lav Diaz 31:30
But yeah, we actually confront him all the time in interviews. In the country, we're campaigning against him. He really doesn't care about artists. He cares about politicians. But it will change because, yesterday alone, they're releasing the so-called lists of artists and actors who are involved in drugs. He has that kind of list. It's a witch hunt. He started that witch hunt when he started being the president, having this list without even investigating people. There's no warrant of arrest. There's no accountability to the deaths. Yeah, it’s a responsibility. We need to engage him. I don't know where it leads, but yeah...
Haden Guest 32:31
Well, Lav, I want to thank you for your courage, for your vision and for your films!
Lav Diaz
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
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