Marilou Diaz-Abaya's
Sadism
Karnal (1984)
Call it sadism that a filmmaker would offer a take (written by Ricky Lee) on human carnality and its political (read: sexist) ramifications as her medium for creating this classic of Filipino film tragedy.
Karnal is a film about the tragedy of patriarchy, appropriately narrated in a near-whisper in the manner of some ghost-story movie. The narrator (Charito Solis) is the 50-ish spinster daughter of one of the main figures in this story that also has the flavor of a legend. Time and setting? The '30s, in a remote provincial village that would maintain its population of around 500 fifty years forward (why and how is discoursed on at the end of the film).
It was fifty years ago indeed that Mulawin was a village of stagnation, as it seems to remain in this period of our narrator. The only unique event in its life occurred that year, the year a prodigal son named Narciso or Narsing (Philip Salvador) returned to his father's hacienda to thus provide a setting for a rural catastrophe that came by way of a city-rural life dichotomy. This dichotomy is significant and is promptly mentioned here because Abaya/Lee sees the "life in these parts is miserable" regard as the foregrounding statement for what is to (or should) happen. Furthermore, to eschew readings of artistic prejudice against provincial life itself, the city (Manila) is portrayed by the script as a patriarch in its own right, a monster rich in prerogatives and poor in concern.
Sure, village life too has its alienating gazes, looking upon the city-deriving as near-atheistic or disrespectful to the old (di nagmamano, sumasagot pa) for instance. And rural patriarchy's oppressions (selfishness) in the name of discipline feeds on this prejudice. Consider the village talk that leads to our male lead Narsing's jealousy and consequent wife-beating. And this wife-beating is already an echo of the same domestic violence by his father (Vic Silayan) on his mother's "ambitious" bent.
Manila, ultimate symbol of ambition, is seen as possessing the early-century promise of liberation via its democracy and entrepreneurial capitalism, as against the stagnant non-promise of feudal landlordism and its tool, patriarchal tyranny. Narsing had this side to himself that lured him to his mother's ambitiousness and, later on, Manila itself. (Our heredero's early closeness to his mom before he left for that big city created, however, an exclusive triangle with his father that seemed -- to Narciso's sister, at least -- to exclude this very sister: patriarchy's regeneration process in progress).
The regenerating patriarchic 'gene' in Narsing would show signs of strength in small doses in her marriage to Purisima (Cecilia Castillo), the Manila despachadora. A feudal sense of ownership is a giveaway in Narsing's stated desire to name his future kids as all Narcisos if males and all Purisimas if females.
Perhaps Ricky Lee felt it necessary to put some blame on the Church for this paradoxical culture, and so the town priest had to visit the hacendero patriarch to give his own two centavos' worth of patriarchics upon Puring, the girl from Manila. In the confessional with Narsing's sister (our narrator's mother), Padre agrees that the father is the god of the house, clearly implying likewise that adultery should be most unforgivable when committed by the female. Priests, after all, ain't called Fathers for nothing. . . . Surrounded by such a religious take on the good and the bad, therefore, it wouldn't be surprising indeed to have an environment that tags women as weak and extremely given to temptations/seductions and thus deserving of the males' over-protection. The 'irreligious lower class' would, however, have a bigger trust in their females (we need not go into the anthropological details of why), and thus these females would be seen walking alone, drinking cerveza, debating on the porch with their fathers, and so on.
Of course we can also read the film as a portrait of the early-century transformation of the Philippine landscape from a feudal one to a capitalist trading one. Solid to liquid, as it were. But as if aware of this, writer Lee had to -- as we mentioned above -- define capitalism's own form of repressive patriarchy towards the weak. What results from this urban form of repression are such attitudes as Narsing's "Kailangang matalo ko ang Maynila." An attitude towards which the rural patriarch would announce, "Pareho kayo ng Inay mo, puno ng walang silbing pangarap ang inyong ulo." A delaying tactic upon progress! And then Narsing himself would state the big line: "Ang Maynila ay parang Itay, . . . nakakatakot, . . . pero gusto kong talunin sa lahat ng laro. . . . (Gustong-gusto) ko siyang itumba, . . . patayin. . . ." Obviously, we think, dahil ayaw magpatalo.
Narcing's set of attitudes is a case study in itself. Puring, his wife, is a spitting image of his mom. Making some villagers think, "parang si Nena. Siguro kung sino-sinong lalaki rin ang kumukuha." Making her ask, "kaya ba ako nagustuhan ni Narcing?" Narsing's mother supposedly committed suicide the day after she was dragged by her husband out in public naked. The mother was supposed to have rebelled against her husband's patriarchal kingship by going out without his permission, having friendships with several males (sexual or not is immaterial). She hanged herself in the park, rosary in hand (this in itself is rich semiotic [or forensic] material).
What could be the moral of this story? Repressive patriarchs produce rebels of all sorts? Perhaps. One sort is Puring, and Gorio the deaf-mute: alienated, lonely, alone, pitiable, seeming to call for our care and respective 'maternal' instincts. They seem to be introducing revolution by their very sympathy-calling presences alone. Gorio (the character thought to be involved in an affair with Narsing's wife) comes out as this sort of presence indeed: the seeming ideal man with just the right amount of both fallibility and aggressiveness in a man. Another sort of rebellion is in Menardo, who became Narcing's sister's husband because he was chosen by her father. His sort is one that, at the end of the film, refuses to inflict violence upon his wife's decision to go with her former lover Jose (our narrator's father).
The alternative to the situation in this film would be encapsulated in that cliché that goes, "If you love somebody, set him/her free." But this is not to be a propaganda film. Abaya conceived it to be a tragedy, as we said. And what qualify it to be tagged as one are the inevitabilities beyond salvage. Sure, the villagers begin to take the blame for the latest tragic consequence in patriarch Mang Gusting's family, one for having mal-informed him of Puring's emotional liaisons with the deaf-mute Gorio, one for comforting Puring in her isolation by providing a sort of promise of love in his act of throwing flowers into her bedroom window, one for failing to give his friend Mang Gusting ample advice or company, and so on and so forth. But, really, the story would seem to say that none of this could-have's could really have changed the final ending of our movie. Thus, the patriarch's ghost could only appear at his son's prison cell with an expression of sadness. And the priest's last piece went thus, . . . something to the effect that there are things beyond our influence, and the only thing we could do is wait for forgiveness to come.
In closing, however, may I say that Ryan Cayabyab's melodramatic scoring and Castillo's abundant crying exposures could have been lessened, or do all those go with the idea of Tragedy-making and are thus to be forgiven? And was the cornfield chase necessary, or just another capitulation to commercial value?
Anyway, the moment of forgiveness arrives at the end in the form of our narrator's decision to end this genetic cycle of strictness (her Mama became just as strict as her Lolo, it turns out). And so the village of Mulawin must needs wait for its eggs to just rot and be forgotten, with no farmer tending their regeneration. That's tragic sexiness, noble and sadistic. (VISV III, August 2002 - April 2004)
Copyright
© 2002, 2004 Vicente-Ignacio
S. de Veyra III. All rights reserved.
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