At 227 minutes -- less than four hours -- Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left) is rather short by Lav Diaz's standard. His previous film, Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis (A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery), runs at seven hours. And throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, the Filipino master made films ranging in length from nine to 13 hours, something unorthodox, anomalous, even transgressive in the fast-food mentality of the modern multiplex. A four-hour film, any distributor would tell you, will scare people off. There's no room for patience and meditation in cinema these days.
So it is very refreshing that Diaz's The Woman Who Left made history when it won the Golden Lion, the top prize, from Venice International Film Festival last Saturday -- the first from the Philippines to receive such an honour. In February Diaz's A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery, the seven-hour film, won the Silver Bear, or the runner-up prize, in Berlin. That means the 57-year-old Filipino has bagged awards from two major film festivals in the same year (in the world there are three "major tournaments", the other being Cannes), a very rare feat for a filmmaker to pull off. With his films winning big prizes, faith in the art is restored: there may be room for patience and meditation in cinema after all.
And his latest is such a fine film. This week I saw The Woman Who Left at the Toronto International Film Festival, the premier cine-event of North America, and the film left me devastated. Diaz's work always has the density of literature, and he never tries to catch a rabbit -- he always goes for the dragon in its lair. The theme is big: humanity, guilt, crime, punishment, injustice, despair -- the Filipino despair, or maybe the Southeast Asian despair, drenched in sweat and blood of the common man. In The Woman Who Left, what moves us even more is the possibility of mercy, compassion, even grace.
Shot in black and white, like many of his films, the new movie has an added poignancy considering that we've lately heard so many disturbing stories about crime and punishment in President Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines. In The Woman Who Left, a woman who has been wrongly jailed for 30 years is released from prison; she was accused of murder, but the real killer finally confessed out of guilt after so many years. Back in the world, Horacia (Charo Santos-Concio, a well-known actress and producer in her country) reconnects with her daughter, now a grown woman, and grieve over the fact that her son has gone missing. The complex motivation of Horacia is the film's power and mystery: She moves to the town where the mastermind of the murder that sent her to jail lives, and she becomes a local saint to the poverty-stricken neighbourhood, handing out money and jobs, and developing a bond with a cross-dressing street walker. But Horacia also wants revenge. She's angry, a latent volcano, and is capable of violence herself.
Slowly -- though in fact this is probably one of the most accessible films by Diaz -- The Woman Who Left reveals the worst and best of humanity, the conflicting emotions that drives Horacia (or every one of us) on the path to redemption. The world is a cruel place, especially in the slums of Southeast Asia, and pure kindness struggles to blossom like a flower in mud. The last 15 minutes of the film is one of the saddest moments in cinema I've experienced this year (or many years).
By winning the big prize in Venice, Diaz confirmed his status as a master who thrives on distinct formalism. Years ago, people frowned at the way he extends the concept of time -- or time in cinema as an imitation of time in real life -- but he keeps tuning his method and dramaturgy, which lately has resembled Russian literature (The Woman Who Left is said to be inspired by a Tolstoy story, while his 2013 film Norte, Hangganan Ng Kasaysayan (Norte, The End Of History) is a clear adaptation of Crime and Punishment). And though not many people would want to see anything longer than three hours, his previous film, the seven-hour-long A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery, was released in the Philippines. The Woman Who Left, because of the friendlier length and the aura of the Venice prize, should ensure a wider distribution in its home country and elsewhere.
Surprisingly, many of Diaz's films have been screened in Thailand -- not on regular release but at special events. The Thai Film Foundation screened Heremias: Unang Aklat - Ang Alamat Ng Prinsesang Bayawak (nine hours) at the now defunct EGV cinema, and later a cinephile group Film Virus organised a screening of his other films. The Woman Who Left is likely to come to us soon, too.
