WE all know the stories about Nora Aunor: her poverty, her rise to popularity, her voice, and her genius in theater and cinema.
We all have stories of Nora Aunor with regard to us: how she changed our view of Filipino cinema; how she made us realize that there is such a thing called “fandom” even when that concept had not yet been so named; her manner of performance that has remained the benchmark for the acting skill and style of any actor, regardless of gender, skin color and popularity, whose performance is being weighed at the moment.
We all cannot but recognize that, whether we like it, whether we are admirers or mere observers, you cannot talk about any new actress excelling in any role without the mention of Nora Aunor. In every paragraph of achievement about any actor, Nora Aunor is an apparition, an element, a memory that is underscored, bracketed or mentioned. She is an eternal citation in any essay about Philippine cinema, gilded or considered, after a hundred years, or in any intelligent papers of any intelligent Filipino film scholar.
We all survived Nora Aunor, either in our memories of her as our “idol,” or in any of our experiences about her as “Superstar,” or even in the most regular of appointments that we ever set up, for some life or death reason, in order to meet her up close and personal.
And yet, it is the legacy of Nora Aunor that, for those who have survived being personal with and to her, they are left with the facts and being of the actor who started as a personality and rose to become a persona representing everything that is extravagantly legendary and immensely breathtaking about this nation’s film industry.
It is strange, after many decades, to call Nora Aunor a Superstar. The label is almost a disservice. That over-the-top appellation, which prompted people to call others who followed her as “this star” and “that star,” has become irrelevant given what Nora Aunor has brought to this industry. She has survived writers and their own kind of writing. She has, for good or bad, created an industry of lackeys or alalays, now copied by every industry player. She has blurred the lines between the private and the public, urging the birth of celebrities forced to open himself or herself to the scrutiny and tactility of fans. She has come out alive of dire controversies.
Before her, celebrities were not impersonated. Nora has not only transcended the worst of her impersonators but she has never demanded gratitude from these obscure individuals who gained their own fleeting celebrities. Nora, in film after film, generated an orthography of gestures and inflections. Those who worship Nora made it a religion to watch her film over and over again so they could imprint in their heart the soul of those moments and blistering screen displays, those performances that gave rise to a new form of acting that made us forget there were thespians before her.
Nora Aunor was sui generis: she burst onto the scene original, singular. She did not come from any acting tradition, nor was she part of any artistic heritage existing then. The regular pundit would say that she was the right person at the right time. This was not true. She was the wrong person for the right time. What she did was to make that period her own.
And, as any pundit would say, the rest is history.
As I write this, I am listening to Nora sing. I do this whenever I write about her, not because I want to be reminded of her vocal greatness and power of interpretation. I listen to her sing because, even after so many decades, I still am in awe of her voice that is caught between the velvet and the violently sweet, the languid to lovely in the sense of love, its presence and absence.
So, I am back to that habit.
Nora, as I finish this essay, is singing an old Tagalog song, popularized by Larry Miranda. For those who know the lyrics of this song, the words are unabashedly sentimental. It begins with the line: “Sumumpa kang ako ang iibigin/At ang pag-suyo mo ay di magmamaliw/Sa init ng halik/Nagtiwala ako sayong pag-giliw/Pinaasa-asa mo sayong pag-ibig/Na ako ang mahal mo hanggang langit/Ang sumpa mo pala’y marupok na bula ang kawangis.”
By the time, Nora reaches the word halik, you realize she has a lower register that is so effortless you do not notice the note has crept into a shadow. Then she hits the word sumpa, and things become all so clear: this singer who did not have any training at all has a voice that can hide the so-called lift, or that part where a singer’s voice makes a transition in registers.
The song goes on. The melody is now a dirge to a dying heart. Nora’s voice soars because that is what the song and its arrangement ask for. She avoids any catch in her throat, that facile “break” that amateurs manipulate to convince the listener of the singer’s sorrow. For Nora, it is the song. She sings it and the feelings follow. This is very much like what she has always told the curious scholars of acting: “I listen to the person I am acting with talking and I just respond.”
We all have remembrances of Nora Aunor in front of the camera. Directors and writers have all written those actual scenes in shooting when Nora moved from the quotidian to the quixotic, from the ordinary situation of being a human being waiting for the camera to the extraordinary thespian shape-shifting in voice and in voyage of movements.
I have my own memory. It was in the shooting of Hinulid, the film where Nora Aunor first acted a role in the Bicol language. The maverick production went not one but several steps further. The director, Kristian Sendon Cordero, who also comes from the same city as Nora, which is Iriga, allowed her to use her Rinconada language, which is vastly different from the so-called mainstream Bicol language used in the major cities of Naga in Camarines Sur and Legazpi in Albay. The other actors spoke in their own Bicol languages, respectively.
From the very start, Cordero, the director, confided to me that he purposely removed from the film scenes that fans and admirers would call as “highlights” or “moments.” In the same vein, he never alerted Nora that the next scene would be crucial or more crucial than the previous or the following scenes.
