ON Friday, October 19, the fans of Nora Aunor sponsored a block screening of Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara’s incendiary Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo.
That night, the audience was composed of those who may have seen when the film was first shown in 1976 in moviehouses that were palaces. The country going through the fourth year of martial law. There were no cell phones and there was no Internet. There were certainly no millennials. If there were young people, they were those youth. There were, however, American bases. And there was Nora Aunor.
Nora Aunor was an actress that could deliver gold at the box office. Every film she starred in those years was a massive hit. For years, Nora dominated the Philippine film industry. She was, in her early years, doing movies; no one called her works as cinema. It was always a movie—with all the implications of “commercial, light and frothy, kitsch and easy.” The fans were serious about her; the critics did not take her seriously.
Then this film came—Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo, a dense, didactic (at many junctures) film. The piece directed by Lupita Aquino (Concio then) Kashiwahara from the pen of Marina Feleo-Gonzales—a woman filmmaker and a woman writer—wore its politics on its sleeve. It was not a timid film; it was a daring film bordering on the aggressive. It was meant to rally against continuing colonization and the American presence in the country. It was not meant to make us laugh; it was not even meant to make us cry. The protagonists in the film demanded action. If we did cry, it would be, as the character played by Perla Bautista, out of anger, not out of pity.
The density of Minsa’y… allows it to be viewed and enjoyed at many levels. One can view it in the context of that period intact. It was quite a period. Goods were either imported or local, stateside or inferior. Globalization was still nightmares away. America was a power. America was good. When events happened implicating the “Yankees” as bad, one was bound to face criticisms. America can’t be bad. Communists were bad.
Minsa’y… is set in Tarlac. The nation’s last stand during World War II is official in that place; the remembrance of the Death March is not a metaphor but a sharp memory.
The Vietnam War is raging. America is implicated once more. Clark and the other bases in the Philippines and the region are refueling stations, haven for these warriors always fighting to defend democracy and “us.” Around the bases live Filipinos whose movement and life have been delimited by the geography of the bases. For those who venture into the area, where firing practices are done and where bombs are dropped, like the curious children, they are shot—mistaken for wild pigs or some such wild animal. And yet, a thriving business of scrap metals go on, so long as one does it without the knowledge of the Americans who own the place.
How does a place breathe without the sky and the wind given by America? America was not just the wind beneath the weak wings of the Philippines; it was the great wind itself. How does a nation, therefore, live without America?
Those are the truths set in place by the filmmakers in the narrative of a film that dared to be one of the first films to be against the American bases. And the protest happened in a period when America was supposedly protecting the very foundation of our land’s peace and prosperity. In the regular vocabulary of social order and harmony, the film was an affront to those with whom we owe so much; in the language of enlightened politics and necessary radicalism, the film was an indictment of those who owe us more than what they claim they have us given.
Minsa’y… never obscures its ideologies. There are many characters in the film that are built to forgive any misdemeanors of the Americans. There is the mother whose son wants to join the US Navy. She is humiliated, made to undress by an officious Filipina guard who thinks she is stealing commodities from the stores in the bases. Supported by her family, she files a suit. The action shows how the Philippine court doesn’t have jurisdiction over the bases or its people. She goes for an amicable settlement and gets back her privilege to get those imported items to be sold in her store. There are the people around the bases who would not file a case against the soldiers who accidentally kill their children and grandchildren. Then there is the guard of course, hateful, and yet we know she is what has become of all us—full of power because America is in our heart.
There is the son who wants to join the US Navy, an option for the young Filipinos in those periods. He sees her mother a victim of the cruel system of the base and opts in the end not to be part of the American might.
There is the mother of the nurse whose daughter is set to leave for the US in an exchange program. The travel is meant to be her path to citizenship and comfort. The mother dreams of a bright future.
But there is also the grandfather—almost irrelevant and anachronistic as he mouths the words of heroes and patriots. I often wonder how many of us are ever amused by the position taken by this old man. He must be—to many of us—impractical, unnecessary and unreasonable.
From the start, Minsa’y… is a cinema of protest.
A kite with the tricolor of our flag is flown and, against the sky, it dazzles until it’s taken over by fighter jets on their way to Vietnam. The funeral of the three young boys killed in the Crow Valley, a site where bullets and bombs are dropped, is witnessed by the grandfather. In his mind, the Death March in Tarlac and this funeral are two sides of the terrible coin: one side was us fighting with the Americans; the other side, the Americans fighting to keep their bases and killing our children.
Take it or leave it. Love it or leave it. That is the cinema of protest. It will look into your face till you flinch and look away. And yet we don’t look away.
We can’t look away, though, from what’s happening onscreen. Stellar performances of some of the best actors in our land grace the otherwise relentless debates being presented. Eddie Villamayor, real-life brother of Nora Aunor, is all innocence in the role of Carlito. Perla Bautista as the worker in the base is despair and anger all at once as she talks of the embarrassment she gets from the guard—Luz Fernandez in her most despicable because it is real characterization. Bautista harks back to those onsite film trainings that made them good criers. Think of Rosa Mia, Charito Solis and, now, Perla Bautista—these actors sure knew how to cry for the camera.
Gloria Sevilla is one actress that had always the most secure and natural of chemistry with Nora Aunor. Beginning with their outing in Nasaan Ka, Inay? up to The Flor Contemplacion Story, Sevilla is one performer that can stay within the frame of Nora without losing that presence. There is always that look, that benevolent gaze upon the other actor that Sevilla projects, which make her unforgettable even as she shares that screen with someone like Nora Aunor who, without blame, can sear the space and bring a scene home without trying.
