Surprisingly successful take of the short form from Diaz even though I join with the fellow reviewers who consider the film too open to be really considered a whole. The presence of nature with all its sounds and unclear spots are always as important to Diaz’s camera as people even though the focus is on the spiritual struggle of a nation and its folk. There’s something everlasting in the nature that stands on the way of people – every stumbling to it is an agonizing memory of something that has firm roots, of something that seems to be able to control its own fate. Sure, nature is always unpredictable but at the same time there’s stability in it; it listens while Diaz captures the wailing of the Filipino people. It’s a reminder that art is part of nature; natural continuum to human’s need to deal with emotions from profound happiness to the vacuum that is sadness. “Because there is sadness, there is art” claims one of Diaz’s characters in Melancholia. Such is the case of this film as well.

********************

Valtteri is on Letterboxd.