Original poster design for GANITO KAMI NOON, PAANO KAYO NGAYON
Photo from Video 48
GANITO KAMI NOON, PAANO KAYO NGAYON
125 min, Philippines, 1976
Hemisphere Pictures
Directed and written by Eddie Romero; additional dialogue written by Roy Iglesias
Stars Christopher de Leon, Gloria Diaz, Eddie Garcia
(Digitally restored by ABS-CBN Archives and shown in 2013)
On the occasion of the celebration of the Philippines Independence Day, I choose to write on a very important historical film, Eddie Romero's GANITO KAMI NOON, PAANO KAYO NGAYON, with the re-posting of my review of the film, as a matter of fact, a revaluation of the film when it was re-screened at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on August 18, 1992, some 15 years after its initial release in the 1976 Metro Manila Film Festival.
Revaluation, as critical exercise, I should say is important, especially when the film, by hindsight has been deemed significant, noteworthy, for it affords a film evaluator an opportunity to re-visit ideas, assessments that may no longer be true, that may no longer be tenable because of circumstances of changes in events, whether personal or national or even global. Because, a review is usually written in a hurry, as being submitted on a deadline, such assessment can be said to be determined by factors occurring at the moment.
I wonder, should I be given the chance to see the film again, a little more than three decades after, can I still maintain the same position I had in 1992?
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Gloria Diaz, Christopher de Leon in a scene n the film
Romero's GANITO re-evaluated
by Mauro Feria Tumbocon, Jr.
Philippine Daily Globe
August 23, 1992
For students of film and media, a re-screening of "classic" Filipino films occasions their reassessment, whether as artistic enterprise or cultural product, to gain new insight into their meaning and contribution to the development of local cinema. Reevaluation as an important critical exercise, provides that the meaning of film or any cultural product for that matter, stems from its historical specificity.
Because Eddie Romero's GANITO KAMI NOON, PAANO KAYO NGAYON chooses to deal with a distant past in a more or less realistic manner, it inquires into the validity of the past, and not only its authenticity.
The fact that the film was chosen the local critics' best in a year that also produced other outstanding works - Lino Brocka's INSIANG, Ishmael Bernal's NUNAL SA TUBIG, Mike de Leon's ITIM, Mario O'Hara's TATLONG TAONG WALANG DIYOS and Lupita Aquino-Concio's MINSA'Y ISANG GAMUGAMO - provokes questions about its real artistic merits. For it can be argued that without situating the film in the past, endowing it with the personality of a period work - in effect, calling attention to the scholarly precision of the film design - the film falls short of achieving progressive signification relevant to its present-day audience.
What does GANITO tell a present-day Kulas who faces the reality of Americans finally leaving his country but not entirely shedding off his dependency on his perceived benefactor?
GANITO is arguably Romero's most impressive piece of directorial work. The fluidity of its writing, its humor and the orchestration of film elements notably Lutgardo Labad's score and editing are impeccable. The film has likewise provided us with one of the more original performances in a long time: Christopher de Leon's Kulas is memorable for its pathos and intelligence.
Despite this, what remains in the work is the film's problematics of history. Using the period characterized by the fall of Span and the beginning of American aggression, Romero pursues the historical event as an issue of class. The use of non-historical Kulas locates the author as a disinterested observer, if not an incidental participant. Notwithstanding the film's liberal insinuations, where on the contrary, Romero suggests the revolutionary as opportunist, it undulates into an uneasy tentativeness.
The last sequence tells it more succinctly. Kulas who has left Diding apparently to join the revolutionaries - on a metaphysical level, to find his destiny - finds a deserted village with a few children left. In a long shot of the scene, instead of walking ahead, that is, facing the camera in the direction of the revolutionaries, Kulas turns his back presumably to return to where he came from.
Romero as filmmaker, therefore, bears the burden of his work's ambivalence.
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