‘Dayang Asu’: Doggone preachiness

The polemic against egregious government corruption that “Dayang Asu” (Dognation) mounts is not new: Lino Brocka and his “disciples” have pretty much mined the same insight (perhaps to exhaustion), although it’s true that in the history of Philippine cinema they have done so mostly in Tagalog (rather than Kapampangan, which does bring, in this film by newcomer Bor Ocampo, its own welcome difference).

The thesis that government corruption is systemic and grounded in a profound and preexisting cultural “amorality” is almost par for the course in this kind of “miserablistic” cinema, which expects the audience to recoil at every instance of societal paradox and cognitive-ethical dissonance that it extravagantly dishes out.

In this case: a ruthless mercenary who pees into the municipal water reservoir and rapes young women is actually a loving father and son; a dutiful son who is a responsible big brother to a winsome sister will gleefully carry out the grisly murder of an innocent girl; the earthly remains of reprobate and utterly evil people will be mourned by their community and waked ceremoniously in a church, whose power as a guardian and enforcer of values in this godforsaken (here, once volcanically buried) corner of the earth is entirely effete, hypocritical, and meaningless; pedophilic rapists serve as local government officials who command their own private armies and are protected by their relatives who are also in public office; and of course, lest we forget, because this is a “national allegory” too, there will be a poor mongrel mutt getting butchered, cooked into delicious Kapampangan caldereta, and served up to both dissolute drunks and smiley-faced children, whose leftovers are to be seen being avidly chomped up by an adorable and pedigreed pet (I think I actually winced a little here).

And so, going by this “inventory” of conveniently extreme and unspeakable contradictions, we can say that what sets this film apart is its maker’s failure—one almost suspects, his deliberate refusal—to lend psychological rondure and depth to any of these characters, who are not so much persons as illustrations of ideas in his work’s grim and determined vision. Alas, it’s a vision that we’ve seen all too often before, especially in the recent spate of similarly tempered indie films that shamelessly address themselves to an international audience, believed to be fetishistically invested in this kind of civilizational rupture, this “surprise of otherness.”

If this was an attempt to try something new and be distinct from its neorealist forbears and cousins (whose best examples, we must remember, at least take pains to make both the victims and victimizers in this morality tale minimally “real” as filmic characters), then I can report that this flattening of the dramatic world, while novel and “newly troubling” somewhat, finally disappoints, in the way a heavy-handed homily or pedantic newspaper column disappoints.

Never mind filmic miserablism. In all art there’s nothing more miserable than the experience of being preached at; in effect what it says is that one isn’t capable of thinking for oneself. — BM, GMA News

"Dayang Asu" is  currently being screened in select theaters as part of the C1 Originals Festival.