mastermaslamama-blog

[mastermaslamama-blog]

the braveness of true hero heneral luna

The portrayal of Luna, his colleagues, and his opponents are not one-dimensional. Instead, we see their vulnerabilities and stained characters. Luna may have been brilliant as a military strategist and leader but his irascibility and obsessive demands for discipline would fatally backfire later. Felipe Buencamino (Nonie Buencamino) and Pedro Paterno (Leo Martinez) presented as wealthy citizens ready to negotiate with the Americans aren’t just capitalist sell-outs but were under the notion – like Aguinaldo – that the Americans were coming to help rout the Spaniards and give some degree of freedom, like what they did in Cuba. Besides, they asserted, the month’s old republic couldn’t afford a war against a new world super power.

Luna’s persistence in continuing the fight against the Americans didn’t come across as knee-jerk nationalism. In a dream sequence induced by his elegantly terno-draped mother, Doña Laureana Luna (Bing Pimentel), a love for country is poetically traced beginning with his painter brother Juan Luna and the camaraderie developed between him and Jose Rizal. The seamless sequence continues through several scenes ending with Rizal executions and his poetic farewell to his country.

There is the requisite romance for heroes but Luna’s love affair with vivacious Isabel (Mylene Dizon) is not maudlin in the least. She is strong willed and wealthy who initiates a passionate kiss with Luna, and slightly worries but doesn’t fret about his fighting knowing that it’s necessary. At one point, caught in a contretemps between Luna and his opponent, she severely admonishes both, comparing them to children. It came to no surprise that their love scene would be unconventional. No slow seduction here; rather, they tempestuously fling themselves onto the bed. The burly Arcilla and the self-possessed Dizon manage to pull off an erotically charged bed scene in the midst of a war. General Aguinaldo is the enigma in the movie and Mon Confiado mysteriously acts it as well. We were taught in school that Aguinaldo put up a good fight against the Americans until he was captured in 1901 and called on his fellow soldiers to surrender. The death of Andres Bonifacio and Antonio Luna, both in the hands of Aguinaldo’s soldiers are not satisfactorily explained. Instead, both are accused as arrogant, disloyal and going off on their own battles which amounted to treason. In an abnormal war atmosphere with little time to dispense fairness, Aguinaldo may have had to engage in quick retributive justice. We will never really know what happened as the film ends with deadpan Aguinaldo recounting his version of the event leading to Luna’s death.

Apolinario Mabini (Epy Quizon) is portrayed sensitively as the wise counsel to Aguinaldo and in more than a few heated arguments, is deferred to with his wise insights or with just a raised eyebrow.

The battle scenes were quite authentic with bombs blowing away and bullets whizzing by and soldiers being shots at indiscriminately. It felt you had no handle on when you would die or if you should live to tell the tale. The gore that comes about with heads being blown away and blood splattering all over leading up to the spontaneous ritual of the multiple stabbing and almost endless point blank shooting of Luna (he manages to live and flail wildly for many more minutes) seemed pretty horrific. The upshot can be a meditation on the cruelties of war and swearing never to repeat it. Or there’s a gore-thirsty audience out there that will certainly get their fix. There are more actors in this movie that performed with distinction like Art Acuña, as Col. Manuel Bernal, Lorenz Martinez as Gen. Thomas Mascardo, Paulo Avelino as Gen. Gregorio del Pilar, Archie Alemania as the ever loyal Captain Eduardo Rusca, Joem Bascon as Col. Paco Roman, who, as soldiers, performed the necessary swagger, exhibiting courage or doubts in the task of defending a fragile archipelago. What were to me, once archival images of the same stiffly posed soldiers, are now, given sinew, sweat, and pathos by their thespian talents.

The director Jerrold Tarog did a masterful job of bracketing several years of Heneral Luna’s military period and contextualizing it in the maelstrom of the Philippine American War. Tarog captures war’s horror and the insidious feudalistic practices among the principals that would later work against them. He is a genius in creating a dream sequence that poetically summarized the aspirations of a people. The scenes of debate and harangues within Aguinaldo’s cabinet weren’t just raucous and gratuitous behavior but the acting out of persuasive arguments that gives the contemporary historian pause to reflect on and find these same arguments still alive today. Did the concept of nationhood so very nascent then matured 100 plus years later? I fear not.

