1998 ‘Serafin Geronimo: Ang Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion’ Directed by Lav Diaz
A lowly farmer whose wife is afflicted with a lingering illness gets involved in kidnapping that goes awry and culminates in tragedy. Years later, he turns to a crusading lady journalist to confess the details of the sensational crime that remains unsolved.
Kriminal, Serafin Geronimo: Ang kriminal ng Barrio Concepcion, Lav Diaz's Serafin Geronimo: Ang Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion, Serafin Geronimo: Criminal of Barrio Concepcion
it's difficult to see many things here that would encompass the revered Lav Diaz of late, but that's how it goes. . . one for them, ten for you
Diaz's worst movie is also his first, not surprising. Apart from that underlying apocalyptical and political (apocapolytical? sorry) themes each one of his movies have, there's almost none of Diaz in Serafin Geronimo. Major problems would be the pacing, which left me bored even with the 'short' running time, the acting, that is uniformly bad, and editing, simply awful. The video quality of the film didn't help any.
I fear, I have to admit that I quite liked the trashy shoddiness of this film, which looks quite often pretty terrible. Or, to be more precise, like a TV film. It's got too much melodrama aswell as pretty poor acting in some respects. But the feeling of watching an old VHS-Cassette matched very well with this creepy thriller of a literally sick man that is unable to speak up for himself. That's why he mumbles throughout the whole film (he's got a rotting tooth aswell) in a hushed way, which got on my nerves badly. But that film just felt so good, like the dirty water the protagonists are wading through, like their sweaty shirts and damp rooms with stained mattresses, their bare feet on dirty soil. When they drink, then to forget. There is no bliss in this life, just on screen. Maybe that's why the main character, Serafin, is granted a moment's peace in the cinema.
The first section of this film is quite overtly political but I don't really think that's a bad thing at all, actually kind of ingenious to pack contemporary politics in an "action" film. Especially important that it brings up with topic of Journalists in the Philippines being killed for no reason (Which is still happening to this day). Its very real, real conditions, real people, real emotion... HOWEVER the film quickly takes a 180 into a generic crime film and I wont lie, I felt cheated when that happened and still do! Its an unoriginal but intriguing enough story to keep you watching but damn..... some of those scenes just drag on and on. Not in the good way that…
Hours 1-2
First of all while I don't expect the first feature of a *somewhat* unknown director to have any major restoration plans like Out 1 or A Brighter Summer Day (the only copy of this I could find was a VHS rip), I would REALLY appreciate it if that logo in the top left didn't make it look like a Criterion release so I wouldn't have to expect washed out colours and poor video quality.
The movie itself is pretty standard. There's some formal qualities that I was interested in such as this is the only movie I can think of which has abrupt changes in language during dialogue, often going from Tagalog to English to Portuguese to…
