A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka, 1975)

Bembol Roco in Manila in the Claws of Light
Cast: Bembol Roco, Hilda Koronel, Lou Salvador Jr., Joonee Gamboa, Pio De Castro III, Danilo Posadas, Joe Jardi, Spanky Manikan, Edipolo Erosido, Pancho Pelagio, Lily Gamboa Mendoza, Tommy Yap, Juling Bagabaldo. Screenplay: Clodualdo Del Mundo Jr., based on a novel by Edgardo Reyes. Cinematography: Mike De Leon, Clodualdo Del Mundo Jr. Film editing: Ike Jarlego Jr., Edgardo Jarlego. Music: Max Jocson.

The title, Manila in the Claws of Light (in which "Light" is sometimes translated as "Neon"), is enigmatic. But there's nothing enigmatic about this straightforwardly harrowing look at the working class in the Marcos-era Philippines. The protagonist, Julio (Bembol Roco), has left his village, where he was a fisherman, to search for his girlfriend, Ligaya (Hilda Koronel), who was lured away to Manila with other girls by a woman who called herself "Mrs. Cruz" and promised good factory jobs and schooling. When we first meet Julio, he's scrounging for work at construction sites, having been robbed of the money he brought with him to the city. The other workmen help Julio survive after he collapses from hunger on the first day, and their friendship and solidarity in the face of the bosses who routinely cheat them of their full pay help get him on his feet. In his spare time, he continues his search for Ligaya, having learned that she's been lured into prostitution and is now the mistress of Ah Tek, who runs an import-export business. Julio stakes out Ah Tek's business in Manila's Chinatown, hoping for a glimpse of Ligaya. Meanwhile, he endures unemployment with the help of his friends, and survives a bad period by working briefly in a male brothel. His eventual reunion with Ligaya is brief and tragic. The film provides a fascinating look at the underworld of a city that could stand for almost any other metropolis, and director Lino Brocka keeps it moving with a well-paced alternation between desperation and recovery until the shattering end. The cast is uniformly fine, and the realistic view of the city keeps the story from tilting into melodrama.