The other Golden Age of Philippine Cinema
Noel Vera
When we talk about the Golden Age of Philippine Cinema we often mean the '50s, with artists like Manuel Silos, Manuel Conde, Lamberto Avellana, and Gerardo de Leon, or (and more often) the '70s, with artists like Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Celso Ad. Castillo, Mario O'Hara, Mike de Leon.
The problem is that golden ages, like any other cultural and social movement, rarely follow calendar dates. The dawning of December 31, 1979 didn't mean the conditions and talents that created the great films of the '70s suddenly vanished--if anything, conditions persisted, and some of the artists from the previous decade did their best work in the next one.
Perhaps not in the case of Lino Brocka. Brocka in three incredible years, from 1974 to 1976, would direct the three greatest Filipino films in contemporary cinema: "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang" (You Were Weighed and Found Wanting, 1974), "Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag" (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975), and "Insiang" (1976). He would still be active in the '80s, but by about this time Brocka discovered politics, and (or so the theory goes) it ended his career as an artist. "Bayan Ko" (My Country, 1985), and "Orapronobis" (Fight for Us, 1989) are not much more than political agitprop; excellently made and highly effective agitprop, but compared to something like "Insiang," which criticizes Philippine society in a subtler, more complex, more dramatically intense level...
Ishmael Bernal, on the other hand, would sound off the start of the decade with his masterpiece, the epic "Manila By Night" (1980). The film has aged a little; visually it has nothing on Brocka's "Maynila Sa Kuko" (brilliantly shot by Mike de Leon), and the city onscreen looks actually cleaner and more livable than it is today. But the sheer nastiness of the characters, the corrosive nature of life in Bernal's underworld, the overall nihilism of the work--tempered by the artist's unnervingly cool distance towards his material--is still a wonder to behold.
Bernal was active for the remainder of the decade. His '80s output--in terms of range, variety, overall quality--rivaled (some would say bested) Brocka's: the hallucinogenic "Himala" (Miracle, 1981); the sparely realist "Relasyon" (Relationship, 1982); the painfully honest "Broken Marriage" (1983); the quiet, intense "Hinugot sa Langit" (Wrenched from Heaven, 1985--incidentally, one of the finest films ever about abortion).
One filmmaker who came into his own in the '80s is Mike de Leon. In the mid-'70s he was both producer and cinematographer of Brocka's "Maynila sa Kuko;" he also directed the memorably gothic "Itim" (Black, 1976). From 1980 to 1982, however, he made a trilogy of films that many consider his best work: "Kakabakaba Ka Ba?" (Worried? 1980), "Kisapmata" (Blink of an Eye, 1981) and "Batch '81" (1982). "Kakabakaba" is sophisticated satire (perhaps too sophisticated) with a distinctively designed look. "Kisapmata" is a simple horror story about a pregnant daughter and her overbearing father but one so powerfully made (I think it's the best film he's ever done) it became a metaphor for many things: the Marcos dictatorship; the oppressive dominance of men; and de Leon's own dark, twisted sensibilities. "Batch '81," about school fraternities, is more clearly an allegory on fascism; if it's a step down from "Kisapmata," that may be because it's difficult to improve on a great and perfect film.
De Leon would go on to make the overrated "Sister Stella L." (1984), his one nod to fashionable liberal politics, and the underrated "Hindi Nahahati ang Langit" (The Heavens Indivisible, 1985), his one fascinatingly subversive attempt at adapting "komiks" material (about a young man and his unaccountably intense attraction to his half-sister) to the big screen.
Mario O'Hara, like Bernal and Brocka before him, would make his "Manila" movie--three of them: "Condemned" (1984); "Bulaklak ng City Jail" (Flowers of the City Jail, 1985), and "Bagong Hari" (The New King, 1986). O'Hara's "Manila Trilogy" represents a range of genres (from noir to drama to action) and social milieu (from street hustlers to women convicts to an alternate-reality vision of Manila) that few Filipino filmmakers have even approached in terms of sweep and intensity.
