11/14/2022 0 Comments Heneral luna movie poster![]() ![]() The first item to note critically was the use, as an initial structural frame, of a young journalist interviewing Gen. In any case, after the speeches (since it was for a benefit), we settled back in our seats for the screening, me with my habitually cautious “Aber?” that was more for the sake of friends involved in the production. ![]() And now there was this third biopic, on the third intriguing figure of our revolutionary heyday. Heard too of how it was leagues better than the earlier Aguinaldo, which starred an actor-producer-politician whose film posters shared the same template, as of a gangster movie. I had only heard of an earlier venture, Bonifacio, starring Robin Padilla, which took some awards in last year’s Metro Manila Film Fest, but apparently failed to recoup much of the substantial investment. I got to thank producer Nando Ortigas and executive producer Eddie Rocha for my ticket.īeyond these people, I knew next to nothing of the production. Then there were old buddies Mon Faustmann, Dong Alegre and Ronnie Lazaro, who plays a small but significant part in the movie. Renato de Villa, who heads that foundation. Why, I even ran across a real general whom I’ve always admired, Gen. Not only did I breathe a sigh of relief, but actually found myself immensely grateful to have been invited to catch the advance screening exactly a week ago of Heneral Luna, for the benefit of the Hero Foundation. I want you in on the step-by-step initiation I underwent with this historical movie I will shortly rave about. You’ll have to forgive this pasakalye as I extend it further. But how come it didn’t seem so in Oro, Plata, Mata? Somehow, the tropical sun seemed to be the culprit. Suffice it to say that while even as a boy I thrilled to the “authentic” grit of Anak Dalita with its setting of a post-war Intramuros, in turn have I cringed over brightly colored scenes in the supposedly epic Baler of some years back, and even of Amigo which was helmed by a reputable American scenarist-director. I’ve had recent discussions with experts regarding the technical functions of cinematography that can be brought to bear for effective period filmmaking. ![]() ![]() The colors we associate with the present, and imaginably, that dim past, do not come into play. Maybe it’s because we immediately accept that we’re watching a shadow play of sorts. Somehow, black-and-white movies (both local and foreign) of the war years of the 1940s, even of the revolutionary period, escape this demand for the stamp of period reality. We have to be brought back to a believable past. We have an inkling of authenticity whether or not that’s based on historical reality doesn’t matter. Thus, we shake our heads when Lapulapu and his men engage Magellan and his musket-wielding cohorts in a choreography reminiscent of some coastal town’s annual dance fest, featuring bamboo spears that appear to have been purchased from garden shops. But we think we know the past, even if the period essayed onscreen is of several generations or millennia removed. It’s easier for this disbelief to be suspended for a futuristic movie, since anything out of the ordinary can be of the future, if not horror or fantasy. Because, let’s face it, we’re supposed to go on time travel and be brought back to the often dim and murky past. Suspension of disbelief becomes a sensitive point in such fictive cinematic exercises. Those who play Spanish colonizers, inclusive of fat friars, get away with a measure of authenticity only because they’re usually Pinoy tisoy actors who’ve had years of training to look and act the part. The Westerners who play American officers look like they were picked up from a Malate bar or a BID cell, act like hokeys and speak hokum dialogue. All the extras that play the revolutionary period’s cast of hundreds, for instance, are mostly fair-skinned urban folk and not at all like the dark, sullen-faced, wiry figures we’ve seen in vintage photographs. I’m ready to be disappointed with blazing tropical colors, spic-and-span costumes and transparently faux backdrops that all betray a filmmaking process evidently undertaken only yesterday. First off, I must confess to a degree of trepidation whenever I start to watch a local historical film. ![]()
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