'Moonlit Seasons': Reflections on Marilou Diaz-Abaya's art and life

MANILA, Philippines -Filmmaker Marilou Diaz-Abaya, who passed away Oct. 8 last year , would have marked her 58 birthday last March 30.

This is a good time as any to reflect on her other lives — away from filmmaking. Film lovers who want to go deep into the art and psyche of Abaya should read her last book, Moonlit SEAsons. Published in 2009, the book is the filmmaker’s maiden foray into literature as well as her last diary when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2007.

In the 187-page book designed by Dani Mojica, Abaya shares with her readers her fascination with nature and the world beyond Planet Earth. 

Specifically, she dwells on her admiration for Japanese art and culture and her obsession with the moon and the sea and how her future film projects were dictated by this fascination. This fascination paved the way for her very personal essays and poetry, notably in the genre of haiku, tanka and poem- tales.

She wrote in the book’s introduction: “Poetry evokes intui- tive experiences impossible to film. My literary efforts are modest but nevertheless, deeply felt as homage to nature.”

Her love affair with the sea started two decades ago when she had a diving expedition in Cebu with her husband, Manolo and sons, Marc and David. Since then, she wrote, her love affair with the sea has transcended mere pleasure of the senses.

“Underwater, I now experience the Ultimate Artist in the midst of Creation,” she added.

And thus she has taken the liberty and pleasure of adapt- ing Japanese literary genres to express her personal observa- tions and flights of imagination.

Understandably, she pays tribute to the sea in the opening haikus thus:

a coral garden

deep inside my mother’s womb

In the dark, spawning

white tops on blue bay

windsurfers in pas de deux

Oh sweet amihan

choirs of angelfish

Beethoven’s ninth symphony

diver’s cathedral

A curious essay on her friends, Ishmael Bernal and Rolan- do Tinio, called Two Navels, will give the readers a clue that the filmmaker was all set to join her friends some three years before she moved on (the book was written in 2009).

She recalled that Bernal and Tinio also loved the outdoor in unusual ways. “Rolando couldn’t swim but loved the sea. Ishmael was a trained diver but preferred to climb rocky mountains. My two were always focused and often carved for extreme expeditions so they’ve gone ahead beyond the visible horizons of this earth, leaving me behind with souvenirs of their Life as Art.”

When Tinio passed away and she was mourning his death, Abaya wondered if her own (death) would be as blessed and peaceful.

Then her poem went thus:

farewells by the sea

no hearst in far horizon

moon sets agony

siren alowered to her grave

lungs filed with salty water

She rued then that Tinio and Bernal were watching her earthly life and they will wait for her. True enough, she joined Bernal and Tinio on her passing last Oct. 8.

The book reveals a lot about the friends she keeps and the teachers she reveres and the poetess and intimate essayist she wanted to be. She succeeds on her own terms by letting her life experiences speak for themselves and allowing the artistic prism to distill her life and art.

Abaya’s book also has well-kept insights on the making of many of her landmark films.

For one, she admitted that her films Sa Pusod ng Dagat (In The Navels of The Sea) and Muro-Ami were actually her tribute to the sea. The film was a big hit in the Second Festival International de Cinema in Benodet, France where Cesar Montano bested the other entries by winning Best Actor in this international film festival.

What stood out in the film was not just the breath-taking cinematography of Rody Lacap, the unique production design of Leo Abaya, the rivet- ing screenplay of Ricardo Lee and Jun Lana but also the glorious film scoring of Nonong Buen- camino who also used Bohol’s musical treasure, the Loboc Children’s Choir.

Abaya — the consummate music lover that she was — made sure the sea tribute had the appro- priate music as well. Recalled Abaya on the mak- ing of the film scoring of Muro-Ami: “In the begin- ning I was very sure that if I were working on the universe of mostly water where the most impor- tant function of the human being was to breathe,

I just thought that it would be interesting if I had nothing but the element of air in my music. First, I told Nonong (Buencamino) that we could use the Loboc Children’s Choir and that somewhere in the production of music, we would use instruments other than the human voice but they should also be wind instruments.”

Upon knowing the director’s specifications, Buencamino started scoring for the wind instru- ments namely the oboe, English horn, clarinet and flute. He was also aware of the primal message of the film: “One of the things I set out to achieve in the music of Muro-Ami was to help bring the audi-ence realize the philosophical tone of the film and not the socio-economic or realistic message.”

Because to Abaya, Muro-Ami was about “the voyage” and not about “a second look at child labor in the high seas.” The film went beyond all the socio-economic issues.

Explained Abaya: “I wanted to veer away from the social realism, a point I was least interested in. I was interested in the idea of The Voyage with the ship as a metaphor in the specific space which is The Sea.”

Randy David, who delivered a stirring address in the symposium titled, Changing Climate, Changing Cin- ema, admitted this after watching the film: “One finds oneself standing in awe before the unspeakable and the incommunicable. That’s how I felt watching Muro-Ami. I do not remember any of the dialogue, but I swear I can still hear the rhythmic pounding of the stones against the corals where the fish hid. The vast ocean is the main character in that film. And the human beings that milled around it were nothing but fragments of its envi- ronment. Muro-Ami is the most allegorical of Marilou’s films. It is Moby-Dick; it is The Old Man and the Sea.”

Like it or not, Muro-Ami was Abaya’s voyage into the realm of the profound.

On the whole, the book starts and ends with her fascination with sea even as she recounts her private sorrow and agony as she went through the countless chemotherapy sessions she had to go through for five years.

She wrote in her last essay in the book: “Returning to the city, to our medical treatments, to the chal- lenges of pain, suffering, and healing, we are sancti- fied by something which the sea encrusts in our in our hearts — hope, that no matter how long or short one’s life is, that is worth every breath, for oneself, and for others. The Gospel of Mark quotes Jesus as teaching, ‘Salt is good...therefore, have salt in your- selves and live at peace, one with another.’”

'Moonlit Seasons', like Abaya’s films, is an exquisite reflection of her art and life.