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Friday, March 29, 2024

Filmfest Best Picture needs audience

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BONIFACIO: Ang Unang Pangulo may be the big winner in last year’s annual Tagalog movie festival but it is, unfortunately, lagging behind in the box office tally, just ahead  Magnum .357.

This is significant as it reveals the Filipino audience’s movie preferences, and evidently they’d rather spend on movies that continuously belittle their intelligence rather than on those that stimulate their critical abilities.

Robin Padilla plays Bonifacio in the most sensible
film in last year’s filmfest

Bonifacio, despite its structural flaw, is the most sensible of all the movies shown in the festival, yet it is not drawing enough audience to encourage its producers to infuse more investments of movies of the same kind.

Robin Padilla, who portrays the hero of the masses, is as passionate about Andres Bonifacio as the film’s director, Enzo Williams. The two did everything they could to bring to the big screen aspects of Bonifacio’s life that had been largely ignored by so-called historians who authored books used in elementary, high school, and college, passing on information about Bonifacio and why and how he died.

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The film doesn’t contest the heroism of Dr. Jose Rizal who was martyred by the Spaniards in their desire the quell the rising anti-Spanish sentiments of Filipinos, but rather spark a protracted rebellion against them. It, however, puts Bonifacio and his role in the revolution against the Spaniards in a perspective that few historians dare to expose.

Padilla and Williams want to bring Bonifacio’s life to the younger generation whose awareness of the hero’s life may be too faint and vague, hence the film begins in the present time with Daniel Padilla as a high school student who hangs around the Katipunan Museum (fictional, of course) and sketches using objects found in the museum as subject. Eddie Garcia is the curator of the museum who later will narrate the life of Bonifacio from the time the Katipuna’s Magdalo faction of Emilio Aguinaldo in Cavite called for an election and proclaiming the Caviteño as the President of Katipunan until his death in the hands of the men loyal to Aguinaldo.

Daniel Padilla and Eddie Garcia play student and
narrator in the present day

The premise that Bonifacio was the first President of the Philippines is discussed in the film rather obtusely, only after the scene showing Bonifacio and the members of the Katipunan tearing up their cedulas as a sign of protest against the oppressive regime of the Spaniards. Williams picks it up in the museum to show RJ Padilla and Jasmine Curtis-Smith pointing to the torn cedula displayed in one glass-encased stand. Garcia picks the narration from there.

I have a problem with this structure as it, more than elucidates what Williams and Padilla want to underscore, distracts the audience from following the logic of the narrative. I would have wanted to watch a straight narrative of events that led to Bonifacio’s death, or a narrative that backtracks from the hero’s martyrdom from the hands of the Cavite faction of Katipunan. If the structure followed the latter’s idea, the presence of Garcia, the two younger Padillas, and Curtis-Smith in the film would have been easier to justify.

Vina Morales is Gregoria de Jesus

Also, I think Williams forgot to give more importance to Gregoria de Jesus, played in the movie by Vina Morales, who joined the Katipunan even before she and Andres got married and how she continued to be the beacon of the revolution as the head of the women’s chapter of Katipunan. Perhaps, Williams have plans to make a film of Oriang’s life sometime.

I wonder how the living descendants are reacting to this film that obliquely points to Aguinaldo as the instigator of the death of the Bonifacio brothers? Naturally, even in the history books written with imprimatur from the Department of Education, Aguinaldo had already been exonerated and even made one among the country’s national heroes.

Robin Padilla was surprisingly, from beginning to end, acting with much restraint, not wanting to give the audience the impression he wasn’t serious about Andres Bonifacio. Although, he, at times, was unaware that the Bad Boy mannerism that had endeared him to his audience, would slip off, his performance was more than creditable. While he has learned to control how to lessen the contortion of muscles in his face, he has yet to hone himself in the aspect of body movement to effectively complete his character transformation.

At least, Williams cast Spanish-speaking performers as military officers and friars (that reminded me of a TV production that lazily cast Filipino actores con falta de conocimento de la lengua Castellana and sounded so unnatural that I had to switch channels in embarrassment), this giving the film truthfulness that is so lacking in many Filipino movies and television shows.

Director Enzo Williams succeeds in
bringing Bonifacio’s story on screen

The visual style of Williams is admirable. Very few Filipino films are lighted correctly, and even if the films were shot day for night, you still know they were shot during the day. Williams shows us the difference between day and night. And in those times where electricity was still unknown a las villas y casas en las poblaciones, we see how Williams lit each of the scenes to give the audience a visual experience of what was it to live lit only by gaseras.

While the film focuses generally on Bonifacio, Williams also spent most of the film’s less-than-two-hour running time on Robin Padilla and his transformation from Philippine cinema’s bad boy to cinema’s new icon, playing real-life hero and not superhero. Williams success in shaping Padilla up to become Philippine cinema’s new actor playing historical characters could lead to the actor’s deeper appreciation of what he can do in shaping the youth’s character to be more patriotic and loving of their fellowmen.

Yes, Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo wants you to watch it. And while there is still two days before the cinemas reverts back to screening Hollywood films, catch one now at a multiplex near you.

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