Where Tarog’s directorial talent shines is in the way he casts his characters to be embodiments of a young and searching nation. We are the jaded audience who have seen revolutions and upheavals since coopted by the real sleaze and traitors that would make the Buencaminos and the Paternos as mere petulant spoiled brats. Tarog’s characters, either nefarious or saints, exhibited that strain of innocent passion which we’ve long lost. After all, they just waved the new flag for the first time, sang a new anthem in their language, written a constitution of their own, established an army, and before this historical period begins, have just about vanquished the Spaniards and laid siege to Manila. And were now poised to take on the most powerful country in the world. Tarog brings out that innocent passion before the war spirals downward and the body count goes into the hundreds of thousands

[mastermaslamama-blog]

the braveness of true hero heneral luna

If you haven’t read my review of the movie Heneral Luna, here it is. Please go and learn history and support educational movies. Or else we only give trash to people. Movie producers, seeing only the bottom line will continue to spew garbage until they see there’s mass interest in these movies as well.

It’s a challenge to create a historical movie based on differing accounts with the added burden of portraying one of the country’s national heroes in a manner faithful to the persona.

What we knew in high school of Heneral Antonio Luna (played authoritatively by John Arcilla) is, like other heroes, sketchy. He is remembered as a formidable general, a cut above the other generals. What he accomplished has been murky and his life tragically cut down by soldiers loyal to General Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado) at the height of the Filipino American War. Luna’s earlier years in the war against Spain, or his role as propagandist is bypassed to concentrate on what has been a puzzle for historians: The defeat of Filipino forces by American troops.

Vintage photographs of Aguinaldo and his cabinet composed of wealthy gentlemen and radical ideologues and revolutionaries all have the same serious and officious poses, belying the antagonistic differences they actually had for one another. In contrast, a movie with charged scenes of shoutings and debates among these same gentlemen, each side with very arguable positions sets the first historical lesson for viewers. We lost the war because of disunity. That disunity stemmed from a native penchant of thinking about family, clan, or even province before a then nascent concept of nationhood. The movie also underscores how the conscripted Filipino troops, full of patriotic intentions, had little military training or fighting experience as opposed to confident American generals and their gung-ho troops with ample firepower who saw previous action fighting Indians and reconcentrating tribes in the American plains or earlier, in the grisly Civil War.

The portrayal of Luna, his colleagues, and his opponents are not one-dimensional. Instead, we see their vulnerabilities and stained characters. Luna may have been brilliant as a military strategist and leader but his irascibility and obsessive demands for discipline would fatally backfire later. Felipe Buencamino (Nonie Buencamino) and Pedro Paterno (Leo Martinez) presented as wealthy citizens ready to negotiate with the Americans aren’t just capitalist sell-outs but were under the notion – like Aguinaldo – that the Americans were coming to help rout the Spaniards and give some degree of freedom, like what they did in Cuba. Besides, they asserted, the month’s old republic couldn’t afford a war against a new world super power.

Luna’s persistence in continuing the fight against the Americans didn’t come across as knee-jerk nationalism. In a dream sequence induced by his elegantly terno-draped mother, Doña Laureana Luna (Bing Pimentel), a love for country is poetically traced beginning with his painter brother Juan Luna and the camaraderie developed between him and Jose Rizal. The seamless sequence continues through several scenes ending with Rizal executions and his poetic farewell to his country.

There is the requisite romance for heroes but Luna’s love affair with vivacious Isabel (Mylene Dizon) is not maudlin in the least. She is strong willed and wealthy who initiates a passionate kiss with Luna, and slightly worries but doesn’t fret about his fighting knowing that it’s necessary. At one point, caught in a contretemps between Luna and his opponent, she severely admonishes both, comparing them to children. It came to no surprise that their love scene would be unconventional. No slow seduction here; rather, they tempestuously fling themselves onto the bed. The burly Arcilla and the self-possessed Dizon manage to pull off an erotically charged bed scene in the midst of a war. General Aguinaldo is the enigma in the movie and Mon Confiado mysteriously acts it as well. We were taught in school that Aguinaldo put up a good fight against the Americans until he was captured in 1901 and called on his fellow soldiers to surrender. The death of Andres Bonifacio and Antonio Luna, both in the hands of Aguinaldo’s soldiers are not satisfactorily explained. Instead, both are accused as arrogant, disloyal and going off on their own battles which amounted to treason. In an abnormal war atmosphere with little time to dispense fairness, Aguinaldo may have had to engage in quick retributive justice. We will never really know what happened as the film ends with deadpan Aguinaldo recounting his version of the event leading to Luna’s death.

