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The audience clapped when the credits rolled at the cinema where I watched Heneral Luna. For the first time on film, a hero is taken down from his sanitized moral pedestal and is humanized, so that now, those of us who are on the streets find it easier to learn what he has to teach. Indeed, the treatment is nearly iconoclastic, but therapeutic.
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It is fortunate that the filmmakers have chosen Luna as their messenger, a hero so flawed he’s almost like the rest of us. It is inevitable then that as Luna vituperates on screen against the causes of his frustration, we who have grown tired of struggling, feel a simultaneous inner rage boil within us against ourselves and against a cultural system that perpetuates internal strife.
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We, by our own divisiveness, indecision and selfishness remain the greatest saboteurs of our own progress. It shoves us roughly into the realization that more than a hundred years after Luna’s death, we have not changed. Heneral Luna mirrors in a very clear and sharp tone, the Filipino experience now. Why Heneral Luna and why now? The answer is simple, because it is relatable and opportune. There are countless other Filipino films that are exemplary in these elements. It is too simple to attribute the growing love for the film to its production and cast alone. I liked best of all however, Epy Quizon’s Mabini, who is just as I imagined him to be, as if the statesman himself decided to quit the ten peso coin to appear in a film. What of the parallel camp? Mon Confiado makes for a beautifully subdued Aguinaldo while Noni Buencamino’s Buencamino simmers with an inner ardor almost equal to Luna’s. Anson, Bascon, Alemania, Medina and Acuna emanate an endearing spunk that sit well alongside Arcilla’s fervor. Luna’s boys are the necessary foil to his fire. John Arcilla is luminous as Luna and manages to lift us through his mounting wave of just rage. The end result for Heneral Luna is a group of seasoned actors well adapted to their roles. In this respect, there is a refusal to compromise, shunning the effective tactic of foisting ill-fitting roles onto teen idols for salability. Perhaps the film’s greatest asset in its attempt to engage its audience is what may once have been its biggest risk, its cast. Heneral Luna, already at a disadvantage because of its traditionally unpopular genre, has chosen a tone, voice and approach more suited to communicate. Those harping about narrative flow, nuance, gravity and focus must understand that a perfect film is pointless if it does not reach an audience. From the sweeping vistas of verdant land, down to the smallest detail on uniform buttons, everything is laid out with almost reverent care.Īnd it isn’t an elitist snob. What it does show is a Filipino historical and cultural experience told boldly but conscientiously, that is, with more than the usual degree of attention paid to the essentials and the essential peripherals. Its popularity is even more surprising considering it doesn’t feature the excesses of Hollywood, the inanity of slapstick comedy, or the endless gush of maudlin mistress woes. What is it about Heneral Luna that has so captured the hearts of so many? People have suddenly and inexplicably fallen in love, so much so, that when cinemas dropped from 100 to 48 after the first week of screening, public clamor managed to push the cinema count up to 104. Like the brash and vitriolic general of the same name, it had refused to fade calmly into obscurity and continued to pop in and out of the trending list in succeeding days. Heneral Luna, an indie historical film which had opened quietly the week before, had begun trending in Twitter at 4 a.m. I woke up to a most singular occurrence, Tuesday last week.