The scene I would be privileged to watch was that in the morgue. Sita, the mother played by Nora, would be looking at the body of her dead son. She would be conversing with a priest who was a friend. The priest would be asking Sita whether she would file a case against the murderers of her son, and where she intended to bury her son.
When I arrived at the set, which was in an abandoned, old house in the middle of what used to be sugar cane plantation in the outskirts of Naga City, Nora welcomed me as she waited at the landing of a massive staircase. A few minutes after, she had changed into a blouse and a skirt.
It took a long time to set up the lights in what I believed was a living room when the occupants of the house were still there.
Nora was seated, smoking a cigarette and chatting with Jess Mendoza, who played her son. When the shoot was about to begin, I was positioned right beside the metal bed where the corpse was. It was a personal request of mine that I be able to watch Nora perform up close. Kristian, the director, made sure I was really just a feet away from Nora, at a space where the cameras could avoid me.
Finally, the camera began turning. Nora was looking at the corpse. The face was blank. The lips were closed tight. She told the priest, in the language of her youth, how she had no desire to file any case after what they had done to her son. She would bury him in Cagbunga, a barangay in the town of Gainza, where the Three Dead Christ could be found. Her Rinconada Bicol was impeccable, the syllables guttural and clipped. As she talked, she placed her hand on the forehead of the dead body before her. Those eyes were not grieving. Those deep, dark eyes of Nora were not in rage. No emotion was being checked. But the scene was grief, the scene demanded rage. The hands were steady, as was the gaze. At some point, she tilted her head, but the movement was muted, as if any sound would banish death and life. Those lovely, lovely eyes were not even in tears.
I was in tears. I was the one weeping quietly because Nora, by then, was near me and had slowly touched my face with her two tiny hands. Si Manoy man, (literally, “Oh, Brother, please,”) she whispered almost half-sc0lding, almost half in jest. I did not even hear the director calling “Cut.”
When the film was finally released, I recalled that scene and understood the film Hinulid as Nora Aunor, the actor, understood it. There was no need for rage, no compelling reason to cry. She was not seeking justice. She was there, a mother, memorizing the face of her son, the life of her son. Memory, after all, as the film would tell us, is more powerful than justice.
A week before the May 15 election, I found out Nora Aunor had endorsed Colmenares for senator. I immediately sent her a message to confirm if the news was true. Sa atin po si Neri was her answer.
It was a line that only Nora Aunor could deliver. It was a line that we could, we should remember for, after all, memory is greater than any injustice.
8 comments
Salute to the people’s actress for her endorsement of the people’s senator.
Sir Tito maraming salamat sa tribute. Nakita namin ang pagmamahal nyo kay Ate Guy nung pumunta kami sa Naga ng bigyan sya ng award dun. Grabe pati kaming Noranians pinakita nyo pagmamahal. Maraming salamat po!!!God bless you po!!!
THANK YOU SA ARTICLE NA ITO, MR TITO GENOVA VALIENTE
Thank you very much Mr. Valiente for a fitting tribute to the one and only, Superstar, Ms. Nora Aunor! Yes, she is a living legend who changed the course of Philippine cinema – for the better. I, for one, had no interest at all on anything about the Philippine entertainment industry until the emergence of the little brown girl from Iriga whose existence was totally dismissed by almost everyone in the industry! Little did they know what a big storm hit them until they can no longer keep up with her drawing power, the embers of which are still shining and show no signs of getting dark more than five decades later! I guarantee that Ms. Aunor’s legacy will live for generations long after she’s gone!
Mr. Tito Valiente, finally again, a special feature story on Ate Guy! It’s been sometime. This is a welcome addition to all those beautiful pieces you have written for Business Mirror and which I collect in hard copies. Thank you sooo much! 🙂
Empty praises. Why didn’t you include her downfall? The only actress with most number of flops in philppine history and dubbed as the pull out queen in Philippine cinema? The only actress in her stature that had a film that was pulled out during Christmas day in MMFF. Utangera, her addition to shabu, her sugal days sa heritage hotel. And her few small time best actress awards (which now almost every actor can have in a small international film festivals) that were superbly magnified by the obnoxious few and soon to be extinct noranians including this writer. The list goes on… wag nyo lokohin publko. kayo lang nag ma magnify name nya. IIlan lang kayo. Kayo lang tumawag sa kanya people national artist wherein she was rejected by both presidents to be one. Even the people when surveyed condemned here to become national artist. fact yan! tama na kalokohan. her fame was stuck in the 70’s nakakarimarim kalokohan nyo. blag.
EVERYBODY HAS HER OR HIS DOWNFALL, UPS AND DOWNS!!! AND YOU YOURSELF IS NOT EXEMPTED, MAYBE EVEN WORST…!!!!
She is bigger than the national artist award… these so called judges in the form of “presidential prerogative” how have history judged them. Pnoy the most useless stupid judgemental president that made marcos the so called dictator look like a hero and hands down most intelligent president— as for duterte only history after his presidency will he be labelled. We have hundreds of national artists but none can outshine Nora. You say i am an admirer, yes because i can pick a genuis a survivor and once in a lifetime seen talent if i see one.