Apolinario Mabini (Epy Quizon) is portrayed sensitively as the wise counsel to Aguinaldo and in more than a few heated arguments, is deferred to with his wise insights or with just a raised eyebrow.

The battle scenes were quite authentic with bombs blowing away and bullets whizzing by and soldiers being shots at indiscriminately. It felt you had no handle on when you would die or if you should live to tell the tale. The gore that comes about with heads being blown away and blood splattering all over leading up to the spontaneous ritual of the multiple stabbing and almost endless point blank shooting of Luna (he manages to live and flail wildly for many more minutes) seemed pretty horrific. The upshot can be a meditation on the cruelties of war and swearing never to repeat it. Or there’s a gore-thirsty audience out there that will certainly get their fix. There are more actors in this movie that performed with distinction like Art Acuña, as Col. Manuel Bernal, Lorenz Martinez as Gen. Thomas Mascardo, Paulo Avelino as Gen. Gregorio del Pilar, Archie Alemania as the ever loyal Captain Eduardo Rusca, Joem Bascon as Col. Paco Roman, who, as soldiers, performed the necessary swagger, exhibiting courage or doubts in the task of defending a fragile archipelago. What were to me, once archival images of the same stiffly posed soldiers, are now, given sinew, sweat, and pathos by their thespian talents.

The director Jerrold Tarog did a masterful job of bracketing several years of Heneral Luna’s military period and contextualizing it in the maelstrom of the Philippine American War. Tarog captures war’s horror and the insidious feudalistic practices among the principals that would later work against them. He is a genius in creating a dream sequence that poetically summarized the aspirations of a people. The scenes of debate and harangues within Aguinaldo’s cabinet weren’t just raucous and gratuitous behavior but the acting out of persuasive arguments that gives the contemporary historian pause to reflect on and find these same arguments still alive today. Did the concept of nationhood so very nascent then matured 100 plus years later? I fear not.

Where Tarog’s directorial talent shines is in the way he casts his characters to be embodiments of a young and searching nation. We are the jaded audience who have seen revolutions and upheavals since coopted by the real sleaze and traitors that would make the Buencaminos and the Paternos as mere petulant spoiled brats. Tarog’s characters, either nefarious or saints, exhibited that strain of innocent passion which we’ve long lost. After all, they just waved the new flag for the first time, sang a new anthem in their language, written a constitution of their own, established an army, and before this historical period begins, have just about vanquished the Spaniards and laid siege to Manila. And were now poised to take on the most powerful country in the world. Tarog brings out that innocent passion before the war spirals downward and the body count goes into the hundreds of thousands

[mastermaslamama-blog]

the braveness of true hero heneral luna

If you haven't read my review of the movie Heneral Luna, here it is. Please go and learn history and support educational movies. Or else we only give trash to people. Movie producers, seeing only the bottom line will continue to spew garbage until they see there's mass interest in these movies as well.

It’s a challenge to create a historical movie based on differing accounts with the added burden of portraying one of the country’s national heroes in a manner faithful to the persona.

What we knew in high school of Heneral Antonio Luna (played authoritatively by John Arcilla) is, like other heroes, sketchy. He is remembered as a formidable general, a cut above the other generals. What he accomplished has been murky and his life tragically cut down by soldiers loyal to General Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado) at the height of the Filipino American War. Luna’s earlier years in the war against Spain, or his role as propagandist is bypassed to concentrate on what has been a puzzle for historians: The defeat of Filipino forces by American troops.

Vintage photographs of Aguinaldo and his cabinet composed of wealthy gentlemen and radical ideologues and revolutionaries all have the same serious and officious poses, belying the antagonistic differences they actually had for one another. In contrast, a movie with charged scenes of shoutings and debates among these same gentlemen, each side with very arguable positions sets the first historical lesson for viewers. We lost the war because of disunity. That disunity stemmed from a native penchant of thinking about family, clan, or even province before a then nascent concept of nationhood. The movie also underscores how the conscripted Filipino troops, full of patriotic intentions, had little military training or fighting experience as opposed to confident American generals and their gung-ho troops with ample firepower who saw previous action fighting Indians and reconcentrating tribes in the American plains or earlier, in the grisly Civil War.

The portrayal of Luna, his colleagues, and his opponents are not one-dimensional. Instead, we see their vulnerabilities and stained characters. Luna may have been brilliant as a military strategist and leader but his irascibility and obsessive demands for discipline would fatally backfire later. Felipe Buencamino (Nonie Buencamino) and Pedro Paterno (Leo Martinez) presented as wealthy citizens ready to negotiate with the Americans aren’t just capitalist sell-outs but were under the notion – like Aguinaldo – that the Americans were coming to help rout the Spaniards and give some degree of freedom, like what they did in Cuba. Besides, they asserted, the month’s old republic couldn’t afford a war against a new world super power.

