Bernal: His Vision and Search for Redemption

Fernando V. Beup Jr.
Film 102
26 February 2003

Bernal: His Vision and Search for Redemption
(or Why Elsa in Himala Is Not a Hoax)


In Ishmael Bernal’s 1982 film masterpiece "Himala," Elsa, the main character played by Nora Aunor is shown kneeling, hands drawn together, eyes closed, her face turned towards heaven in fervent prayer. Over many years, this shot has been reproduced many times in different publications, making it perhaps one of the most recognizable still photos culled from Filipino films. The shot has indisputably attained a classic status so much so that even in the absence of the movie’s title, it almost never fails to bring to mind the film from where it was taken, and ultimately draw attention to its very creator—Bernal himself. If anything, this attests to the immense power that the image possesses.

Few would argue that a very fine actress like Aunor has lent this image a strong visual appeal. But how could one explain its enigmatic magnetism and credibility? How could such a photo command so much attention and be rewarded an iconic significance in the annals of Philippine cinema? The question inevitably requires us to take a look at the picture again and closely examine the elements that make this particular image so powerful as to become a celebrated and revered symbol of excellence in Filipino filmmaking. To make it even more interesting, it should be noted that its creator had been widely acknowledged to be an outstanding filmmaker, something that has been affirmed with his being accorded, posthumously, the status of National Artist for Film in 2001. Could it be that the strength of the photo of Elsa in a prayerful trance is but a part of a visual narrative style employed which transcends the filmic image, implicitly communicating the inner “moorings” of its author? What then are these internal moorings?
To arrive at answers to the above questions, it becomes imperative to subject Bernal’s films under close scrutiny and reveal, if at all, semiotic relationship between Bernal’s films and his personal beliefs, convictions, or disposition. It is the purpose of this paper to explore the inner moorings of Bernal as can be gleaned from his style in filmmaking particularly as regards his themes and visual narrative techniques. Himala and Nunal will serve as the focal points of the paper’s inquiry being considered among Bernal's most artistic works, with the rest to help support the paper’s theses. Ultimately, the paper will show how these elements converge to reveal Bernal’s importance as an artist and his recurring vision of moral order and his constant search for hope and redemption in his films.

It should be noted that Bernal was a very prolific artist, having made prior to his death in June 2, 1996, more than 30 films which touch on various topics and genres.[1] Not all of these films are considered outstanding, however. In fact, Bernal’s films were largely commercial, though it is noted that most of them bear his distinct touch and commitment to artistic pursuits.[2] Among his most famous creations were Pagdating sa Dulo (1971), Nunal sa Tubig (1976), Manila by Night (1980), and Himala (1982); all of them bearing important statements about society in general. The oppressive political situation at the time of President Marcos and the rise of activism among the students and the intelligentsia may help explain why many of Bernal’s films were loaded with statements regarding Philippine society’s ills.

Bernal was very good as a political satirist as evidenced by Pagdating sa Dulo and Manila by Night. Yet it is not through these films that Bernal becomes outstanding and truly remarkable. His widely acknowledged greatest work, Himala, though itself bears political implications, is not, in its most immediate sense, about politics. The movie tells about a simple country lass who one day declares to have witnessed the Virgin’s apparition and from thence attracts a large number of believers, miracle-seekers and all sorts of people, consequently bringing into the once sleepy village numerous vices and social evils. The movie ends in the shocking assassination of the “visionary” after she reveals that she does not perform miracles—that in fact there is no miracle.
The film, for all its richness in meaning, is essentially about the general gullibility of Filipinos who, in their desperation and ignorance, are driven to believe anything or anyone—regardless of the subject’s veracity. It is evident that Elsa’s richly layered character had been deliberately crafted—and aurally enhanced—in such a way that would lead viewers to create an ambivalent judgment of her: is she, or isn’t she? The question inevitably becomes a question of faith in the viewer: Should I believe or not? Why should I believe?

