Between you and me, I have to say that I find that most Romanian film festivals are perfectly futile.

From where I’m standing, no single three-, five-, hundred-day-long consecutive run of hasty screenings of all the chic films running around on the festival circuit make sense in the long run. And it’s not that recent cinema wouldn’t be of value, but the pursuing ephemeral hustle and bustle that dances to the tune of publicity budgets is not a substitute for an infrastructure that is willing to give time. In other words, I think that the years of patchwork as a form of cultural resistance are over; we are living the times of que sera, sera.

Arriving at the Viennale for the first time, I could not shake off the impression that the festival doesn’t have the allure of constant new beginnings. Of course, I am familiar with the parallel realities of festival days, when the entire town is seemingly continually traversed by a human chain of people who belong to the same ilk; we give ourselves to similar extravagances in Bucharest or Cluj. But things are a bit different when the cinephile champagne is mixed with the milk and honey of the town. The cinemas of Vienna, in particular, are the bearers and narrators of histories; ones that are said on the spot, but also in the museum that stretches along the two floors of the Metro Kinokulturhaus, above the screening hall. A few meters away, in the same building as the Albertina gallery, lives the eternal child of Peter Kubelka and Peter Konlechner, The Austrian Film Museum, more than just a mere archive/cinematheque that often takes the lead role in the story of the restoration of world cinema, but also the bearer of a generous publisher which has issued titles written by ones such Olivier Assayas, Ted Fendt ori Paolo Cherchi Usai throughout the years. But my fascination for the naturalness of cinematic consciousness in Vienna – or filmbewusst, something that Béla Balázs had heard for the first time in Switzerland – is not something that belongs solely to its flagship institutions, but which extends itself into the streetside cinemas, which host a frenzy of applause that accompanies each speech uttered by the curators, the very same kind of speeches that seem to castrate the audience’s enthusiasm in Bucharest. Is the magnifying glass of my provincial anxiety the reason why such menial moments seem mighty? In any case, I believe in creating a tabula rasa for the sake of systematic cinephilia; halls, museums, archives, translations instead of timely exclusivities, event-screenings and updates. We might lose the pace of the years, but cinema should not be running against time.

Anyways, what will become of the Viennale’s masterpieces in six months’ time? Normally, they would go out of use. And I’m not talking about Nadav Lapid’s dizzying desert sequence (Ahed’s Knee, 2021), the sultriness of Miguel Gomes & Maureen Fazendeiro’s meta-fiction (The Tsugua Diaries, 2021) or Avi Mograbi’s lesson (The First 54 Years – An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation); all three will pass quickly, and on their own. I am afraid for filmmakers who are much more endowed than them, individuals who have understood how they can essentialize their cinema; the following will serve as a memento, perhaps.

Isn’t Lav Diaz misplaced by such a label? Not at all; clocking in at a little over four hours, his monumental The History of Ha is a very clear proof of the fact that essentialized cinema is not the same as pocket-sized cinema. If it had been so, we would have all been robbed of the understanding of one’s decision to abstain from cutting. And someone’s cry can only be understood if you see it from beginning to end, as it so happens in The History of Ha.

I have to admit that I have a sort of reticence when it comes to contemporary balck-and-white films, all the more so if they’re historical pieces. And that is because, in my eyes, the act of visually speculating the past is one of the most curious and satisfactory things in cinema. There are few filmmakers whose works have a visual chromatic austerity that culminates on a conceptual plane just as much as it does on the formal one; Béla Tarr is one such master; Lav Diaz is another. It’s true that denying color to history is one of the noblest intellectual approaches, however, as I said, it’s a choice that limits my playground.

It’s the 17th of March 1957, the day that Filipino president Ramon Magsaysay died in a plane crash. Ventriloquist Hernando Alamada (John Lloyd Cruz) travels on a ship that lies between Japan and the Philippines. His comical performances with Ha – the puppet that he endows with the sacred aura of intimate friendship – have won him a certain amount of popularity in both countries, but some still remember him from his days of Marxist activism and populistic poetry. At home, failed promises await him, since the last years have marked the ending of the Hukbalahap anti-imperialist movement, ended by the pro-American Magsaysay, but a last hope also awaits; her name is Rosetta, the one who he is to marry soon.

The splendour of which Diaz’s (both director, camera operator and editor of the film) long shots are capable of is better seen on dry land, all the more so under an open sky. Once he disembarks, Hernando sets off towards his native village, making his way through the bush and swamp of the area; they are paradisiacal in nature, but capitalism has taught us all too well what the price of genuine paradise is – the full price, that is, abject poverty. The ventriloquist’s sister, along with her husband and children, are some of those who have no choice but to pay it. His return marks the starting point of a moral crisis into which the protagonist slowly starts to sink; his family’s material state seems to be caused by the failure of his political ambitions, just as in the case of his failed engagement, as Rosetta finds herself pushed to marry another man in order to pay off her own family’s debts.

Wounded in such a harsh way, this taciturn, slightly biblical yet humanly limited individual starts going off on the road to nowhere. Time and time again, the frames confirm the formula behind Diaz’s dialectical spell – as unflinching as they are, these long single shots take in the bustle of an uncontrollable nature, split between a bison (carabao) which is made to carry weights, an all-powerful vegetation and capricious rains. From here on out, the puppet enters its full rights; what seemed to be a rather playful preoccupation – giving Ha the stage just for laughs – now gains the weight of reconciliation; or that of an attempt to do so. Whoever crosses his path will now have to face Ha, not him. In the meanwhile, the puppet seemingly gains a self-sufficient personality, simultaneously acting as the voice of his conscience and as a travel buddy; last but not least, a partner in creation, since this punitive adventure has to do especially with the act of questioning the point of art in the face of impotency. It’s hard to imagine how someone other than John Lloyd Cruz could do a better job at this; at times funny, at times grave, at times so grave that he becomes funny, this game of acting in two gives this entire odyssey a sort of suppleness. Another such noble endeavor lies in the Dostoyevskian allure that their clothes, their costumes gain in the black-and-white light; there would be no other way to capture the film’s visceral transitions from restless nights to the harsh light of the morning – a moment of violence and hope, the building blocks of poverty. That all hope is in vain is also something that the ventriloquist himself will find out and end up preaching, once he sets off together with three individuals who have been forgotten by society; nun Lorenza (Mae Paner), young Dahlia (Dolly De Leon) and vagrant Joselito (Jonathan Francisco), all caught by the gold fever which has struck the entirety of the Philippines.

The fact that Diaz makes the choice to sometimes insert a trolley bag like a sort of souvenir from the future, in order to rustle the historic milieu has something to do especially with a clarification that, at one point, is said by the marionette – history, not the story of Ha. The two feel each other out throughout the entire film, but the first is the one to prevail through its long shot and power to assimilate; stories are told, histories are thought out, and the Filipino director’s film is polished under the force of the two.

Alright, but still, would I bring The History of Ha to Bucharest if I were given the chance to do so? Well, I’d much rather wait while keeping it in mind.

Călin Boto

Film critic and journalist. He is an editor at AARC and writes the ”Screens” features for Art Magazine. He collaborates with many publications and film festivals as a freelancer and he is strangely attached to John Ford's movies.