Jaguar (Lino Brocka, 1979)

If you'll be my bodyguard  

Jaguar has a tony reputation: directed by Lino Brocka, loosely adapted by Jose 'Pete' Lacaba and Ricky Lee (from the true-life story "The Boy Who Wanted to Become Society," by Nick Joaquin), edited by Augusto Salvador, lensed by Conrado 'Carding' Baltazar, it's the first Filipino film to compete in the Main Competition of the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

That said the film doesn't come up as often in cinephile discussion as Brocka's Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng  Liwanag or Insiang, which shouldn't be a surprise. Maynila and Insiang were released on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming as part of the Criterion Collection; Jaguar is only available in crummier and crummier streaming copies, in the nether regions of the internet-- until recently, when the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), the Philippine Film Archive (PFA), and Cite de Memoire all collaborated on a restoration. The film premiered in last year's Lumiere Festival in Lyon France, then opened the Sinag Manila Film Festival last night with a star-studded screening. After over forty years, Jaguar returns to Filipino audiences with a vengeance. 

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980) 4K Restoration on the big screen

Close to you

This early shot in Bona (1980) I think says it all.

What's so remarkable about Nora Aunor's face here is just how unremarkable it looks in that sea of faces, standing in the brainfrying streets of Quiapo. The biggest star in all of Philippine cinema crammed in a crowd like sardines in a can, and she doesn't just look as if she doesn't stand out, she looks as if she belonged there, milling among the pious, the pickpockets, the prostitutes, all out in force on the Feast of the Black Nazarene. After all when you think about it: what's the point of appearing as the lead in a Filipino film if you don't look like a typical Filipino?

Nora Aunor (1953 - 2025)

Philippine cinema's dark beauty

Nora Aunor is arguably Philippine cinema's greatest actress.

Cinema Regained: Noel Vera (Rotterdam Film Festival 2006)

In tribute to Gertjan Zuilhof (1955 - 2025) who made this program possible

Critic in Rotterdam

Some months ago, Gertjan Zuilhof of the Rotterdam Film Festival asked me right out of the blue to program films I'd written about in my book Critic After Dark. I originally had over ten choices, narrowed down to seven features and a collection of shorts, made a few compromises along the way but otherwise felt happy about what I'd been able to bring to festival audiences last January 2006.

Bona 44 years later (Lino Brocka, 1980)

Bona, 44 years later

There's a lovely symmetry to having the restored print of Lino Brocka's Bona (1980) screened in the 2024 Cannes Classics section, in the same city where the film had its world premiere (at the parallel Director's Fortnight) decades ago. Feels like a combination homecoming, resurrection, revelation all at the same time.

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)

Bona: martyr or monster?

(Plot discussed in explicit detail)

Lino Brocka's Bona is possibly the least-seen of his major works, partly because the two remaining good prints of the picture had been squirreled away abroad (to the Cinematheque Francais and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art) while Filipinos back home had to content themselves with fading recollections and equally faded Betamax tapes. Everyone remembers how powerful the film was; no one can rightly say they've actually seen it, at least in recent years.

The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971), Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (Lino Brocka, 1974)

Our town

If you're going to film someone's story-- in this case Larry McMurtry's semi-autobiographical novel-- you can do worse than follow Orson Welles' suggestion to shoot in black and white. Faded photos have an allure no JPEG file will ever have; black and white celluloid will have this much over digital color no matter how high the definition-- they're already texture of memories, snipped out and pasted in someone's yellowing album. 

NIda Blanca

Nida Blanca

What made her such a memorable actress? Her smile, which was unique; it had a queer twist to one side as if wanting to turn into a sneer, something worthy of Barbara Stanwyck in a noir thriller. It didn’t, not quite; it accompanied eyes that opened wide in surprise and wonder, or narrowed into an intense laser stare. The problem with those eyes--or the glory of them whichever way you saw it--was the twinkle you saw, a twinkle that said she was only kidding, that the near-sneer was a put-on, that the tough-girl image was merely a façade defending her from a tough world.

Insiang (Chris Millado, 2002, stage adaptation)

Insiang comes home

Insiang is arguably Lino Brocka's masterpiece, an intimate three-character chamber drama (Tonya (Mona Lisa); her lover Dado (Ruel Vernal); her daughter Insiang (Hilda Koronel)) that slips under the skin like a hunting knife, slicing away fatty illusion and crusted complacency. It's a vision of the Tondo community, of little plywood shanties jammed together and trembling under the shadow of a mountain of garbage.