It should be of interest to note that toward the end of the film, despite Elsa’s pleading that there is no miracle, that miracles reside in the hearts of everyone, the viewer still gets the feeling that she is a messiah, and that the bullet from an unknown assassin is not only underserved but tragically wrong. After the chaos the assassination had generated, the people once more—perhaps even more strongly—believed that Elsa was indeed a messiah, that in fact she was a martyr. Vicariously, the viewer cannot but feel a sense of loss of a potential messiah.

The strength of Himala, among other things, undeniably rests on this ambivalence the movie creates in the audience. Interestingly enough, Bernal’s Nunal sa Tubig creates a similar effect in its totality when viewed within the context of faith and fortitude. The same is true with Hinugot sa Langit as regards the issue on abortion and, subordinately, as regards poverty and social justice. Bernal’s mastery of provoking this ambivalence reveals his subtle skill in manipulating the mise-en-scene to create an atmosphere that subconsciously helps the viewer to sense the spiritual, hence, the “religious.”[3] Incidentally, Nunal, Himala, and Hinugot all have obvious connections with religion and, understandably, possess strong moral overtones. In Nunal, Carmen (Maricel Soriano) physically and verbally affronts the man who killed her landlady (while she is in the middle of a prayer), screaming, “You have no right to kill!” In Nunal, the mythical island populated by people who are reluctant to embrace religion and modernity (science) succumbs to bad luck, eliciting the remark, “It must be karma,” from the daughter of a fishing investor.

Yet it is not the dialogue itself nor the themes that elicit from Bernal’s films spiritually unsettling feelings. Rather, it is in Bernal's cinematic (visual) expression that the audience can find his statements about the spiritual (sacred) most compelling. Can such a visual expression exist? Referring to Amedee Ayfre's idea of such cinematic style, Michael Bird in his essay Film as Hierophany writes:

…there is a cinematic approach to the sacred that discloses not only its surface appearances but also its inner striving that point to its depth. "Genuinely" religious films, by no means restricted to explicitly religious subjects, are those in which the cinematographic recording of reality does not exhaust reality but rather evokes in the viewer the sense of its ineffable mystery. [4]

In Himala, the scene on the hill where Elsa is first seen worshipping the Virgin is so visually powerful and mystical that both the viewer and the filmic characters would likely to simultaneously believe in the authenticity of the apparition even when no explicit sacred manifestation had been shown. The desert-like features of the hill, the luminescence of the midday sun, the blowing of the wind and the twisted and lifeless trees that allude to the crucifixion of Christ all subsume the viewer and reduce him to a mere mortal witnessing the spectacle of the divine. The effect produced by this particular scene aptly demonstrates Birds's assertion on the manifestation of the sacred in art, particularly in film:

If art cannot give a direct representation of the dimension of the holy, it can nonetheless perform an alternative religious function: art can disclose those spaces and those moments in culture where the experience of finitude and the encounter with the transcendent dimension are felt and expressed within culture itself. Where art is unable to portray the face of God, it can on the other hand show man's struggle to discern the divine presence. While lacking the capacity to represent infinity, art can locate, emphasize, and intensify those striving in culture for the transcendent that occur at the boundary of finitude.[5]

The lingering focus or gaze of the camera on Aunor's face as she undergoes a hypnotic trance further reinforces the sacred’s significance in the scene in which the French philosopher Mikel Duffrene would call "sensuous realism," or the theologian Paul Tillich's "belief-ful realism," both of whom are concerned about meanings behind reality as opposed to mere physical representations of the sacred.[6] Using Duffrene's idea of the "sensuous," the visual image Bernal thus created becomes central to his motive of highlighting the "authenticity" of Elsa as a visionary, in effect creating a disturbing duality (she is/she isn’t) in the character that must have only been intended to create an ambivalent attitude towards Elsa on the part of the viewer. Hence, to view Himala and dismiss the character of Elsa as a mere “hoax”[7] is to miss, if not simplistically and summarily veto Bernal’s vision of dividing the audience into two main categories: the believers and non-believers, and, ultimately, inviting the audience to find their way between right and wrong. Indeed, Elsa is not a hoax any more than Bernal wishes his audience to believe she is. If at all, this gives the viewer an insight into the workings of Bernal’s mind both as an artist brought up in a society steeped in religiousity and, more importantly, his understanding of the film medium’s ability to convey the mysterious.

