CRY FREEDOM

(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 20 JUNE 2008)

I spent the last holiday watching Peque Gallaga’s obra maestra, Oro Plata Mata, over again. I have seen this ‘80s classic from the now defunct Experimental Cinema of the Philippines more than once before, but released only late last month in DVD format by ABS-CBN’s Star Home Video, it proved worthy of yet another run.

BLURB
…in the Philippine vernacular [the] term ‘peacetime means exclusively all the years before Dec. 8, 1941. There has been no ‘peacetime’ since then. —Nick Joaquin

Back in 1982, when it was shown at the Manila Film Center, I was too young to have had the privilege to see Oro Plata Mata unfold on the big screen. But talking incessantly about the film, if only because it was a great shock to them that there was so much explicit material in it, the grownups around me had made it a part of my childhood fantasies. I waited for years to be able to see it and when I finally did, I must say I wasn’t at all disappointed, the cuts notwithstanding.

It was a coincidence that I saw it another time on Independence Day holiday this year, but it did make me think that Independence Day doesn’t really mean anything anymore now that freedom is nothing more special than the fact that we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Besides, who among us still have memories of war and liberation? A great percentage of today’s population, myself included, does not even know exactly what the Marcos regime meant to day-to-day life or what the 1986 revolution meant to those who were liberated from that.

But Oro Plata Mata, hailed as one the 10 best films of the ’80s, is not so much about war and freedom as it is about life changing under and adapting to dire circumstances. In the film, the Japanese only had a cameo role, appearing for no more than a minute in one scene in the form of a bloodied soldier, who died just as quickly. Mostly, the invading forces only made their way to the scene through the conversations of the hacienderos over a game of mahjong or through the lens of a telescope in which they appeared only as a parade of headlights tearing through the darkness toward the protagonists. But then, in brief, although it was set in World War II, the Peque Gallaga classic is not even about the Filipino at war with foreign invaders, but Filipinos at war with each other, which makes it even more poignant and terrifying.

What I find most commendable about this war epic is its realism. Like life, not all the scenes are exciting—some drag interminably like an afternoon in the woods, which is where the “Plata” section of the three-movement film unravels, with the two haciendero families of Negros taking refuge there. As in life, too, there is laughter even through the terror. Although I feel the whole cast performed excellently, including Mary Walter, Abbo de la Cruz, and Melly Mallari who all played servants, my favorite was Lorli Villanueva’s character Viring, an aristocrat who has a knack for gossip and an obsession with her diamantes. The most powerful scene, to me, is when bandits cut Doña Viring’s fingers off because she refuses to give them her precious rings. Equally powerful is the scene where, in the wake of the attack of the bandits, who leave immeasurable physical, emotional, and psychological damage, the lead character, Miguel (Joel Torre), coaxes the quorum—Nena (Liza Lorena), Inday (Fides Cuyugan Asensio), Jo (Maya Valdez), and Viring—to resume their mahjong sessions to ease them out of shock.

Oro Plata Mata, as I saw it, is made up of these little nuances that only get punctuated now and then by the big scenes. The premise of the story—the hopes and dreams, the terror and grief—is articulated not by convoluted dialogue or action-packed scenes or the idealization of characters and situations—but by, say, the grunts of Hermes (Ronnie Lazaro), a guerilla who lost his tongue to the war; or the world of meanings expressed through the eyes of Trining (Cherie Gil), whose innocence through the atrocities gradually turns into cynicism; or the sullen expression of her sister Maggie (Sandy Andolong), who awaits the return of her lover, dead or alive, from the war.

Indeed, in Oro Plata Mata, as in life, freedom is most meaningful where it is absent. What you do when you are allowed to do anything you want does not have as much impact as when you do it against the rules, the customs, the conventions, the limitations.

If I may digress into real life to make my point, Yves Saint-Laurent, who left us a few weeks ago, invented his now classic “le smoking” when women were not allowed to wear pants in certain public places, such as in New York’s fine dining establishments. As a result, we will remember him forever.

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.