The film was Brocka's first to be shown internationally, was the first Filipino film to go to the Cannes Film Festival, to be screened at the prestigious Director's Fortnight. Audiences and critics alike sat up and took notice when Brocka made Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" (You Were Weighed and Found Wanting, 1974); they applauded Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon) in 1975. Insiang confirmed what Filipinos already knew--that Brocka was not just one of the best filmmakers in the country but in the world.

What few remember or even realize was that before Insiang was a film it was a script by Mario O'Hara, written for an episode of the drama series Hilda, in 1973. A few years later Brocka was pitching projects to neophyte producer Ruby Tiong Tan (one of his proposals: an adaptation of Agapito Joaquin's one-act play Bubungang Lata (Tin Roof), which O'Hara turned into a film in 1998); Ms. Tan agreed to Insiang. O'Hara wasn't available to adapt his teleplay (he was directing his second feature, the epic Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976)), so Lamberto Antonio stepped up instead (according to O'Hara there are few changes). The film was shot on location in fourteen days, on a budget of P600,000 (roughly three million today).

It's now 2002, and Tanghalang Pilipino has chosen for its 16th season to adapt Insiang on the theater stage; the question on everyone's mind--certainly on mine--is "Why?" The film is arguably the definitive example of Filipino social-realism--why remake a near-perfect work? In terms of structure, of sustained dramatic tension, of economy of means achieving maximum effect, the film stands above almost any other Filipino films (only one other approaches its elegance and intensity I think--Mike de Leon's Kisapmata (Blink of an Eye, 1982)).

Fifteen Filipino films

(Thanks to Video 48 for some of the pictures)

Fifteen Filipino films

My old list.

Pinoy Rebyu's list

This can be neither comprehensive nor complete. We've lost so many of our films to vinegar syndrome, to New Year celebrations, to general apathy and neglect; a kind of accelerating cultural Alzheimer's, a tragedy I would argue comparable to many recent disasters only instead of lives lost we're losing our sense of self. This is a mere sample a sketch--a glimpse if you like--of what I believe are the finest Filipino films I've managed to see to date.

A film is composed of many elements--dialogue, sound, music, color, movement, the shape and texture of people's hands eyes faces. Of all these elements I'd say the most expressive are the last three--but that's me saying so, an assertion just dying to be contradicted (ask Michael Powell, or Robert Bresson).

And a list (any man's list, which I consider superior to any aggregate) is ultimately futile, is a man's way of insisting on his priorities biases (occasionally hopefully) insights.

I love futile gestures.

This for better or worse is mine.

Insiang (Lino Brocka, 1976)

Insiang: one unhappy family 

(WARNING: Plot twists and story discussed in explicit detail)

Lino Brocka opens Insiang (1976) with the closeup of a pig stabbed in the throat, blood pouring as if out of a spigot. We see row upon row of headless carcasses, bellies split open from neck to crotch, pink skin not unlike a human corpse. The film's cinematographer, the great Conrado Baltazar, captures the haze heat stink and noise of a busy slaughterhouse like no one else before or since.

An amazing beginning, with image foreshadowing the slaughter. The image is also an assertion: "Violence on flesh is nothing compared to the violence that can be inflicted on heart and mind." The slaughterhouse scene strikes a particular note, its message loud and clear: "the worst is yet to come." 

Martial Law Movies

 

Martial Law Movies

Rodrigo Duterte on former president Ferdinand Marcos (italics mine): "President Marcos was a president for so long and he was a soldier. So that’s about it. Whether or not he performed worse or better, there is no study, there is no movie about it. It’s just the challenges and allegations of the other side which [are] not enough"

Well then!

For studies let me recommend a few titles: Ferdinand Marcos and the Philippines by Albert F. Celoza; The Marcos Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave; and The Conjugal Dictatorship, by Primitivo Mijares, who worked for Marcos, turned against him, disappeared shortly after the book was published. 

In literature there's Lualhati Bautista's Dekada '70; Emmanuel Lacaba's Salvaged Prose and Salvaged Poems; and Ninotchka Rosca's State of War.

