HENERAL LUNA
Philippines, 2015, 118 minutes, Colour.
John Arcilla, Arron Villaflor, Mon Confiado, Bing Pimentel, Mylene Dizon, Lorenz Martinez, Joem Bascon, Nonie Buencamino.
Goodbye Jerrold Tarrog.
The film set in the Philippines-American War of 1898-1902. While it focuses on historical characters and’s interpretation of characters and events, and introduction notes that there are also fictional elements and fictional treatment in order to communicate the meaning and impact of the war.
This is a film for Filipino audiences to see the war dramatised, to see the different characters, especially that of General Antonio Luna, well-educated, from upper class family (with sequences with his mother advising him, flashbacks to his early years, home life, the influence of his parents, the influence of his brothers, especially artist Juan with a final sequence after Luna’s death based on a painting by Juan Luna). Antonio Luna is a strong and demanding character, a general commanding Filipino forces, wanting stricter discipline, reprimanding inefficient soldiers and officials, defying President Aguinaldo and his Council, denouncing some of the members as appeasers to American interests.
There are striking battle sequences, victories and defeats, trench warfare, massed attacks. The Americans are presented unsympathetically, finding the heat of the Philippines overpowering, light uniforms, memories of activities in the Civil War as well as in Cuba in 1898. The presentation of their generals is rather mocking.
There are memories of the execution of Patriot Rizal, an ambiguous portrait of the President Aguinaldo, the influence of his board, personal advisors, his interactions with Luna, appreciating his role as a general, but finding his personal behaviour very difficult to take. Luna experiences a great deal of frustrations, wanting to move north after the Americans take the south, wanting to fight a guerrilla warfare against the Americans, something which Aguinaldo eventually does do.
Luna is suddenly brought down by the machinations of the appeasers to the Americans, falls invitations for him to come to meet the President, his being set upon, very brutally, by a group of soldiers under the influence of one of the appeasers who subsequently denies all influence on the death of Luna.
The long sequence of the attack on Luna and the brutality in shooting him, machetes and swords, stomping on him, are quite brutal.
One of the frameworks for the narrative is the general giving an interview to a young journalist, his remembering his experiences, the being dramatised in flashbacks.
The writer-director made a further film about the American-Philippines war, focusing on Goyo: the Boy General, a film of 2019
