What I disagree with in Jerrold Tarog’s portrayal of Philippine hero Gen. Antonio Luna in his 2015 film Heneral Luna, portrayed to great effect by John Arcilla, is a line that appears at the beginning: “This is fiction based on facts.”
For a while there, I braced myself—Is the film going to put Luna in some make-believe world? Is he, like Abraham Lincoln in Timur Bekmambetov’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, going to be slaying vampires? Is he, like Oscar Wilde in Gyles Brandreth’s The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries, going to be a sleuth? Is he, like Adolf Hitler in Timur Vermes’s Look Who's Back, going to wake up in 2015 from a deep, long slumber in 1899?
But in a blink, the next few lines explained it only took some creative license in rearranging the order of events, such as the battles in the many towns across Luzon, from Pampanga to Cavite to Intramuros. I have no doubt that much of the banter as well as the conversations was imagined to supply the missing details from direct quotes and written accounts and word of mouth culled from intensive research, but that's par for course. I understand that some characters, no matter how crucial their roles were, such as Isabela, Luna’s secret lover, played in equal parts mystery and revelation by Mylene Dizon, could not have been fleshed out enough for lack of material evidence. I heard that Dizon’s character, the object of gossip while the film was all the rage that in whispers took the shape of a political intrigue, was an amalgam of the women Luna loved, among them Nelly Bousted, over whom Luna was said to have engaged Jose Rizal to a duel (but whose heart Rizal won); Conchita Castillo, to whom Luna wrote three days before he was killed; and Nicolasa Dayrit, a nurse. There was also talk, which spread on social media based on claims discussed openly before Heneral Luna even came to the picture, that Isabela might have been Ysidra Cojuangco, but all Tarog said, as he posted on Facebook, was “Yes, the character’s name is a wink at the Ysidra fanatics.” I leave you to investigate further on your own, if you are intrigued enough.
The point is what I saw when I watched Heneral Luna (two times) was not fiction, not historical fiction either, but a historical film that, needless to say, was all facts, not counting the editing, scoring, styling, lighting, costume design, screenplay, cinematography, and special effects that made this throwback into our history infinitely more entertaining, more exciting, more relevant, and more thought-provoking than the average history textbook that, so concerned with facts and facts only, is sure to make your eyes glaze over, unless you are a fact geek, a researcher, a historian, or a history teacher.
But Jerrold Tarog is a filmmaker and his medium is designed as much by infinite possibilities as by unyielding constraints. As a moviemaker, his job is to take people places and make sure the trip is worth it, especially if, as in Heneral Luna, the trip is all of just a little over two hours. No, he did not make of a true story a snooze fest but one that has people talking, whispering, arguing, even taking out their old, dusty history books to tell the facts from the fiction. Isn’t that what art is all about, to provoke thoughts, to get people thinking, to get people asking questions and finding answers on their own?
I also think we downplay the importance of fantasy to our detriment. I believe in the importance of fantasy in creating a life. It’s not enough that we eat, drink, and sleep, that’s for cows. We have to dream and that’s what the arts are for—music, paintings, poetry, literature, fashion, theater, and film, even biopics like Heneral Luna, whose nature is to make art of what otherwise would have been only everyday life, necessitating creative liberties to connect the dots and, more important, to make it larger than life enough to inspire very strong feelings about the story. Heneral Luna, in this case, draws from the facts of an underrated hero's life the message that now, as then, the greatest obstacle to our nationhood is ourselves. Didn't we all get the message?
Antonio Luna definitely made the most of his 33 years and four months of his life as a Filipino. —Dr. Vivencio R. Jose
What I am sure of is that, thanks to Heneral Luna, I know more about what happened to us back then, when the Americans took over the Spaniards in exploiting our nation—“Welcome to Manila, men. She’s ours!" Did the Americans put it that way? Maybe, maybe not, let’s give the art of diplomacy the benefit of the doubt, but that was the general idea. And thanks to Heneral Luna, I know about Col. Francisco “Paco” Roman, played by Joem Basco, whom I consider even more heroic because his sacrifice was a thankless job, even if as a rich man's son—his father was Spanish, his mother Filipino; he was educated at Ateneo and a school in Hong Kong; and he helped fund the revolution before joining it—he could have had the choice not to embroil himself in the fight for Philippine freedom. Unlike Antonio Luna’s or even Apolinario Mabini’s, who died of cholera, Roman’s heroic life and death did not yield hero worship, at least not from me, until Tarog’s film put him and the other loyal soldier, Capt. Eduardo Rusca, whose character played by Archie Alemania provided much comic relief, in the sidelights. I know now, however, that to this day there is a place in Sta. Ana called Paco Roman Street (check it on Google Maps).
Heneral Luna may be more art than history, but it is in the interest of the historian, even the purist, to promote it and to use it and others like it, such as the second to Tarog’s intended trilogy, this time on Gregorio del Pilar, played in a bit sort-of-preview role in Heneral Luna by Paulo Avelino, to get more people clamoring to know exactly what happened in our past.
Heneral Luna is still streaming on Netflix.