I would like to take a look at a particular scene from the movie Perfumed Nightmare, staring and directed by Kidlat Tahimik. This is a more in-depth look to one of my answers for a question on quiz 3.The scene in question is the going away party that Kidlat’s American Benefactor throws in honor of them leaving Paris for the United States.
Kidlat’s American Benefactor waits at the entrance to the party for his guests to arrive. As each guest arrives the director intercuts his shot footage of actors with newsreel footage of an important Western-looking person arriving at a huge event. Each guest arriving at the party also wears a mask hiding the actor’s face – hiding their identity. This technique of intercutting between the masked actor/guest and the newsreel footage suggests to the audience that it is the important person from the newsreel footage who is actually arriving at the party. So each guest arriving at the party represents an important person.
After all the guests have arrived the scene cuts to a shot of Kidlat sitting in a chair. When Kidlat rises from his chair to greet the guests, his narration describes how he feels – that all these important Western guests are staring at him. The director emphasizes Kidlat’s feelings by selecting camera angles that shoot up at the guests and intercutting these with camera angles shooting down onto Kidlat as Kidlat begins to talk about how small he feels compared to these guests. This is further exaggerated by using a bird’s eye view shot taken in such a way that makes Kidlat look tiny, as if the guests were looking down on him.
Throughout the movie Kidlat talks about progress and how he feels that his home needs to embrace progress and modernize. Now he is face to face with these people of progress, of modernization, who represent all the idea that Kidlat had idealized throughout the movie, and Kidlat feels small. The director is using this sequence to show the audience that Kidlat’s idea of progress, the concept he has always dreamed about, is not actually what he envisioned it would be. The audience is left feeling that, in Kidlat’s world, progress is this all powerful thing that no one can hope to stop.
In the next part of the sequence Kidlat begins to think of the wooden horse his mother carved for him on his car. As mentioned in an article that I read online by Antonio Sison the horse was “carved by Kidlat’s mother from the butt of the rifle of Kidlat’s father after he is killed by the American soldiers”. The article further mentions that Kidlat’s mother tells him, “Take this horse on your travels. One day you might need him to help you find the path to freedom”. This is shown when the scene cut from Kidlat to a shot of a wooden horse next to a toy car. Kidlat starts to think about the bridge shown in the beginning of the movie and what he had done. The scene then cuts back to the shot of Kidlat where he resumes his narration. He states his name and says that he is not actually as little as they make him feel. The shot cuts back to the toy car, but now the wooden horse is magnified to 3 to 4 times larger than its original size in the previous shot. The scene then cuts back to Kidlat who starts to blow air out of his mouth. With added sound effects of strong harsh winds, the following shots show the American and his guests being pushed away and rolling on the ground. This creates the illusion that Kidlat is blowing them away.
Kidlat’s character has now developed the strength and courage to stand up against progress. He begins to blow away all his past notions of progress. He rejects this “progress.” Kidlat has discovered that anyone has the power to stand up to things, such as progress, even if you are alone.
This sequence is the turning point for Kidlat’s convictions. He no longer supports progress as he did in the beginning of the film. But what is this progress that Kidlat is now rejecting? Kidlat made Perfumed Nightmare after attending Wharton Business School in the US. He returned to the Phillipines and made a Third Cinema film that has all the appearances of being an unsophisticated piece of film making, but perhaps it is the opposite. Perhaps Kidlat is stating his opposition to the Americanization of the Philippines and perhaps we should consider this film the work of a revolutionary.
Intro to Film and Media: Spring 2014
I really like the point you make toward the end of your post, when you argue that Kidlat is summoning winds that blow away not just the Western leaders at the party, but also “all his past notions of progress.” Your point here helped me to understand a little better the what Kidlat’s friend Kaya tells him in the beginning of the film (which we hear him repeat several times later): “When the typhoon blows off its cocoon, the butterfly embraces the sun.”
I was thinking that the typhoon represented a kind of environmental collapse or catastrophe that would destroy Western Civilization . . . and that people like Kidlat’s mother, who build their houses with bamboo, would endure. But your point makes it clear that Kidlat summons typhoon winds not to destroy the West, but also to change himself (like the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly). At first, Kidlat thinks he’ll be able to fly by leaving his home for the U.S. . . . but he comes to realize that what’s really keeping him from flying is his belief in the Western idea of progress. Ultimately, summoning the typhoon is an act of self-creation for Kidlat as much as it is an act of destruction.
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