And more, much more; I'm only citing titles I'm familiar with.

As for movies--in ascending order, my incomplete unobjective totally off-the-cuff list of titles that do in fact deal with the Martial Law Era.

Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Weighed and Found Wanting, Lino Brocka, 1974)

Tinimbang judged today

Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Weighed and Found Wanting, 1974) was a seminal work in contemporary Philippine cinema: one of the rare quality films of the '70s to enjoy commercial success, and Lino Brocka's declaration to the industry that a skilled commercial director has become a major Filipino artist. 

Dung-aw (Lino Brocka, 1975)

Refrains in a song

Lino Brocka's Dung-aw (Dirge, 1976), his musical adaptation of the life of Gabriela Silang is one of the less acclaimed and least seen of his films and possibly for a reason: Brocka doesn't quite have a knack for the genre. The drama swirls around this or that central figure and suddenly everyone pauses while the protagonist bursts into song; Armida Siguion-Reyna as firebrand revolutionary Gabriela Silang acquits herself well (even if you can tell she's lip-synching to a recording of her own voice) but the darkly handsome Mario Montenegro as her husband Diego (also using his own voice) can only manage a cautious warble (as he should). The result is certainly different but not the kind of inspiring historical re-enactment you (or Armida who also happens to be producer) probably had in mind. 

That said Mario O'Hara's script for the film takes what little is known of Silang and fashions a brief (seventy-five minutes long) sketch of her life--her beginnings as a woman of some means (she married into wealth, married again when her first husband died), her support of second husband Diego's decision to join the British against the Spaniards in the hopes of establishing a free northern province of Ilocos, her eventual takeover of Diego's leadership role in the rebellion when he is assassinated.

Manila in the Claws of Neon (Lino Brocka, 1975)

With the film's digital restoration and premiere at the Cannes Festival, and subsequent Feb. 9 Saturday at 8 pm screening in New York City's MoMA, a reprint of my thoughts (pre-restoration) on the film:

Maynila at the edge of greatness

(Warning: plot discussed in close detail)

Lino Brocka is the best Filipino filmmaker ever; his masterpiece, Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975) the greatest Filipino film ever made.

That was the consensus arrived at some time after Maynila first came out, and the idea has persisted ever since. Has, in fact, been given greater legitimacy with a top spot in the Urian's list of the ten best Filipino films in the past thrty years, and by inclusion in the book Film: the Critic's Choices--a list of what some critics consider the 150 greatest films ever made.

That's what they say. What about us-- you, me, the mere mortals? What do we think?

Maynila sa mga kuko ng liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, Lino Brocka, 1975)

To be released by the Criterion Collection on June 12, 2018, Lino Brocka's best-known film. 

Some thoughts (pre-restoration) on the film:

Maynila at the edge of greatness

(Warning: plot discussed in close detail)

Lino Brocka is the best Filipino filmmaker ever; his masterpiece, Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975) the greatest Filipino film ever made.

That was the consensus arrived at sometime after Maynila first came out, and the idea has persisted ever since. Has, in fact, been given greater legitimacy with a top spot in the Urian's list of the ten best Filipino films in the past thrty years, and by inclusion in the book Film: the Critic's Choices--a list of what some critics consider the 150 greatest films ever made.

That's what they say. What about us--you, me, the mere mortals? What do we think?

Philippine Cinema in the 1980's (David Aggabao, 2012)

A five part, just-a-hair-over-an-hour-long documentary on '80s Filipino cinema, done by students as final requirement for a University of the Philippines (UP) film class.

Don't agree with everything in it--the assertion that nothing really new came out of the '80s mainstream films, for example. I submit that there was plenty of surrealism and experimentation on visual narrative in films like Bed Sins, Himala, Kakabakaba Ka Ba? and Temptation Island (funny Joey Gosiengfiao and Elwood Perez don't even get a mention here), and that the dark, decadent look of films like Scorpio Nights, Batch '81 and Bagong Hari exceeded anything you saw in the '70s. And the emphasis on Orapronobis--it's a good film, one of the best of the decade, but there were more pointed attacks on authority (Bagong Hari, Kisapmata and Scorpio Nights come to mind) and braver films (Sister Stella L) even from Brocka himself (Bayan Ko, which was released during the far more dangerous times of the Marcos administration).