Bernal's vision, hence, starts to unfold as basically a moral one, if not Catholic. It is moral because his movies thematically tackle moral issues such as hypocrisy and abortion (Hinugot), hypocrisy and opportunism (Himala), spiritual emptiness and ignorance (Nunal), moral decay (Manila), etc.; and Catholic because they bear references to the Catholic faith, directly or indirectly. It appears then that Bernal is a moralist, though he does not appear strictly to be didactic. That he is not didactic fairly accounts for the widely acknowledged fact that Bernal’s film can be approached at different levels at the same time, meaning that one can deduce what one wants from the point that he wishes to see Bernal’s films. In Himala, the playful frolic of Nimia with the boys at dusk creates an unsettling feeling of ambivalence: A veiled Nimia framed in iridescence of the setting sun conjures the image that she is the Virgin. In effect, Bernal seems to involve the viewer once again in that already familiar guessing game: is she?/ isn’t she?

Bernal’s strength as a filmmaker seems to come from his understanding that film must create “moments” that would serve as tools for discovering the covert meanings in every scene. Nunal and Himala are rich in these “moments,” instances which coax the viewer to put meaning into the film rather than get them. It is in this fashion that Bernal demonstrates his great artistry in manipulating the film medium to convey meaning not through direct representation but over and beyond representation. In this manner, Bernal echoes Rudolf Arnheim’s suggestion that “art is distinct from ‘mere’ imitation or representation—art is a creative transformation ‘rather than mechanical reproduction’.”[8] In Bernal’s case, the transformation occurs in the careful composition of the filmic atmosphere and characters to create a sense of the holy (good) and the unholy (evil).

Why Bernal would choose to narrate his story in a “belief-ful” realist mode while credibly casting doubts on the authenticity of Elsa as visionary deserves a closer look. It is reasonable to assume that Bernal intentionally utilized a form of storytelling “conspiratorial” in nature so he could involve the audience to come to terms with their own moral dilemmas by subtly but forcefully presenting to them two equally competing forces: good and evil.

For Bernal, the choice between good and evil presents a difficult and exhausting problem. In Hinugot, Carmen is tormented by the dilemma of having to choose between keeping her unwanted baby or having it aborted. The choice could have been settled on that level, but Bernal complicates the story by adding into the story a rigorously Catholic, guilt-ridden former abortionist Loring (Charito Solis) who psychologically harasses Carmen about the latter’s moral choice. As the situation complicates, one can palpably sense the dialogues among the characters acquire an internal monologue tone. In the scene where Carmen is confronted by Loring about the former’s decision to abort her child, the conversations suggest that Carmen is wrestling with her conscience (Loring) in an apparent state of (Bernal’s) soliloquy.

Somehow the internal monologue tone is not confined within Hinugot alone. Himala when listened to intently creates a similar impression; so does Nunal; so does Manila. The overall effect, then, is that as one watches the characters exchange words, one is eventually able to hear Bernal conversing with himself in an obvious tug of war with his conscience, vicariously absorbing the viewer into Bernal’s own psychological disposition. If so, the recurrence of this phenomenon in Bernal’s films very well echoes, if not boosts, the particular notion in the auteur theory that “to a certain extent… the auteur is always his own subject matter; whatever the scenario, he always tells the same story, or…has the same attitude and passes the same moral judgments on the action and on the characters.”[9]

Corollary to this is the interesting manner by which Bernal brings to the screen his idea of evil. Bernal tends to signal the sinister and the occult by afflicting his supporting characters with some form of neuroses. Loring’s rigorous efforts (resulting from her tremendous guilt) to save her soul by appropriating her resources for the church at the expense of the family squatting on her property displays her distorted moral priorities. She is, in a clinical sense, obsessive-compulsive. In Nunal, Maria’s (Elizabeth Oropesa) sister uncharacteristically sweeps the courtyard in the afternoon, knowingly smiles at the misfortune of Maria, giggles at the clumsiness of the priest, and leads a government statistician into trouble. Bernal pushes this further by showing both women (Maria and sister) wearing shawls, walking as if in procession, conjuring up visions of the dark and the Gothic reminiscent of the final river scene in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973).

