‘Palabra sagrada’

Last Tuesday night turned out to be well-spent, despite my initial reluctance to take a break from pressing work. An invite had come earlier from dear Alma Miclat for dinner with visiting Chinese writers, at the Chinese Embassy’s cultural office in Dasmariñas Village. But I was determined to keep socials at a bare minimum for the month. There’s an urgent first draft to complete, for a book started by no less than Nick Joaquin. Can’t let the dear fellow down.

But Princess Nemenzo was charmingly insistent on the phone. Could I represent this paper at a special screening for selected media of Oliver Stone’s Comandante, a 2003 video-docu on Fidel Castro that had been shelved by HBO in response to something called the US Patriot Act?

I tried to beg off, invoking the demands of work. A couple of hours at the UP Executive House, plus early dinner and an hour of passage to and fro, would all add up to four hours less of work on the inherited commitment.

I promised Princess I’d find someone to take my place. But Juaniyo Arcellana closes part of this paper Tuesday nights, and Danton Remoto was scheduled for ramp work, or so he said. And Wilson Lee Flores would be at that Chinese dinner, together with Umpil (Writers Union of the Philippines) top honchos: National Artist Rio Almario, UP Institute of Creative Writing director and UMPIL director-general Vim Nadera, Umpil vice-chair Bobby Añonuevo, and the lordly bard Teo Antonio. Joining them that evening were Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, Dr. Marjorie Evasco, recent National Book Awards winner for fiction Jun Balde and Joaquin Sy.

Since I couldn’t find a proxy, no way I could hedge further on Princess’ follow-up invite. It helped me decide of course when she gave assurance that her husband, UP Prez Dodong Nemenzo, would be there, very likely with a whisky bottle just for this invitee.

UP Prof. Randy David turned out to be the only other media guy to show up, with his wife Karina Constantino David. Like the Nemenzos, if on a separate trip, Randy had visited Cuba some years back. So had Larry Cruz, slow foods impresario, who came with an Amazon.com-purchased DVD of a much earlier docu on Fidel Castro done by, and with, Errol Flynn! Pete Lacaba couldn’t make it, and Conrad de Quiros was said to still be in recuperation mode.

Dinner was fine: such exquisite beef caldereta as centerpiece. And dear Dodong came down with a bottle alright, a 10-year Laphroaig single malt at that. Larry wasted no time breaking it open; we nosed it properly, appreciatively, in tulip-like glasses, just as the opening credits for Comandante unrolled.

In February 2002, Oliver Stone stuck to Fidel Castro in Havana for three days, shooting 30 hours of conversation with the septuagenarian Cuban leader. The docu project was initially meant only for Spanish TV, but Stone came up with a riveting feature-length work that wound up premiering at the Sundance Film Festival early in 2003, and HBO bought it up for a May airing.

Came the ferry-hijack incident of April 2003. Cuban military managed to prevent the 50-passenger ferry from making it to Florida. Reportedly upon Castro’s orders, three of the hijackers were executed by firing squad and 75 other dissidents incarcerated.

The controversy pre-empted the docu’s showing at the NY Tribeca filmfest, while HBO deferred its airing. The network eventually asked Stone to go back to Havana for another round of interviews with Castro, specifically on the hijack incident. Both agreed, and the resulting film, Looking for Fidel, was supposed to have run on HBO in April 2004. But Comandante has remained un-aired, un-distributed.

Ergo, we felt privileged to join the members of the Philippines-Cuba Cultural and Friendship Association in appreciating the give-and-take between Fidel Castro and Oliver Stone. It’s engrossing, well-shot (with a couple of close-in DV cams) and brilliantly edited: Oliver drawling his wide-ranging questions, Fidel by turns quick-witted, charming and impassioned in his replies, the lady interpreter just as quick in rendering these from Spanish, while we read the parallel subtitles also in English. Some effort it took, but the viewing proved rewarding.

