The actress Nora Aunor is now midway with the shooting of the independent film Hinulid, from the Bicol word that refers to Christ after He was taken down from the Cross and laid down. In the film of Kristian Sendon Cordero, who is into just his second film but already is a veteran of writing awards, there is not one but three Dead Christ. And—and this may sound sacrilegious—then there is Nora Aunor.
I was in Cagbunga, Gainza, in Camarines Sur, the whole day they were finally bringing onto to the frame the Three Dead Christ. It was a difficult situation because the notion of three images or icons of Christ lying side by side each other is considered an aberration by many.
There are many stories about the icons. It is said that all three icons were found, one by one, floating on the river nearby. It is said that, when that part of the village was flooded, the three were found again on the river floating together. It is also said that, when one of the icons does not want to be part of the procession, even when it is his turn, there was no way any person or groups of persons can bear his weight.
That morning, the scene showed Cita, the character Nora is playing, visiting the chapel of the Tolong Hinulid (Three Dead Christ). It is in a chapel on the edge of a vast ricefield. A group of barangay tanod guarded the waiting shed to the dirt road leading to the site. I introduced myself as part of the production and they waved me in. I don’t think they would have allowed me in had I introduced myself as a film critic.
My car was allowed only up to a point. A barricade had been set up a few meters from the chapel and people were contented watching the crew busying about. Inside the chapel, Nora was gazing at the Dead Christ. Across her was Jess Volante.
Jess plays a blind healer. Jess is an old friend and our friendship dates back to when we were intrepid scholars who would go around the region giving seminars for free on Bicol history and culture. The other part of the team was Dr. Dan Gerona, a historian. That morning, it was a very different Jess Volante I was seeing, his low voice filled with the sadness coming from Nora. Jess was getting the energy from the actor. They were talking about healing the child of Cita.
There are three actors playing Lucas, the son of Nora’s Cita. There is Lucas at 9, Lucas at 15 and Lucas in his mid-20s. Jess Mendoza, a competent and compelling actor who was nominated for an Urian Best Actor in his first outing as lead in the dark and quirky The Natural Phenomenon of Madness, plays the older Lucas.
Jess Mendoza told me over the break how Nora was affecting him in many scenes. One showed them dancing and, with their faces close to each other, Jess said he just felt his tears well up and stream down his face. The camera caught that.
The camera would not catch how we responded to Nora’s genius in collapsing in short, terse lines a flood of emotion, keeping them there in her heart because to reveal them would make those feelings impure. Several scenes were shot in a haunted house, a prewar mansion built in the middle of what was a sugarcane plantation.
The morning of the shoot, I was in a cab and in search of that “haunted house.” We entered a side street but I felt we were going nowhere. We then inquired where the big old house was. “Ah, the haunted house?”
We were soon back on the main road, but to make sure, we hailed a young woman who asked us to follow her. We asked her to ride with us instead. Closing the door, she blurted: “Yaon na d’yan si Nora? [Is Nora there already?]”
Indeed, by the time we got to front of this rambling house, a small crowd had gathered. They were quiet and maintained a respectful distance. The lower room of the house had been transformed into a morgue. I went around the house and saw the stairs leading to the second floor. At the top of the stairs was Nora. I went up and hugged her.
She was called to the window, a massive gap where there used to be windows and a wall. Overgrowth framed that spot. We all went down. A camera below was trained on them. The scene called for Nora and Jess to stand there and look down. A green expanse gilded the space around them. Jess Mendoza/Lucas drew his Nanay/Nora Aunor close to him. They appeared to be talking. Then Nora leaned on the shoulder of her son. Cut. It was magic, that simple shot.
A series of morgue scenes were taken. Very efficiently, with Jun Dio, the director of the short film Sarong Aldaw (One Day) serving as the assistant director. One scene had Nora on the cot. I don’t know what the scene was all about because; as far as I know, Nora’s character doesn’t die in the film.
A scene called for Jess/Lucas to walk up to the morgue, his steady steps we could hear. He stopped at the door, half of his body already on camera. He saw the covered corpse. He started to walk, this time the sole of his shoes scraping the cement. Jess was dragging himself. He stopped by the cot and slowly opened the white sheet. He touched the head of Nora gently.
Cut.
In the next scene, Jess was still looking down at the face of Nora. He was crumbling, convulsing, but you could not even hear the sobs.
Cut.
I was not prepared for the next scene. I requested Kristian, the director, to put me where I could really see Nora act. All throughout the day, I would be moving around the set, looking for a vantage point, but one that will not be within the camera frame.
The scene had Cita in the morgue, her son on the cot or bed this time. A priest was with her. The priest is played by Raffi Banzuela, a local historian from Albay and a multiawarded writer. We were together in the public-relations office of a government corporation. This film was getting to be a sentimental journey for all of us.
The priest was asking Cita a series of questions in the Bicol language, but in Albay, Bicol. For Bikolanos, that is a different language from the one spoken in Naga. Nora was using her own Rinconada Iriga. The splendor of languages, I kept telling everyone.
Where is the vigil? Where will you bury him? You will burn him?
“Kun susuluun mo siya, ano pa an ebidensya mo? [If you are going to burn him, what evidence will you have?]”
The dialogue about how cremation will remove all traces of the body implies many things about the death of Cita’s son. When Cita hears this, she slowly looks up from gazing at her son’s face. Nora walked up to Raffi, and I could see her gripping the end of the bed. Slowly, she spoke of how her son had been beaten, bruised and violated. What other evidence does she need? I covered my nose because I could sense I was dripping. I was trying not to cry. I barely heard the word “Cut!” from Kristian. Nora, suddenly, was next to me, smiling. “Matibayon ka, Manay,” was all I could tell her.
In Gainza, Nora would hug the old ladies who had been waiting for her to come out. Without telling anyone, Nora was already out on the tiny ledge that served as entrance to the small chapel. It was about 10 in the morning, and fans and admirers were still there. She waved at them and asked them to come to her.
That night in Gainza, the nearly impossible happened. During the preliminary meetings, I had advised Kristian to be careful and judicious about his plan to use the three icons. He was thinking of solutions, and one of these was to have a replica made of the Three Dead Christ. That night, the caretakers of the icons agreed to take the images from the bier. They also agreed to bathe the icons as they would do on designated days. Finally, they consented to allow Nora to participate in the ritual of bathing the icons.
I still have to gather the many images taken during the meetings so I could do a pictorial essay here at some point. For now, I only have this photo of Nora as Cita with the urn bearing the ashes of Lucas inside. She is crossing the colgante, or hanging bridge, to go to her village, a remote location across the river. It is nearly sunset and the face of Nora is upturned, her eyes seemingly pleading for the sky to banish her pains, and on her face we see the grief and love of a mother summoning all the days that are to come. It is that face, and it might as well be that heart, we tell ourselves, that we are again witnessing, an actor’s body that makes an old bridge tremble for the truths it has seen, and the small gestures of those small hands holding the urn, which in the hands of Nora Aunor, the actor, are really about the return to infinity.