Golden Horse 58｜A Gentle Rewriting of Traumatic Memories: Sleepwalking in Disaster Areas

Whether the Weather Is Fine
Carlo Francisco Manatad
2021/Philippines/104 min/Color

On the last day of the Golden Horse Film Festival, I would like to remember this Filipino film that I watched at this film festival - When the Weather Is Fine (2021).

As director Carlo Francisco Manatad's first feature film, Ben is set in the director's hometown - Duluwan City, which was hit hard by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, with illogical plots and absurd scene settings at first glance. Describe the post-traumatic healing and growth, as well as the trauma victims’ memory of the trauma process after trauma: the powerful destructive power of super cyclones, the lack of disaster prevention resources, the government’s usual squatting, and Typhoon Haiyan caused more than 6,300 deaths in the Philippines .

Although I dozed off for a while while watching the movie, and some of the shots were like a fast-forward version of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, I couldn't grasp the story logic of the movie, but after watching the last scene, I couldn't tell the reason. Like, very touched.

The story is roughly as follows: feet covered in mud, extensive damage after the disaster, houses destroyed and corpses exposed, victims robbing each other - young robbing old ones, gun-wielding ones robbing knives; the government announced that the next typhoon was coming, and asked everyone to Escape quickly; the powerful and powerful can enter the disaster relief center first to receive treatment and resettlement; religious activities have become hot, and all kinds of strange heresies have sprung up; then the government announced that the typhoon was coming. The post-disaster material distribution center broadcasted: "Please line up the disaster victims and don't push, because we don't have enough materials for everyone to eat, please don't push any more!" People deserted their jobs, and groups of children looted everywhere.

However, the director's perspective on these events is extremely detached from the surreal, innocent and gentle. The snatch of survival materials among the disaster victims is like a child's toy changing hands, easily and without struggle. Like a sleepwalk.

Of course, what each scene points to is the destruction of the existing social order after the disaster, but because it is a post-traumatic memory, the documentary and causal perspectives that are more important than facts are willing to abdicate; the director is good at absurd reality and incompatible scenes The turning point, on the contrary, is free and becomes a reality. Whether it is in terms of material and social situations, every scene is both desolate and persuasive.

In other words, if the purpose of pain sensation is to point out the disease and drive the sufferer to seek good luck and avoid misfortune and seek healing, then in a country/society/family/self-existence predicament that has been recorded for more than ten years, rotten from its bones, and has long been unable to escape. , when the pain reaches a critical point, the pain will no longer be pain, and it will no longer be meaningful to "feel the pain" as it is.

But there will be memories, and memories still have the meaning of ride, life extension and confrontation.

As a result, the post-traumatic memory is like an extremely absurd symbol system, which cannot be interpreted by outsiders. Only by sitting in the cobwebs can you see the meaning of the densely woven cobwebs. Here's a full, serotonin-recycling-inhibitor perspective for someone with depression: a perspective where I want to remember everything, but I don't want to feel the pain needlessly. A "I'm bleeding and I'm so tired. I just want to listen/sing one of my favorite songs at this point, okay?" perspective.

Therefore, every character in the disaster scene of "Tianqing Sometimes" has become the flesh of his own core obsession - not the body has the will, but the obsession has the body: a woman wandering in the disaster area looking for her husband, insisting on sunset before sunset A guardian who cannot light candles when praying, a girl who insists on leaving her hometown to start a new career in the capital, a male protagonist who is indecisive between relationship choices, a bureaucrat who insists on the usual indifference in the disaster area, and who is obsessed with finding the next savior — whether political or religious — bewildered believers. Of course, there are also the group of children who are obsessed with the game of robbery, and the large number of victims who are addicted to the soft singing scene.

When the pain sensation is no longer meaningful, the detailed description of the scar is no longer necessary, and what is worth showing is the obsession that has become flesh, and this process of allowing the obsession to persist is the individual's trauma memory.

"Sometimes in the Sky" is a group tour of the suffering people, a sleepwalking, the continuation of memory, and the new flesh and blood of the suffering people.

While watching the film, I thought of several historical ethnographies about the aboriginal peoples in Canada’s polar circle, Guldana Salimjan’s oral history research on migrants on the border between Xinjiang and Kazakh, and in the fields of Ibañez-Tirado, the residents of southern Tajikistan’s views on “disaster and Kazakh borders”. "No development" became the norm" and the corresponding ridicule and adaptation, I also thought of Mozambique writer Mia Couto's novel "Terra Sonâmbula" (Terra Sonâmbula), and many more, about the disabled system and natural disasters, Statements on the memories of survivors of war and man-made colonization. It was a low-end statement that seemed absurd in the eyes of those in power or privilege, but it was a way of being that they allowed themselves to live and remember—I refuse to forget, and I refuse to feel the pain any more.

Post-screening QA (the organizer and the translator don’t know what they are doing is super bad, not ready at all, it’s bad enough) to learn that the director seems to be a little anxious about the film’s reaction after the screening at the end of the year in his hometown—that is, the hardest-hit area. Worrying about whether I am the right person to tell the memory of this disaster (a typical old question: who has the resources and power to present himself to the public, and whether such presentation can be regarded as a collective representation. I have no When I have the opportunity to check the information to compare the director's struggle, I won't comment much. Although this is actually the essence of the image, it is the choice between reproduction and self-questioning).

I think the negative comments should still be the majority, but I am very grateful to him - although he will not know, thank him very much for expressing his memory in the image and touching me, and I believe that in his In my hometown, there will also be such a small number of people who are touched and comforted by this film.

Most of the films selected at this year's Golden Horse Film Festival satisfy me, but if I can touch a film, one is enough and I am very satisfied. Blessings also look forward to the future works of this cutting-edge director.