Luna’s persistence in continuing the fight against the Americans didn’t come across as knee-jerk nationalism. In a dream sequence induced by his elegantly terno-draped mother, Doña Laureana Luna (Bing Pimentel), a love for country is poetically traced beginning with his painter brother Juan Luna and the camaraderie developed between him and Jose Rizal. The seamless sequence continues through several scenes ending with Rizal executions and his poetic farewell to his country.

There is the requisite romance for heroes but Luna’s love affair with vivacious Isabel (Mylene Dizon) is not maudlin in the least. She is strong willed and wealthy who initiates a passionate kiss with Luna, and slightly worries but doesn’t fret about his fighting knowing that it’s necessary. At one point, caught in a contretemps between Luna and his opponent, she severely admonishes both, comparing them to children. It came to no surprise that their love scene would be unconventional. No slow seduction here; rather, they tempestuously fling themselves onto the bed. The burly Arcilla and the self-possessed Dizon manage to pull off an erotically charged bed scene in the midst of a war. General Aguinaldo is the enigma in the movie and Mon Confiado mysteriously acts it as well. We were taught in school that Aguinaldo put up a good fight against the Americans until he was captured in 1901 and called on his fellow soldiers to surrender. The death of Andres Bonifacio and Antonio Luna, both in the hands of Aguinaldo’s soldiers are not satisfactorily explained. Instead, both are accused as arrogant, disloyal and going off on their own battles which amounted to treason. In an abnormal war atmosphere with little time to dispense fairness, Aguinaldo may have had to engage in quick retributive justice. We will never really know what happened as the film ends with deadpan Aguinaldo recounting his version of the event leading to Luna’s death.

Apolinario Mabini (Epy Quizon) is portrayed sensitively as the wise counsel to Aguinaldo and in more than a few heated arguments, is deferred to with his wise insights or with just a raised eyebrow.

The battle scenes were quite authentic with bombs blowing away and bullets whizzing by and soldiers being shots at indiscriminately. It felt you had no handle on when you would die or if you should live to tell the tale. The gore that comes about with heads being blown away and blood splattering all over leading up to the spontaneous ritual of the multiple stabbing and almost endless point blank shooting of Luna (he manages to live and flail wildly for many more minutes) seemed pretty horrific. The upshot can be a meditation on the cruelties of war and swearing never to repeat it. Or there’s a gore-thirsty audience out there that will certainly get their fix. There are more actors in this movie that performed with distinction like Art Acuña, as Col. Manuel Bernal, Lorenz Martinez as Gen. Thomas Mascardo, Paulo Avelino as Gen. Gregorio del Pilar, Archie Alemania as the ever loyal Captain Eduardo Rusca, Joem Bascon as Col. Paco Roman, who, as soldiers, performed the necessary swagger, exhibiting courage or doubts in the task of defending a fragile archipelago. What were to me, once archival images of the same stiffly posed soldiers, are now, given sinew, sweat, and pathos by their thespian talents.

The director Jerrold Tarog did a masterful job of bracketing several years of Heneral Luna’s military period and contextualizing it in the maelstrom of the Philippine American War. Tarog captures war’s horror and the insidious feudalistic practices among the principals that would later work against them. He is a genius in creating a dream sequence that poetically summarized the aspirations of a people. The scenes of debate and harangues within Aguinaldo’s cabinet weren’t just raucous and gratuitous behavior but the acting out of persuasive arguments that gives the contemporary historian pause to reflect on and find these same arguments still alive today. Did the concept of nationhood so very nascent then matured 100 plus years later? I fear not.

Where Tarog’s directorial talent shines is in the way he casts his characters to be embodiments of a young and searching nation. We are the jaded audience who have seen revolutions and upheavals since coopted by the real sleaze and traitors that would make the Buencaminos and the Paternos as mere petulant spoiled brats. Tarog’s characters, either nefarious or saints, exhibited that strain of innocent passion which we’ve long lost. After all, they just waved the new flag for the first time, sang a new anthem in their language, written a constitution of their own, established an army, and before this historical period begins, have just about vanquished the Spaniards and laid siege to Manila. And were now poised to take on the most powerful country in the world. Tarog brings out that innocent passion before the war spirals downward and the body count goes into the hundreds of thousands