To be fair I made a mistake too--when I declare Salome to be the greatest Filipino erotic film ever made, I meant Init sa Magdamag. And yes, I considered Scorpio Nights for the title--in my opine Init did more, and with zero nudity. 

Overall it's well done, I thought; there are two authorities interviewed (Professor Joni Guiterrez of the UP Film Center, and Doctor Arminda Santiago, of the UP College of Mass Communications) to balance out my eccentric if not demented opinions, and titles to fill in cracks in the information provided. Not a comprehensive work, I guess, but a good start at one, and for all my lack of objective distance, I'd recommend a look. 

12.13.12

Jose F. Lacaba receives lifetime achievement award

For the 40th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law, a belated reposting of a piece I wrote on one of the dictatorship's more hardcore adversaries:

Jose "Pete" Lacaba receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the 10th Osian's Cinefan Film Festival

Sincerely hope he had the chance to visit the Taj Mahal in nearby Agra. Shah Jahan's monumental tribute to matrimonial love (actually it's less romantic when you learn that Mumtaz Mahal (hence the name) was his favorite wife, and that when his son Aurangzeb deposed him for overspending and imprisoned him in nearby Agra fort to spend the rest of his life gazing at his great love's tomb marker, he had his harem to console him in his loneliness--but still).

The article goes on to mention Lino Brocka, for whom Lacaba penned many of Brocka's best-known works--Jaguar (1979), a superbly structured drama based on Nick Joaquin's news article "The Boy Who Wanted to Become Society," and featuring great noirish cinematography by Conrado Baltazar; Bayan Ko (My Country, 1985), which took genuine courage to write during the last few years of the Marcos dictatorship; and Orapronobis (Fight for Us, 1989), which took courage of a different kind, saying that the then hugely popular Corazon Aquino (not a dictator, but she had so little control over what was happening it was practically chaos) was "worse than Marcos"--an accusation currently being leveled against present president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Written during this period as well was his one screenplay for the Philippines' one genuine genius filmmaker ('genius' with all the virtues and limitations the label implies), Mike de Leon: Sister Stella L. (1984)

What to say about the films? Lacaba has a strong voice in his scripts, I submit, so strong that otherwise powerful personalities like Lino Brocka and Mike de Leon (and if you think the reclusive de Leon doesn't have a powerful personality, ask the men and women (especially the women) who act or work for him) are subsumed under his intense, no-nonsense sensibility. Melodramatic Brocka becomes coherent and even understated (?!); De Leon loses the baroque edge of cruelty of his more personal works (Kisapmata, 1981; Batch '81, 1982). I don't believe the films show either director at their very best (they become, I submit, Lacaba's translators to the big screen), but they are strong, well-shaped pictures--superb examples of agitprop--with an electric political awareness and unselfconscious modesty I wish I could see more often in other Filipino films.

Lacaba does when given the opportunity to do so (which doesn't happen very often--his filmography is relatively spare, compared to more prolific Filipino writers) uplift the work of almost any other filmmaker. Chito Rono, for example, was inspired to create what I would consider his masterpiece from Lacaba's script for Eskapo (Escape, 1995)--the early scenes of paranoia and fear, when Marcos' freshly declared Martial Law hung silently over every Filipino head, are unmatched in any of Rono's other pictures (or almost any other picture in Philippine cinema, for that matter).

With filmmaker Tikoy Aguiluz, I submit they brought out the best in each other. For Rizal sa Dapitan (Rizal in Dapitan, 1997) Lacaba wrote what I thought was an honest, beautifully spare historical drama, perfect for Aguiluz's no-budget guerilla-style filmmaking (full disclosure: I wrote a draft of this film (a rather improbable affair full of conspiracy intrigues and arnis combat and scenes of Rizal exorcising the demon out of a possessed woman, of which only a little of the dialogue and even less of the plot was used)). For erotic noir thrillers like Tatsulok (Triangle, 1998) or Segurista (Dead Sure, 1996), Lacaba brought tautness to a well-structured plot that Aguiluz (and Aguiluz's longtime collaborator, writer-editor Mirana Medina-Bhunjun) exploited for maximum tension and (thanks to Aguiluz) memorably unglamorous eroticism.

