Ang Magpakailanman
(Eternity)
Ang Magpakailanman, Raymond Red's first, is a critically acclaimed experimental work about a book bearing the film's title, and its owner named Jose. The film's Freudian flavor-an exploration of dreams and the unconscious-is balanced by overt references to biblical themes and sociological observations of crime. The film romanticizes the protagonist's suicide by adding equal doses of morality through religion and mystery through sorcery, yet it ironically presents death as being both clinical and calculated-like crime.
Akin to a rare and forbidden book, the 19th-century set scenes of Ang Magpakailanman unfold like pages; its thirteen cryptic title frames, resembling the stations of the cross, to be deciphered as chapter headings. Gothic echoes of a hammer striking a nail, the camera closeing in on Jose-these are the images of Prologue. And like the Old Testament, Jose's recurring crucifixion nightmares prefigure his own death. But pretending to not have peeked at the last page, let us chart the narrative's natural progression.
The next morning, Jose finds himself wandering along a dark hallway. Upon entering an office, he is welcomed by an unidentified man with a generous waist. Jose offers his manuscript, and the man reads and shakes his head in rejection. Business concluded for the day, Jose meanders through the streets, pauses, and retreats to his house. Dreams disturb him yet again. As soon as he recovers from his nightmares, Jose revisits the man and shows him the same manuscript. Insulted by the man's laughter, Jose grows frustrated and murders him in cold blood. As he flees the crime scene, the man's secretary enters the office, assesses the crime evidence, and steals the dead man's wallet. To understand the pathology of her crime, consider how bacteria, when exposed to freezing temperatures, multiplies.
Back on the streets, Jose has a strange encounter with a woman wearing a veil. She follows him everywhere like a shadow or his conscience. As though seeking penitence, Jose enters a church, but the mysterious woman continues to follow him. Disturbed yet unwilling to confess his sin, Jose eventually goes home. Meanwhile, the authorities determine that Jose is the murderer, and proceed to arrest him. Before they can enter Jose's house, however, the young man mixes a potion from a formulary and drinks the poison. After several attempts to break the door, the authorities enter Jose's house and find him fallen and frothing at the mouth. The Epilogue leaves us with the comic silhouette of four guards marching in tempo staccato toward the setting sun.
Writer Noel Vera notes how the film possesses "the giddy freedom" germane to silent films. While the film's strength, according to Luna Sicat, "lies in its recognition of film as an instrument of abstraction." Employing shifting angles, a grainy texture that acts as patina, and a generous contrast of light and shadow, the film succeeds in imaging the nuances of fiction.
Ang Magpakailanman, unlike the ominous book in Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate to which Vera obliquely refers, is not a book with the "power to grant immortality." Given the religious thrust and allegories found in the film, Jose's suicide does not represent ultimate salvation. Instead, Ang Magpakailanman as a film and as a book ironically suggests that eternity is never an escape; escape never eternal. A clear evidence of Red's serious romance with cinema, Ang Magpakailanman becomes more significant because it prefigures seventeen years later, in an uncanny way, the absolute shadow: Anino.
Pearlie Rose S. Baluyut
Director/Writer/Cinematographer: Raymond Red
Cast: Jon Red
1983 super 8mm 25 minutes