In Cinema Centenario, young members of the audiences were perhaps wondering who was that beefy young man holding his own against the most compelling performances on screen. He is Jay Ilagan and he is sorely missed in the industry. In Minsa’y…, his role could have been just a decorative post, a support, a link to other scenes. But Ilagan, in that most ordinary but most sensual and real face, shows us there is such a thing as acting for the camera and that is “not acting.” As Bonifacio, he starts out as a man with the dream to go stateside, as well, but in the end sees the irony of fighting for an army of another nation. In that last scene where he decides to stay, Jay Ilagan constructs (with the filmmakers of course) one of the most sensible love scenes in Philippine cinema. His Bonifacio is seated across Corazon. He asks when she is leaving; she answers she is waiting for word from her travel agent. He stands and crosses to where she is, sits down close and asks her to stay. We know the plea is helpless. But he has to say those words as a man. The gesture, the words, the soft, almost inaudible voice are all it takes to conjure art that hides art. We don’t have this kind of male actors anymore.
Paquito Salcedo is a gracious and heroic presence as Ingkong. This bit player and constant character in many forgettable films would so impress the critics that he would be nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the very first Gawad Urian in 1977.
It can’t be not written though without noting that, after its restoration, cineastes and fans await one of the most significant portrayals in a film of an actor, regardless of age and gender, which is that of Nora Aunor as Corazon.
A very young critic and one of the original members of the then newly established Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, Nicanor Tiongson writes in Daily Express: “Once again, Nora Aunor proves herself to be one of the finest actresses today, with an acting style that is both ‘raw’ and ‘fine,’ characterized by a disarming sincerity and force that can break into an unbelievable number of nuances, shades and colors of emotion.”
By the time the Manunuri released its list of nominees, Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo would be nominated along with another Nora Aunor-starrer, Mario O’Hara’s Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos. In that year, Nora Aunor as Corazon and Nora Aunor as Rosario battled it out, with the critics giving their nod to the latter.
For the record, Minsa’y… would receive more nominations than Tatlong….
More than 40 years after, the two films are still contending for top positions among the laureled cinemas of the nation. In the selection of the 10 cinemas to represent the centenary of Philippine cinema, Minsa’y… came up again as one of the candidates. Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos would eventually travel to Busan. There was, however, no doubt that night in Cinema Centenario, that there was only one cinema in the hearts of the audience, and that was the film about a moth and the many myths of independence in our land.
There was no doubt also that night in Cinema Centenario the palpable tension as scene after dramatic scene, the film unfolded. Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara was very brisk in her directing, slowing down only for the powerful moments. All throughout, actors moved around and changed places, with the camera arranging perspectives.
While Brocka found drama in sublime stasis, Aquino-Kashiwahara reveled in activities and energies. This design worked well as when the corpse of Corazon’s brother was brought in by a car pulled by a carabao. The festive air in the house, which was in the middle of a despedida for the emigrating nurse, stopped dead. A boy rushed to make the dreaded announcement. The mother ran but was stopped by an older woman (Lily Miraflor, unforgettable as always). The camera flew up to where Corazon was, who turned quickly to the window to see her brother in such a bad state. The camera moved away and caught Corazon running in slow-motion this time. She reached the ground and, seeing the mortality in front of her, jumped into the cart. The camera twirled and looked above and through the bamboo slats of the cart. The nurse pumped the heart of her brother. It was for nothing. She hugged the boy, now lifeless, and repeated the line, “I told you not to go there.”
Here is the gem in the scene: at each utterance of the line, the intensity grows, tremors appear where there is only denial, regrets where there has been rage. The variations in the delivery could only come from a thespian, critics agreed. Nora Aunor was in her early 20s then.
Then came that scene. The camera is looking down again, through the entrance to the house. The frenzied food preparation for the send-off for Corazon was now for the wake of Carlito. Two American officers in uniform arrived. They go up to the second floor where the coffin was. In front of it were two women, one had her head covered in black. She did not look up nor remove the veil. Behind the coffin, in what was decidedly a very theatrical positioning, was Corazon, alone, in mourning shroud. One of the officers approached her and offered the apology, handing an envelope. He repeated the line about how a soldier mistook the boy for a pig.
Cinema Centenario was hushed at this point, almost condemned to silence. Through the shadow, with the darkest veil shutting off those strong eyes, Nora Aunor as Corazon looked straight into the eyes of the officers—the lens of the camera really—and delivered the lines that had been made camp and offensively ridiculous by funny and dumb impersonators: “My brother is not a pig!”
Neither the veil nor the coffin could shield the officers and us from the rage that came from that small body, traveled through that mouth on a face which grew distorted and distraught, convulsing and compelling. She said the lines in English and translated it into Tagalog/Pilipino. Those lines and the rage and passion were for the Filipinos and, if there were those who didn’t speak the language but cared to listen, then the fury and the ferocity were for them, as well.
The audience in Cinema Centenario that night trembled with the resentment and the violence onscreen. The cinematography of Jose Batac Jr., we are reminded, was as relentless and urgent as this sad tale of a nation. The editing by Edgardo Vinarao was no-nonsense. Resty Umali surprised us with snippets of anthems from the colonizer. There are more, more things to remember and write about this film.
But what is memory without regrets? I may sound fuzzy but in the restored version, the part at the end, where Corazon, stepping from the lawyer’s office, sees the man in a motorcycle accident. In the “original,” Corazon rushes to the scene because she is a nurse. When the face of the man is revealed, the camera looks at the face of Nora Aunor as Corazon. A tiny smirk appears around those thin lips, and the film ends.
- Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo was restored by ABS-CBN in 2018. It was originally released by Premiere Productions in 1976.