It is a film that is crafted with just enough meticulousness a reasonable budget can afford but does not pander to common but erroneous knowledge and wisdom. Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna provides that essential middle ground. As a result, movie-going masses are fed with didactic rubbish that are designed primarily to treat viewers like kids who prefer their stories visualized like soap operas than read from a textbook, oblivious of the fact that there exists another vein of historical cinema that dares to ask more questions than provide the same answers over and over again. The divide between the gutless but glossy epics and the braver but more intimate independent productions is so immense. Mario O’Hara’s portrayal of Andres Bonifacio in Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio (2010) is so laced with humanity that a lot of its viewers considered it close to sacrilegious. Mike de Leon’s Bayaning 3 rd World (2000) ingeniously dissected the famous myth of Rizal. The few films that managed to shape the historical figures as actual humans instead of icons and idols are films with too small a budget to be able to pull off the requirements of a period piece. (READ: 10 movies featuring PH national heroes) Even Enzo Williams’ Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo (2014) ended up putting its titular hero on a pedestal even if it had the audacity to dwell on some of the details of the hero’s death at the expense of another historical figure. Gregorio del Pilar (1997) to Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Rizal (1998) to Mark Meily’s El Presidente (2012), and all you’ll see are narratives that lead only to the goal of sanctifying the historical figures they center on. (READ: Heneral Luna: Para sa bayan o sarili?) Most of the films that have been made to tackle the nation’s history have portrayed the prominent men and women who fought for our freedom as saints, almost bereft of faults and mistakes. Local cinema has mostly been complicit to this bamboozlement. Distilled of dirt and sin, all that is left are perfumed memories that can only fuel a pride that may be as misplaced as it is dangerous. Those details of the nation’s past that may or may not have a more lasting impact on our state as a people are either left as footnotes or completely forgotten and neglected. However, this history that we are enjoying is one painted with half-truths and veiled lies. Filipinos have been led to believe that the country was birthed from the untainted bravery of our forefathers who dispelled vicious colonizers with both their words and weapons. The quote from Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (1995) rings truest in the Philippines, where history, or at least the one that was crafted to instill within the people an illusion of a pristine and glorious nation, is as fragrant as a little girl’s fairy tale.

“History was written by those who hanged the heroes.”

The heneral luna movie