Bagong Bayani (Unsung Heroine, 1995), about the trial and execution of Singaporean domestic worker Flor Contemplacion, is part dramatized footage, part documentary, almost all masterpiece--an innovatively structured film (Aguiluz claims the inspiration was Ian McNaugton's And Now For Something Completely Different (1971)) sprinkled with Lacaba's no-nonsense dialogue (Lacaba once said he strove to write the way people talk), dealing with an urgent Filipino issue (the plight of our overseas contract workers--source of much-needed foreign currency, backbone of our fragile economy, target of an endless number of employer abuses).

One remembers the film for the power of the dramatized scenes (Contemplacion's farewell to her family) the power of the documentary footage (the interviews of various overseas workers and Singaporean citizens), and for the image of Flor pressing hand against window, trying to feel the touch of her children's hands through the glass. A great film, easily the best of the collaborations between Lacaba and Aguiluz (arguably, Lacaba and anyone).

Congratulations, Pete; you deserve the honor many times over (not to mention the financial rewards--Hollywood rarely pays its writers well, much less the Philippine film industry). God willing we'll get to see more of your work, and of the same rare calibre, for years to come.

Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (tribute to Rodolfo Quizon (Dolphy) 1928 - 2012)

Rodolfo Quizon (Dolphy) July 25, 1928 - July 10, 2012


Biographical note on the man.

A brief article about one of his many films:

Lino Brocka's Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (My Father, My Mother, roughly, 1978) is the master filmmaker's one collaboration with the near-universally acknowledged King of Philippine Comedy, Dolphy (Rodolfo Vera Quizon). Screen legends working with famed filmmakers rarely if ever create sure bets; it's something of a surprise, then that the resulting picture from these two is so straightforwardly poignant, laced with just enough humor to wriggle past one's defenses.

Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (Lino Brocka, 1974)

Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa 

Lino Brocka's Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (Three, Two, One, 1974) shows the filmmaker's versatility in the short form, working with various writers.

The first segment, Tony Perez's Mga Hugis ng Pag-asa (Faces of Hope) has Jay Ilagan play Noni, a drug addict struggling in a drug rehabilitation center. And while the segment is generally considered to be the weakest of the three, it does feature cinematographer Romy Vitug's fine monochromatic camerawork, and the startling image of Ilagan being shaved of all his hair (a shockingly traumatic sight when I first saw it at the tender age of nine).

Brocka is at his melodramatic best with Mario O'Hara's Hellow, Soldier. Hilda Koronel is Gina, a young slum dweller waiting for her American G.I. father to pick her up and take her to America; Anita Linda is Gina's mother Lucia, who wants her daughter to leave, yet is unable to face the loneliness of life without her. O'Hara's deceptively simple story is an evocative metaphor for any number of themes: the lurid legacy left behind by the American Occupation (Lucia was unapologetically the American's mistress, and raised the child herself); the troubling questions that arise when someone tries to do something (should Gina live with her mother or father? And what happens to Lucia?); the bitterness, the rage, the--most shameful secret of all--affection felt by Filipinos for their onetime ally and master and ostensible lover.

Brocka has his actors play their roles at a higher emotional pitch than usual, which may put some off; some, however, will believe that this is unaccountably the right way to go--how can you not be affected, with issues this personal, this deeply felt?

Orlando Nadres' Bukas, Madilim, Bukas (Tomorrow, the Darkness) is Brocka's uncharacteristically gothic short masterpiece. Brocka, who has rarely done a period film and who almost always locates his stories in the urgency of the here and now (almost always in the Manila of today), with Vitug's help creates an airless, languid realm, not so much isolated as abandoned by the outside world.

Trapped is bedridden invalid Atang (the great Mary Walter) and her spinster daughter Rosenda (the equally great Lolita Rodriguez); their relationship together is a study in miniature of a love-hate, master-servant, mother-daughter antagonism of almost unbearable intensity. Enter the ugly-handsome Miguelito (Mario O'Hara, this time as actor), Rosenda's one chance to escape her lifelong imprisonment. The result is a kind of stylized melodrama you wish Brocka could have done more often (if the results can be as wonderful as this)--Brocka's penetrating analysis of human relations, transformed by a fevered imagination and a sense of doomed poetry.

(Published here as apparently the website of CineFilipino--for which I wrote this piece--has vanished, assumed defunct)