Curiously enough, Bernal shows a fascination for signaling moral bankruptcy by emphasizing “lack.” Himala and Nunal both show the loss of moral fortitude through the absence of water. In Himala, it was through a prolonged drought; in Nunal, it was the drying up of the well. For Bernal, the lack of water suggests the drying up of the spirit, implying the people’s “thirst” or need for spiritual nourishment. Not quite incidentally, water plays a very important symbolic role in religion (Catholic) particularly in baptism and consecration, and acquires an even more profound meaning in one of Christ’s last words, “I’m thirsty.”

That both Himala and Nunal could generate rich interpretations can be attributed to the manner by which they are presented with their emphasis on the atmosphere rather than through cinematic montage. In this manner, both films closely approach the level of literature, where the spectator interprets (puts) rather than passively watches (gets) the films. It appears then that Bernal is at his element when he approaches the realm of the sublime and the intangible, the mystical and the psychological.

Interestingly, Bernal’s cinematic style finds its parallel in the works of the Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the French-Czechoslovakian Milan Kundera; the Austro-Hungarian Franz Kafka; and the Irish James Joyce, all of whom are considered rooted to the existentialist school in terms of the themes they tackle. It seems plausible that Bernal himself may have asked the same questions existentialists have asked; and basically, these have to do with the question on the purpose of one’s existence—the “being and nothingness” of Sartre, the anxiety of Soren Kiekergaard over the absurdity of his existence, and finally, Friedrich Neitzsche’s idea of the death of God, meaning that faith in God is gone and can no longer solve man’s miserable condition. Principally, the questions they have asked are moral ones; and Bernal may have found in these philosophers an excellent company.

It is unfortunate that so very little has been written, if ever there was, about the personal, religious, and psychological aspects of Bernal as these could provide us a deeper understanding of the inner workings of his mind, and subsequently, better understanding of his “religious films”. It is evident, however, that Himala and Nunal—perhaps his two richest films in terms of visual imagery, multidimensionality and mysticism—are rendered superior by their style in tackling the spiritual and the intangible—in other words, the moral.

It would have been most interesting to understand him as a person so that insights can be gained as to the personal meanings he had put into his films that presently we can only surmise. It might take some time before Bernal can be deconstructed through his works, but it may be Himala, his greatest work, that may yet give us the best clue to his mind: Why does Bernal confuse us—and confuse us deliberately—about the authenticity of Elsa? Is it because he believed that man is “condemned to be free”—free to make choices—just as Sartre had believed? Why was Elsa killed? More importantly, who killed her? If we put Elsa in substitute for faith, or God, only Nietzsche can give us a most chilling answer:

We have killed him—you and I! We are all his murderers…Whither are we moving now?... Do we not now wander through an endless nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? [10]





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[1] Mario A. Hernando, “Ishmael Bernal: Merging Art and Commercialism,” Far East Banknotes(Third of a Series), 1981.
[2] Ibid.
[3]The “religious” or religion in film is thoroughly discussed in John R. May and Michael Bird, eds., Religion in Film (United States: The University of Tennessee Press/Knoxville, 1982).

[4] Michael Bird, “Film as Hierophany,” Ibid., 14.
[5] Ibid., 4.
[6] Ibid., 8.
[7] The word “hoax’ constantly appears in various articles, particularly in the summary of the film.
[8] Bird. Ibid., 10.
[9]Andre Bazin, “La politique des Auteurs,” Cahiers du Cinema, no. 70, April 1957: extracted in John Caughie, ed., Theories of Authorship (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1981), 45.
[10] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. 1882. The Joyful Wisdom; quoted in T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: the Philosophic Quest (United States: Bantam Books, 1989), 324.