Certain critics have opined that Oliver Stone acted much like a frontman in allowing his subject to outmaneuver him with ease. "Intimate, if not always incisive," cavils a reviewer. While placing it among his Five Best Films for 2003, Roger Clark of The Independent (London) carps that it’s a "memorable diary account of two monstrous egos prowling round each other…"

But there’s no under-appreciating Fidel Castro’s simpatico qualities. It’s hard not to admire the man who has kept his island-nation afloat despite intense economic and political pressure from the Dream-Team bully country. Harder still not to be more than halfway convinced that his answers are searingly honest; either that or he’s a terrific actor of scenarist-soundbite genius.

Of course Fidel Castro is famed for his marathon speeches that hold Cuban crowds in thrall. But here he speaks succinctly, sometimes intensely, often casually, but never roundabout. He jokes around, and he comes out avuncular, grandfatherly even. Frequent close-up shots of his animated hands (deep-veined, of elongated pianist’s fingers) – whether clasping the top of a seat, adjusting his jungle uniform, signing papers on a desk, or drumming/tapping involuntarily into hyperkinetic inner recesses – cross-cut with his daily activities, serve as more than just a dutiful visual background for the words of conviction he unleashes, often very thoughtfully.

Stone probes him on familiar milestones: the Bay of Pigs episode, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination (couldn’t have been a lone gunman, Fidel says, citing his knowledge of long-range sniping)… Nixon was "a hypocrite, shallow…" Khrushchev was "a shrewd peasant." Gorbachev gave it all away, or close to that. It was he, Comandante Fidel, who sent El Che to Africa, ’cause he was too impatient a revolutionary. Yes, he’s seen Titanic and Gladiator, but not on the big screen. Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot he found desirable in his younger years. But he thinks one’s personal life, i.e., string of Significant Others, ought to remain unspoken, kept distinct from the public persona. At one point he deadpans that Oliver could’ve been sent by the CIA to smuggle Viagra to him, perchance cause his death by heart seizure.

"Este… palabra sagrada (sacred words)," Fidel remarks on the catch-all phrase "national security" that the US wields as a mantra over compliant citizens. There is validity, there is truth to his disdain, even as for the present this sacrosanct fallback has evolved into an even more heart-tugging, thus emotional vice rational, plea for appreciation: "homeland security."

Yes, loaded words can always be held up to be sacred; such is their cyclical power, from the Iliad to the Bible and the Koran (the latter is said to promise patriots "72 virgins" – a typo, texts our direk friend Butch Perez; it really meant "72-year-old virgins").

When mantras like "clear and present danger" and "Patriot Act" and "weapons of mass destruction" are used by government to give even the softest lie to shades of truth, it is up to the "un-patriotic" artist such as an Oliver Stone to uncover the emperor’s garb of gab.

Words will necessarily be the centerpiece, too, this Saturday, Aug. 28 at the Pulungang Recto, Faculty Center, UP Diliman, when Umpil conducts its 30th National Congress starting at 1 p.m. Guest of honor and keynote speaker on the Congress theme "Panitikan at Pagbabagong Pangkultura" will be Quezon City Mayor Feliciano "Sonny" Belmonte, Jr., who is expected to expound on his avowed cultural thrust for his new term of office.

Highlighting the affair will be the presentation of the 17th Gawad Balagtas distinction to nine writers for lifetime achievement: Reuel Molina Aguila for drama in Filipino; Crispina B. Bragado for Ilokano fiction; Anacleto I. Dizon for essay and fiction in Tagalog; Marjorie Evasco for poetry in English and Cebuano; Juan T. Gatbonton for essay and fiction in English; Don Pagusara for drama and fiction in Cebuano; Bienvenido A. Ramos for poetry and fiction in Tagalog; Fidel Rillo for poetry in Filipino; and Lilia Quindoza Santiago for fiction and essay in Filipino.

Each of these honored writers will receive a special citation, lifetime membership in Umpil, and more concretely, a fine sculpted wood trophy from the generous artist and donor Manuel Baldemor. Not bad for a life of fidelity (take that, Mr. Rillo!) to… este… palabra sagrada.