Rebellion and Despair in Kalel, 15

Much has been said about Kalel, 15 in terms of its masterful direction (by Jun Robles Lana) and beautiful cinematography (by Carlo Mendoza), as well as in terms of the powerful performances of its actors (especially of the lead star Elijah Canlas, whose acting style is delicate, intense, and sublime all at once).  I myself have watched it three times in the span of a few days, and I personally think that it is one of the best Filipino films I have ever seen (and I would even daresay, perhaps partly because of the fresh aesthetic hangover, that it is the best).  However, beyond it’s well-recognized artistic merits, I also believe that Kalel, 15 is an intelligent film that demands profound philosophical reflection.  Based on my interpretation, the film calls on the viewer to ponder on despair as an inevitable response to existential rebellion.

The theme of despair is woven into the film all throughout.  Jun Robles Lana himself has said in interviews that shooting the film in black and white is meant to signify suffering and the absence of hope.  Moreover, thematic emphases on despair and the premise that the main character is condemned from the beginning is evident in the following key areas:

• Plot and screenplay elements. 
• Kalel is silent in the first few opening scenes, perhaps implying that voicelessness is the character’s default state of power(lessness). 
• Kalel’s father is an aging and ailing priest, and thus is a “f/Father” in two senses.  His being inutile (given his age and ailments) is thus extrapolated to both of these senses of “f/Father,” in a double parallel negation, which is the tragic damning opposite of the synthetic effect of a double sequential negation.
• Kalel’s mother abandons him and his sister for the second time, which invokes a recollection of the expression “first a tragedy, then as farce.”  This also implies a darker tone against the comic elements of the film, in the practical relatable sense that humor is often used as a coping mechanism to endure suffering, and in the more philosophical sense that there is a thin line between the tragicomic and the truly tragic.  Perhaps this interpretation provides a similar relevance to the part of the plot where Kalel makes a trip to the wrong precinct (the traffic bureau) before making it to the right one where her sister is jailed.
• Early on in the film, Kalel’s HIV transitions to full-blown AIDS as he gets afflicted by Kaposi’s sarcoma.  Perhaps this signifies a point of no return, and a bleaker sense of hopelessness that is now caught in a vicious spiral.
• Each of the characters that effectively abandon Kalel (first his mother, then his sister, then finally his father) are lost in sequence in the plot, never to return again, signifying the persistence of loss without any hope of reunion, reconciliation, or redemption.
• Cinematographic devices.
• There are numerous shots where the focus is fixed rather than shifting, as if to imply that there are parts of the picture that are permanently anathemized.  This device reaches its climax in the scene where Kalel walks along stalls of Christmas lights after his trip to the precinct, and the entire frame loses focus.
• There are several scenes with a “lateral God’s view” i.e. where the focal points of the scene are located in a lateral distanced view from afar instead of a vertical distanced “God’s view” from above.  Perhaps this signifies that the characters, as well as the narrative, are not only condemned by God, but also by man.
• Symbolic scenes.
• The dresser mirror which Kalel uses to look at his body and eventually at his lesions is broken/cracked from the start.  A broken mirror superstitiously means long term misfortune.
• When Kalel visits Sue in the hospital, he offers her an apple which she immediately eats.  This scene is reminiscent of the eschatological story of Adam and Eve’s fall from Eden.
• While high on hallucinogenic drugs, Kalel holds his face too close to a burning candle, like a moth (“gamu-gamo”) flying towards the fire until its wings get burned.
• Two scenes – when Kalel lays down crosswise in his bed and raises his legs, and when he looks at his bare torso in his dresser mirror for the first time in the film – conjures images of crucifixion, the ancient method of torture and execution.

However, I think that the film does not only present an overall tone of despair in itself,  but rather in an interplay with the theme of existential rebellion.  The fundamental existential state is that of anxiety over having been thrown into an absurd and meaningless world.  Rebellion as a response brings hope, through a recognition that embracing the absurdity, meaninglessness, and emptiness of existence also shows forth the path to absolute freedom.  This can extend to the sociopolitical sphere in the sense that radical proletarization (to the point of being pure subject without substance i.e. the Cartesian cogito) can pave the way to true emancipation.  The film on the other hand raises the more pessimistic existential questions.  What if  existential rebellion amidst the meaninglessness and emptiness of life brings forth not hope and freedom but more despair?  What if the human condition is already condemned from the beginning?  What if sociopolitical rebellion leads not to victorious emancipation but to the void?  This last question recalls a point that Slavoj Žižek would often make on the idea of revolution, borrowing from Alain Badiou – that the greater anxiety is not about what if the revolution fails, but rather what is the revolution succeeds.  Moreover, dramatic moments of rebellion (e.g. millions of people gathering in collective action in a public space) are cheap, and the greater question should be what happens “the morning after?” i.e. when things return to normal.

