AT the peak of her popularity years ago, Nora Aunor’s birthday party was a national celebration. With fans from the north and south and east and west of this archipelago, Nora celebrated May 21 not for herself but for the world around her.
Last May 21, amid the pandemic, Nora was not onscreen but online. She was pioneering a form that had yet been untested by any actor of her status or stature in the country. She would be performing before audiences not primed by any press releases or controversy. No heavy sponsor announced this outing; no trailer could suggest what it would all be about. The spirit was take it or leave, love me or leave.
On her birthday, Nora would be in a monovlog.
It sounded like monologue, which it was and was not. There was an unrecognized syllable at the end—vlog. Alternatively, it is a mash-up “video log” or “video blog.” Techies know it; young people are very familiar with it. I have a feeling Nora got to know about a vlog when she started doing it. Which is not unusual.
Nora has tried all forms in all times. She has occupied spaces or created spaces for her craft when the industry would not have a space for her.
It is already a cliché perhaps to say that Nora has changed not only the complexion prevalent among the actors of the generation she would replace but also the tone of acting for the generations whose path she will assure and create. Let it be said that whatever preceded Nora and whatever followed her would be calibrated by the artistry she had scaled and the records she had broken.
Be that as it may, why venture into a monovlog? Because it is another space.
To say that she was daring to do a monovlog at a time when there was no ready viewer for this is an understatement. Wasn’t it Nora who, after being awarded the top acting prize in Thy Womb, recognized the dwindling viewers for good cinema and uttered the brave words of how she would continue to make good films even if there was only one person viewing her work? Of course, it was a metaphor, even a hyperbole. The fans and critics who admire her, however, know that Nora thrives on metaphors because she herself is a metaphor for a film industry that is neither here nor there, an industry that demands perfection but can be volatile when swayed toward the trendy and terrifyingly inferior initiatives.
Nora was—and is—always different. She never ingratiated herself upon the industry. When it was not acceptable for leading actresses to die at the end of a film, she opted exactly to go to that tragic end. In the war masterpiece of Mario O’Hara, Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos, she slept with the enemy and perished with that enemy. She starred in that film where the redemption of her character was not in the content of her defeat and the absence of remorse of her ways, but in the grand and tortured portrayal of human frailty, abetted perhaps but never excused away by the senselessness of war.
When Americans still had a perfumed presence in our country and the dictator imposed on the people’s consciousness the abject need for the imperial strength of military bases, Nora’s Corazon de la Cruz (the Heart of the Cross?) in Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo was personal in her change of allegiance to the United States of America. It was the death of her brother and not any anti-American sentiment.
At the close of the film, when Corazon approaches the scene of an accident and discovers the victim to be a young American, she does not go down on her knees to assist the man. Instead, there is that slight turn of her thin lips—a smile? Or revenge or a delectation? It does not matter really. That very moment, we all were ready to give up our American dreams and the desire for green cards but when the screen blacked out, we knew we would give up everything just to be an American. As for Corazon, we would pity her for that bad decision. The ellipses and complexity of Nora’s expression in that movie is for a film book.
Those films and other films were all managed by fine filmmakers and, with crew and assistants ready to create another world. On May 21, however, there was no luxury of sets or location or assistants. And yet, at 6 pm, there was Nora online, on the screen of our laptops or mobile phones. Gone was the celluloid or silver screen. A different sheen had taken the vast expanse of the telon: it was the treasured burnish of a thespian out to grapple with the new technology and the new viewer.
The limited screen size of the mobile phone or tablet referred only to a physical manifestation. Something big was happening and this was the dimension of the actor’s performance.
The monovlog is called Lola Doc, a reference to a grandmother who is a doctor, a frontliner. Her husband has passed on and she decides to stay in the hospital to help. You could say, she is self-quarantining because she is anxious about unknowingly passing on the virus to her grandchildren, who are at different spaces. The three—one boy, a young girl of about eight, and a slightly older girl—are reacting to their grandmother, who is in the hospital.
In that space, we have an actor locked down within a small frame. No special lighting is trained on the face of the lola. No makeup flatters face of Nora Aunor.
The technology in its urgency has attempted nothing with that face. No attempt is necessary. Nora is Nora. She seems to face us but the finer editing by Chuck Gutierrez of Voyage Studios has conjured a conversation with three grandchildren.
The grandmother explains why they still cannot see each other, why she has opted to remain in the hospital. We see the reactions of the three child actors. As their faces appear within the small space, their emotions are heightened over and over. Nora’s Lola Doc, all throughout, remains in control, as all doctors are expected to be. A slight touch underneath the eyes is the only giveaway that tears have perhaps fallen. Then it is over. Then we are jolted, shocked, amazed.
In that short time and space, we know where the grandmother is. What will happen or not happen to her, we ask. We seem to recognize her. We feel her. Nora in her age-old skills has created a person—but more than that, she has provided us with the autobiography of the pains and anxieties, the hope and faith of that character.
The Lola Doc monovlog is part of Tanghalang Pilipino’s “PangsamanTanghalan,” their own subversion of alternative space.
When Nora’s monovlog ended last May 21, the Noranians and other admirers knew where to go: to the YouTube Channel of Andy Bais, an ardent fan. Andy happens to be a professional stage and film actor.
Out there in Dumaguete, Andy was staging his own birthday tribute to Nora Aunor. For weeks now, he has been rehearsing the songs popularized by Nora. It is a labor of love. It is also an achievement of online technology. Minutes before 8 in the evening, the site was already open. A chair was placed against the window with Nora Aunor memorabilia. Songs of Nora from the 1970s wafted from the living room. At 8 pm, Andy was singing the songs that have endeared Nora to the fans and to history. Greetings from fans—from west and east and from north and south of this Earth—came up as the music played.
After many decades, the fans of Nora Aunor remember her. After many years, the fans have remained relevant.
After many decades, Nora Aunor has become the star for all time, overriding seasons and technologies, outgrowing even that admiring honorific, that most daunting word: SUPERSTAR.