Finally, the '80s were nothing if not the Golden Age of the Filipino "bold" film. These were erotic films that, for one reason or another, the Marcos dictatorship had allowed to be made--had, in fact, encouraged, through funding from the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, and through uncut screenings at Imelda Marcos' Manila Film Center. The rational? Who knows? Perhaps the Marcoses were too engrossed in other troubles (the Aquino assassination; the devaluation of the peso; the swelling opposition movement). Perhaps they wanted to show the world that they were more liberalized, more enlightened. Perhaps they encouraged sex flicks to distract the general public--a kind of desperate bid to give them what they want, "bread and circuses" style.
Whatever the underlying cause, the effect is a blooming of erotic flesh, photographed in a variety of storytelling styles, often by newcomers to the industry who are either doing their debut features, or have done them not too long ago. Of the better ones I might cite Abbo de la Cruz's "Misteryo sa Tuwa" (Joyful Mystery, 1984) a somewhat sadistic fable on the evils of money; Chito Rono's "Private Show" (1986), a noir on live-sex performers; and William Pascual's "Takaw Tukso" (Temptation, 1986), a Bergmanesque chamber piece written by Armando Lao. Three others I would consider not just the three best Filipino erotic films ever made but three among the '80s' best: Tikoy Aguiluz's "Boatman" (1984), also about live-sex performers, but with Aguiluz's unique documentary style; Peque Gallaga's "Scorpio Nights," a no-holes-barred film about a student screwing his downstairs neighbor's wife; and Laurice Guillen's "Init sa Magdamag" (Midnight Passion 1985, script by Racquel Villavicencio), about a woman drawn, willingly or unwillingly we aren't sure, into a sadomasochistic relationship.
Mention should be made of an extraordinary debut that was neither erotic nor mainstream; it wasn't even a full-length feature. "Ang Magpakailanman" (The Eternity, 1983) is a twenty-minute short written, directed, and photographed by Raymond Red, about a mysterious book of the same title and the young man searching for it. The film has more wit, originality, and visual imagination than a dozen lesser Filipino features; and though Red will eventually do what Brocka, Bernal, and de Leon failed to do--become the first Filipino to win the Palme d'Or in Cannes with his short "Anino" (Shadows, 2000)--this remains his real masterpiece.
A final note: two films stand out amongst an amazing array of greats and near-greats--Gallaga's "Scorpio Nights" and O'Hara's "Bagong Hari." Both expressed the nihilism and despair of the Filipino people in the waning Marcos era--"Scorpio Nights" with its breathtakingly death-defying sex, "Bagong Hari" with its relentlessly violent depictions of death. Both, literally, were the last words on the last years of the Marcos era; there's an almost terminal aura about them, as if anything more said--on sex, on violence, on everything in between--would only be redundant. With impeccable timing, the month after "Bagong Hari" closed on its opening day on January, 1986 (it was a commercial disaster), the EDSA Revolution overthrew the Marcos dictatorship--making "Bagong Hari" the last great film of the '80s, and (arguably) of the "'70s Golden Age of Philippine Cinema."
After February 1986--nothing; literally nothing. Marcos' successor, President Corazon Aquino, was no friend--not even a good influence--on the local film industry (there's joke going around that Aquino's two great contributions to Philippine cinema was Censors chief and moral hypocrite "Manoling" Morato and her appallingly untalented aspiring-actress daughter, Kris Aquino). The only significant Filipino production made from 1987 to 1989, in fact, was Lino Brocka's "Orapronobis"--which was made with French money and which accuses Aquino of being even worse than Marcos, the way a weak leader with little or no control over her administration is worse than a dictator. It wouldn't be until 1995--nine long years--that anything even resembling a recovery would appear in the distance.
(Comments? Email me at
[email protected])