"Perfumed Nightmares": a film review

A film review of "Perfumed Nightmares", a film of Kidlat Tahimik

“Mababangong Bangungot”, translated as “Perfumed Nightmare”, is partly an autobiography of Kidlat Tahimik. Kidlat Tahimik is a “Filipino filmmaker and shaman… born in 1942 during the U.S. occupation” and this is his first featured film.[1]

In the movie, Kidlat Tahimik has ever since displayed much awe at Americans, particularly for Werner von Braun, who theoretically created the spacecraft that brought Americans to the moon. In fact, Kidlat began and was the president and chairman of the Werner von Braun club in his town, with small children as his members. He likewise coveted American beauty pageant winners and never missed the radio program “Voice of America”. Once, he even wrote a letter to the program (which was read and answered on-air) and asked the first words American astronauts said when they reached the moon.

He owns his living as a jeepney driver; he not only drives people but also delivers goods like dry ice. However, he considers San Marcos—their patron saint—as his most important passenger. One of his regular passengers, Joe (as most Americans were called by Filipinos then), invited Kidlat to come and work with him in France, and then in the United States.

In the end, Kidlat agrees to come with him. Before he left, he was given farewell by the town, remarking that he is the first in their town to go to the Big Apple, and only the second to ride an airplane. Kidlat dreamt of buying an electric light to their village’s only bridge, which he had learned to love as a jeepney driver, and so he was excited and didn’t feel very bad in leaving.

At the airport in Paris, Kidlat is astounded by the products of technology around him. He writes home, “There are 26 bridges here… the doors open for you, the floors walk for you”. Joe’s business was those little machines that eject chewing gums when you insert coins on them. Having brought his treasured jeepney with him, he traveled Paris loading chewing gum machines and making new friends, at the same time. On a short vacation he had, he decided to go to the land of Werner von Braun: Germany. There he had witnessed and again was astounded by the different space equipments being made there.

The climax of the story is close to its falling action. It was during a masquerade party Joe held, and in which he invited Kidlat and his other foreign partners. This scene is a bit unclear, but I guess the reason why Kidlat said that he felt he was getting smaller as he was being introduced to the foreigners was because they belittled him as a Filipino. Oh, and by the way, since it was a masquerade party, the guests were all wearing masks… while Kidlat had none. It’s not very reliable, then, to say, that Joe had been a true friend to Kidlat, or he would have told him to wear a mask… or maybe he had that in mind. With visible fury and resentment, Kidlat called on his secret power and blew out air that served as fuel as he rode a space shuttle (or something like that) back to his town in the Philippines.

The movie was a black-and-white first-person voiceover that is not only partly autobiographical but actually acts stronger as a revelation of the upshots of American occupation in the Philippines. First of all, Kidlat Tahimik was able to get by through driving jeepneys. Deemed by many as the national symbol of transportation, it is often overlooked that jeepneys actually came from jitneys, old American jeeps that were salvaged and assembled into a decent public transport vehicle. Kidlat’s dependence on jeepneys, therefore, implicitly proclaims his dependence on Americans (and the Philippines’ on America).

His awe of America, his faithfulness to “Voice of America”, his institution of the Werner von Braun Club, and the town’s warm farewell to him are all indications of Filipinos’ Uncle Tom attitude toward Americans and foreigners, in general, and that bane they call “Colonial Mentality”. It was repeated twice or thrice in the movie that the Philippines was sold to America for 12 million dollars. The movie, as an undercurrent, tells that, with 12 million dollars, America didn’t only buy the right to lead the Philippines, not the land, but the Filipinos themselves.

It will be too late, however, when we will realize that it is hard to trust, as Kidlat found out, and in the end, it is small and poor Philippines which will receive us with open arms. And maybe, then, we will not be blinded by Warner von Brauns to make out that we have our own virtues and resources worth being proud of as a Filipino… even if we can’t make spacecrafts made of bamboo to the moon.

[1] Mababangong Bangungot by Kidlat Tahimik, http://www.pdome.org/92/summer/tahimik.html