By
Lisa Ito
Young Critics Circle Film Desk
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"Much of the film’s power, however, is drawn from
Aunor’s mastery of countenance and gesture: how her character becomes a
disturbingly gendered embodiment of the maternal and the sacrificial."
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Brilliante
Mendoza’s competing entry to the 69th Venice International Film Festival and
official entry to the 2012 Metro Manila Film Festival, Thy Womb, has been
received in diverse ways since its first screening, ranging from institutional
and critical acclaim to popular indifference to contentious critique.
Set in the island
province of Tawi-Tawi, the landscape of Thy Womb slowly unravels through the
aural: the sound of waves as a baby is birthed into the world, the whirr of a
motorized banca cutting through the tide, the spatter of rain breaking the
stillness beyond.
These waters of
life are the very habitat and home of Badjao couple Shaleha (Nora Aunor) and
Bangas-an (Bembol Roco). This floating world between sky and sea envelops the
ironic barrenness of Shaleha, a respected
midwife in their humble village. The opening scene ends with Shaleha
carefully putting aside the child’s discarded umbilical cord as a keepsake: a
reminder of her own simultaneous power and failure to bring forth life.
Shaleha’s literal
and figurative departures from the daily rhythm of living revolve around this
perceived fall from grace: venturing to other shores with Bangas-an in search
of a fecund second wife. This is a journey more transactional than personal,
capped by the marriage to Mersila (Lovi Poe) and a substantial dowry that will
sap not only their meager resources, but sever their remaining ties as well.
This whole
conjugal narrative unfolds at a meandering pace, underscoring the tedium of
waiting. The film intersperses its climactic points with cinematography
representing the ecological and the social: panoramas and underwater shots
abound with ethnographic portrayals of both social ritual and community life.It
juxtaposes footage of wildlife, scenes and objects that are not only
documentary but symbolic in function: pawikan eggs and rainbows,a desolate
chapel and a busy mosque, the weaving of mats which subsistence fisherfolk turn
to in the lean months.
At best, these
scenes complement the symbolic silence that permeates throughout the film.
There are no histrionics and thespian dialogues for most of the time. Much of
the interrogations within the narrative remain unsaid and alluded to, like the
currents of Thy Womb’s tranquil seas. The pristine underwater shots merely hint
at the ruptures brewing beneath: a massive butanding hovering beneath the
couple’s humble boat, the spurt of blood from a pirate’s gunshot wound
dissolving into patterns in the water, a frantic carabao on the verge of
drowning. What are made visible are merely ripples on the surface; sporadic
interruptions—gunfire disrupting the pangalay dance at a marriage, a squad of
soldiers passing by—merely hint at the real dissonance and turmoil unfolding
beyond in this part of the archipelago.
The film presents
undoubtedly poignant performances by Aunor and Roco, which have won for the
former two other film citations for 2012. Their exchanges of words as husband
and wife are sparse, whittled down all throughout the narrative by the
screenplay (Henry Burgos); the real tragedies, jousts and departures are best
left unspoken and seen. Roco’s stoic weariness betrays both a quiet desperation
at the absence of progeny and sense of impending loss, suddenly sealed by Poe’s
brief but pivotal presence in the end.
Much of the film’s
power, however, is drawn from Aunor’s mastery of countenance and gesture: how
her character becomes a disturbingly gendered embodiment of the maternal and
the sacrificial.This is mirrored in the marriage ceremony she attends as a
guest, where woman is transformed into bride. For my husband’s happiness, I’d
do anything, Shaleha announces later, proclaiming an appalling selflessness in
the face of her transactional and personal dealings. In the end, there are no
words for anticipation, acceptance, and the finality of departure; indeed,
Shaleha is painful to watch in her silence.
Yet it is also
precisely in its very conception of silence that Thy Womb waxes problematic, if
not potentially controversial, as a form of critique. For the semiotics of its
breathtaking scenery, biodiversity and ethnographic documentation still point
to the implied conception of Shaleha’s world as the Other: geographically and
conceptually removed from urbanity, contemporaneity, and familiarity.
While the film
consciously veers away from representing overtly and unabashedly exotic
spectacles reminiscent of the early 20th century colonial gaze, its
representation of personal loss and pain as a largely aesthetic encounter
transforms Shaleha’s story (and the geopolitical implications behind it) into
an exquisite vista that one does not interrogate, but merely beholds. It is
only in problematizing such silence that one can come to closer terms with
Bangas-an’s real loss: there is no redemption, only rupture, in this final
birth.