The film raises this anxiety over “the morning after” in a more  literal sense, from the colloquial origin of the expression, which is that of the morning after a night of heavy drinking and debauchery.  It can be noted how the most important turning points for the worse  for Kalel comes immediately after nights of drinking and/or drugs. 

• His mother abandoned him following a night of drinking with his mother and his sister, where his mother advances the pseudo-subversive element of suspending her symbolic authority (“walang nanay nanay”). 
• After being rejected by Sue, Kalel goes out drinking with his friends, and the following morning gets news that his sister’s boyfriend, a fatal character that will only bring more evil and decay, is already moving in. 
• After confessing about his HIV to his friends while high on hallucinogenic drugs, they betray and ostracize Kalel.

The film also  portrays rebellion through the inversion of conventional aesthetic and social roles.

• There are scenes where the foreground and background are inverted, in the sense that the image foreground is blurred and the image background becomes the focal point of the scene.
• In Kalel and Sue, the Freudian roles of the male pervert and the female hysteric are reversed.  Kalel’s hysteria is most poignantly shown in the scene where he asks Sue, “Hindi tao, hindi gago, ngayon naman malabo.  Ano ba talaga ako, Sue?,” as if to ask the fundamental hysteric question, “why am I who you say I am?”  In the hospital visit scene reminiscent of Adam and Eve’s fall from Eden, the roles are also reversed, with Kalel handing Sue the apple.
• In a number of “voyeur” scenes mostly from Kalel’s bedroom window, the perspective is also reversed in the sense that the “voyeur” looks from the inside to the outside, instead of the other way around as in the conventional “voyeur” configuration.

As the film progresses towards the end, the despair only further intensifies, both in content and form.  After Kalel’s futile visit to the doctor that ends up stereotyping him as a sex-crazed teenager with no other activities to spend his time on (which dialogue is artistically presented in a distorted voice), the film transitions to an aspect ratio with narrower length, as if to imply that he has in a way become boxed, and his world has become even more suffocating.  Kalel gets diarrhea, unsure if from the AIDS or from eating spoiled canned sardines, having nothing else to eat.  His schoolmates wanting revenge for the possibility of getting infected with HIV throws a rock that shatters his window.  He wakes up, almost grateful that the rock did not hit his head.  In desperation, he heads to his father’s parish church and has to trade/sell his secret in the confessional to be able to get access to him, only to be ultimately rejected.  This series of events climaxes as Kalel spits at a figure of the dead Christ, which can represent both a god that has died to save him and a god that has forsaken and abandoned him.

What adds even more artistry to the film is the stark contrast between its greatly negative themes against its highly refined aesthetic sensibilities.  The black and white picture undeniably added beauty to the cinematography.  The house party scene in slow motion is a visual treat reminiscent of a similarly stunning scene from Petersen Vargas’ 2 Cool 2 be 4gotten.  Another especially beautiful scene is when Kalel leans back against the window after trying in vain to call his mother, wherein the light coming from outside passes through the lace curtains and projects floral shadows onto Kalel’s neck.  This moment is almost an existentialist exaltation that recalls the poetic final declaration in Albert Camus’ The Stranger – “I lay my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.”

The film’s final scene shows Kalel meeting with what seems to be his gay client for sex work.  The scene makes  an impression as if things have gone back to normal.  Kalel is wearing better clothes and is even riding a hoverboard.  The picture has even returned to the original aspect ratio with a wider frame.  It is clear that this atmosphere of stability in the end does not signify that the explosion of despair has subsided, but rather, that the overwhelming loss of hope has imploded into Kalel and has created a black hole as shown by his empty gaze.  It is left to the viewer to speculate whether from this absolute emptiness Kalel has found the rebellious freedom to come to terms with his condition or has effectively committed philosophical suicide and has began to be a sort of undead in the world.  In any case, the film makes a profound and unforgettable impression on the viewer – one that brings the heart and mind in momentary tangential acquaintance with that unfathomable and impalpable quality that makes truly great and timeless art.