More like fragmented thoughts from watching the film than a proper review:

Ten years ago, this film first saw the light of day. Ten years ago, I scoffed at the notion that someone could make a film running 5 hours. I probably wouldn’t had the patience to see then if I had the opportunity to.

My favorite films then were Fargo, Se7en, Magnolia, and Goodfellas. I was just getting into the films of Jim Jarmusch and Hal Hartley.

Just to consider the context of when this film came out, there were no independent Filipino films making their mark internationally like they are today. Two other similar films dealing with the Filipino-American experience came out at around the same time, The Debut and The Flip Side, and although The Debut managed to find distribution and a DVD release, the director never made another film, ditto the director of The Flip Side. Just putting this film beside The Debut one can see why Diaz has the staying power the other directors didn’t. Rod Pulido and Gene Cajayon understanding of Filipino culture is frankly, quite superficial, never goes beyond the cliches and stereotypes. In Batang West Side, there is conviction in every scene to justify it being there. Lav was, and still is, unwilling to compromise his vision, and is willing to make sacrifices in order to realize it.

This was the film that encouraged an entire generation of young filmmakers to pursue their own visions, no matter how challenging their visions might be. What soon followed was JP Carpio’s Balay Daku, John Torres’ Todo Todo Teros, Raya Martin’s Indio Nacional, Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s Huling Baylan ng Buhi, and a cornucopia of films from Khavn de la Cruz.

Funnily enough, having seen Lav’s later works, this was actually the one where it all came together for me, how Lav views the Filipino experience: we’re constantly picking up pieces from our past, never coming up with easy answers, similar to Detective Mijares. We are all haunted by our pasts, we try to escape it, but ironically the further we distance ourselves from it, we just make things worse for ourselves. The length of the film is justified because we feel the weight of the case on Detective Mijares along with his personal demons he has to deal with. Critics may bash Diaz for the length of his films, but they can never say he doesn’t know when to cut.

It is, at times, flawed, the dialogue can sound too expository, but as Tarkovsky said, “The passionate aspiration of the artist to the truth, to knowing the world and himself in the world, endows with special meaning even the somewhat obscure, or, as they are called, ‘less successful’ passages in his works.”

Lav also adds a couple things that probably only Hiligaynon/Bisaya speakers would smile about.

The documentary filmmaker in the film had a funny description of what documentary filmmaking was like: “always seeking, there’s mystery, there’s discovery, there’s struggle, but there’s also orgasm.”

Dindo, who constantly irons his clothes when he gets high was funny at the start, but gradually builds to something more disturbing and menacing as the films’ running time proceeds.

For such a long film, it has a very short end credit sequence. It is an epic that plays out on an initimate scale.

It may not startle as it did when it first came out, as now we know what to expect from a “Sine ni Lav Diaz”, but it still is remarkable to see it all come together for the filmmaker.