Caring about the world

Lav Diaz films a wounded country and a wounded people. How can these wounds be portrayed? Is it enough to show it, to note and attest to their existence, to denounce their causes? Not in the cinema of Lav Diaz. The Filipino filmmaker – and this is one of the reasons why his work is so precious to us – invents both narrative and visual strategies to deal with these wounds. And he does this in an attempt to heal them, or at least to offer them solace. Here, it is not only human beings who have the power to heal the victims. It seems that the ability and desire to heal, or at least to look after, is a dimension of the landscapes and the world itself.