A good week for two Pinoy independent films

By Alvin I. Dacanay

Last week was a good one for Philippine independent films and their admirers. For one, prize-winning director Brillante Ma. Mendoza’s latest film, Taklub (Trap), started its run at cineplexes last Wednesday, after serving as the opening film at the 20th French Film Festival in June and at the 11th Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival in August.

Taklub—which had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival—depicts, with unflinching realism, the devastation that Supertyphoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) left behind one year after it hit Leyte province’s Tacloban City in November 2013, and its impact on the survivors.

As scripted by Honeylyn Joy Alipio, Taklub follows some of these survivors as they try to move on with their lives: Bebeth (Nora Aunor), a carinderia owner whose only reminders of the children she lost to Yolanda are mugs bearing their pictures; Larry (Julio Diaz), a widowed tricycle driver who seems to find comfort in donning a maroon robe and carrying a cross during religious processions; Renato (Lou Veloso), whose family perished not during the superstorm, but in a fire that engulfed their tent; and orphaned fisherman Erwin (Aaron Rivera), who, with his siblings, slowly rebuild their hut near the shore, despite the government forbidding it.

Some viewers may be jarred by the exchange of Tagalog and Cebuano lines in some scenes, but that fact is brushed aside once the film goes deeper into the stories of its characters (the English subtitles are, of course, a great help). Others may question the suitability of 62-year-old Aunor playing the mother of school-age children, but that is soon dismissed, thanks to her remarkably nuanced performance. Nearly matching her is Diaz, who was at his most effective in scenes involving a broken wooden crucifix.

If nothing else, Taklub shows—and powerfully so—that the loudest cries for help are sometimes uttered in near or total silence. Clearly, more needs to be done to help the survivors rebuild not just their homes, but their lives.

Second week

Last Wednesday also marked the second week of acclaimed filmmaker Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna—about Gen. Antonio Luna, the ill-fated head of the Philippine Revolutionary Army—in theaters.

Usually, independent films don’t even last a week in commercial cinemas, but thanks to the tsunami of praises lavished on Heneral Luna by movie reviewers and social-media users who feared an early pullout, theater operators were persuaded to keep it in longer. Wise move.

It’s easy to see why Heneral Luna won so much hosannas: it’s executed with great style and humor. More important, it boasts of longtime character actor John Arcilla’s vivid, award-worthy portrayal of the proud general, whose famously short temper, sharp tongue, and extreme methods of instilling discipline and reasserting the chain of command in the Philippine revolutionary army earned him many enemies in Emilio Aguinaldo’s (a stoic Mon Confiado) inner circle of self-interested and regional-minded government and military officials (Nonie Buencamino, Leo Martinez and Lorenz Martinez, among others). Ultimately, these led to his assassination in Cabanatuan town, Nueva Ejica province, in June 1899.

One reason viewers were so taken with Heneral Luna is its relevance: the problems plaguing Filipinos in the 19th century—disunity, lack of discipline, factionalism, political naïveté— continue to afflict us today. These are especially highlighted as the 2016 national elections approach, with many of the country’s “public servants” holding elective office hurling more mud at each other than wrestlers in a mudslinging match. Obviously we have a long way to go.

Deserves commendation

Of course, relevance is not the only thing that makes a movie good. How well the director handled his material, his actors and other resources at his disposal should also be considered, even more so than others. In this regard Tarog deserves to be commended.

Consider how he depicted violence, especially on the battlefield: shocking, but not gratuitous; realistic, never cartoonish. And how he stages scenes, including what I think is the film’s best: that brilliant, sweeping flashback to Luna’s childhood, and to his and painter-brother Juan’s involvement with people from the Philippine Reform Movement in Madrid.

For me, what helped make Heneral Luna work was the inclusion of a fictional character, correspondent Joven Hernando (Arron Villaflor).

It is through him that viewers are first introduced to Luna and, arguably, it is through his perspective that they watch the events in the film unfold. He first acts as our virtual guide, and later toward the end, our interrogator and sort-of spokesman. Hernando’s presence underscores more of Tarog’s decision to use artistic license than his heavy-handed disclaimer at the beginning of the film.

For sure, the film has its faults (too-brief screen time for Luna’s fictional lover Isabel [Mylene Dizon]—rumored to be a stand-in for Ysidra Cojuangco—and for the women involved in the revolution; the Americans are a bit too one-dimensional, and their dialogue is stilted), but after the accursed El Presidente and the too-reverential, high-school history lesson that is Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo, Heneral Luna is a much welcome addition to the growing string of screen biographies of Philippine revolutionary figures. It certainly has set a new standard for films of its type to follow.