Engkwentro (2009, Pepe Diokno)

Pepe Diokno, youngest filmmaker ever granted Cinemalaya funds for a full-length feature, is a grandchild of the late human rights advocate and esteemed Senator Jose Diokno. Armed with lots of moolah, genes of a fighter, and hand-held cameras, Pepe Diokno makes a grand political statement with Engkwentro. He deals head-on with the issue of extra-judicial killings in the country, which is one of the worst crimes of the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

I'd enjoyed watching the film. It bristled with the passion of an avid moviegoer, explosive energy of a sprinter, and the fiery courage of an activist. I loved the references to the films, Imburnal, Tirador, and Tribu. Diokno took some of the best parts from each film and incorporated them into his film. Just like Imburnal, Engkwentro features juvenile delinquents treated as unwanted animals and pests. The 'cockroaches' of Imburnal and the 'rats' of Engkwentro were easily extinguished by vigilantes.

Tirador is a fast-paced story about snatchers in Quiapo. There is a scene in Engkwentro showing members of Batang Dilim prowling in the dark alleys. They chanced upon a member of a rival gang and proceeded to manhandle him. One of the gang members brought up his slingshot (tirador) and took a shot at the crotch of the rival gang member. Then, they're off like snatchers sprinting to safety.

With Tribu, Diokno cribbed the story of two gangs facing off in the middle of the night. Some fight scenes were underlit. Whether those were intended or not, the dark and dizzying scenes showed gang members in their preferred environment. These low-lifers are creatures of the night, as suggested by their gang names, Batang Dilim and Bagong Buwan. The varmints loiter in the dark alleys. They scamper like rats in the dizzying mazes.

Diokno failed to borrow the spontaneity of the dialogues in Tribu. In the set-up prior to the slingshot scene, there's an awkward silence among the gang members. Maybe a frontal camera shot of the gang could have removed the awkwardness. I also disliked Tomas’ brandishing of his gun. The gang leader must have been stoned because he failed to use the gun during the melee. However, the shootings at the end were spectacularly shot and very powerful.

The key asset of the movie is the ominous voiceover by a mayor named Danilo Dularte Suarez. The name of the mayor refers to two things, the Davao Death Squad (DDS) and Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of Davao City. Yes, Diokno zooms in specifically on the killings in Davao City. Engkwentro further ups the ante by mimicking portions of real speeches made by Mayor Duterte. There is a part where the voiceover even refers to the 2004 killing of human rights defender Rashid Manahan in Davao City. The voiceover is a nice device to show the omnipresence of the mayor and his goons. It adds to the paranoia felt by a gang leader, Richard (Felix Roco), who is determined to leave the place.

During the UP Cine Adarna screening of the film, a female student was wondering about the identity of the man behind the voice. 'Si Bayani ba iyan?,' she blurted out loud. It is disappointing to learn that a college student fails to identify the man given the facts broadcasted at the start of the film. That type of ignorance can be fixed with a simple research or a daily reading of news. What cannot be fixed immediately is the fact that a lot of Davao City residents seem to accept the need for vigilante killings. Yes, Davao City seems to be peaceful and safe, but at what price? Lives of children and young people? Good grief! They are not insects and varmints that should be exterminated or vanquished.

Films like Engkwentro and Imburnal are important because they unveil the truth about the killings in Davao City. Some may argue with the artistic excesses. Some may disagree with the approaches to storytelling. But, nobody can deny the power and relevance of the films’ political statement: Stop extra-judicial killings in Davao City!

Engkwentro (Pepe Diokno, 2009)

Sure we’ll grant that Pepe Diokno’s first feature-length film, Engkwentro, is daringly conceived. Everything is orchestrated in such a way that the story wraps up in a handful of takes, marshalled in a surprisingly brief running time. Sure, too, it has its metaphors right: characters inhabit the locale of the story – the shantytown of an unnamed city – like small trapped animals in a terrarium. We get that much. But these descriptions are misleading and hollow: Engkwentro is, we must say in advance, a well-envisioned but callowly executed film.

Engkwentro is prefaced with the sobering facts in an epigraph detailing the number of extra-judicial executions perpetrated by death squads in the Philippines: 814 victims in the last decade or so – mostly at the expense of petty criminals. The film quickly opens in a slum where Richard, a small-time gangster, is anxious to raise money for his escape after word gets around that he has been marked for execution by the vigilantes. Jenny-Jane, his girlfriend, is amenable to his plan and has agreed to get away with him. Richard, however, can’t seem to get through to his younger brother to join them. He is slowly falling in with the wrong crowd, in particular, the gang of Tomas, who also happens to be Richard’s rival in love. Tomas is not about to become a cardboard nemesis for Richard.

Engkwentro, thankfully, mercifully, ends in almost exactly an hour. Produced, written and directed by Diokno, it is meant to be a kinetic and restive ride that would have worn out its welcome had it gone on too long, what with the director’s decision to use handheld cameras. But this is also perhaps its weakness: there seems little time to individualize its characters. The cameras seem consumed to trace all the dead-end alleyways of the slums, the unlit, pitch-dark nights, and the rattling textures of corrugated rooftops. Diokno and his cinematographer seem too caught up with their whiz-bang ethic for this film at the expense of story and characterization. Contrary to advance write-ups, Engkwentro is not done in a single take. No, Sokurov’s Russian Ark has no rival at the moment.

Perhaps the main achievement that Engkwentro will be known for will not be its technical bravura and wizardry but its sociopolitical commentary (the references are suspiciously familiar that it borders on being propaganda against Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of Davao City.) Superimposed on the soundtrack throughout the film are excerpts from the political speeches of the city mayor speaking in an unknown dialect, who vows to fight criminality with an iron hand and usher in progress. These speeches are edited and interwoven so wittily and ingeniously that they sound frighteningly like maniacal, self-incriminating confessions of a madman, recalling Hitler and the rest of his speechifying Nazi henchmen. Their exhortations for a new society (rubbed in by ‘Bagong Lipunan,’ that Marcosian soundtrack, at the end) contrast grimly and humorlessly with what goes on in the slums.

Most of Engkwentro, however, has been an afterthought. Some scenes look severely underlit – this might be the cinematographer’s contribution to create a spiritually dark environment for this hell on earth. Shot supposedly in high definition, some scenes just take place in the dark as the cinematographer, going a la intrepid documentarist, tries to catch up with the warring gangsters chasing after each other in the narrow mazes of the slums. Combined with its other visual and narrative deficiencies, Engkwentro comes close to being unwatchable. Shots are fired, some characters fall dead, and we simply shrug our shoulders. We are almost glad that it ended so soon.