Every movie we see in 2015. Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo is a handsome diorama.
New year, new record.
1. The Green Ray. We had seen this a few years ago, but as with many Eric Rohmer movies we weren’t sure we had. We couldn’t recall the plot, because nothing much really happens in Eric Rohmer movies. A young man walks around the neighborhood where his crush lives, hoping to run into her. A young man waits for his girlfriend to show up, meets another girl and hits it off. A man gets stranded at a woman friend’s house by a snowstorm and spends the whole night wondering if he should sleep with her. You get the drift. The situations are so banal yet the characters’ thought processes are so interesting that we cannot tune out.
In The Green Ray, a woman can’t decide how to spend her summer vacation. That’s about it, plot-wise, except for the bit about a Jules Verne novel. But it’s riveting, and by the end we’re screaming “What! You can’t stop there! What happens next?”
Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo photo from InterAksyon.
2. Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo
The history looks correct but let’s not forget that this is not a school report but a movie, and the root word of movie is move.
Robin Padilla goes through all the poses: Monumento, UP Vinzons Hall, and so on. We expect a line of action figures.
Whenever the movie threatens to achieve any momentum, it is interrupted by the framing device in which Daniel Padilla is a high school student working on a school project at the KKK Museum. On the other hand, we learned that there is a KKK Museum.
As the museum custodian, Eddie Garcia is moved to tears because Bonifacio is called a traitor. As far as we know, Bonifacio is still generally considered a hero, it’s only the Aguinaldo biopic El Presidente that portrays him as a traitor.
After the end credits, which we sat through because we were discussing Bonifacio, there is a stinger which teases the Antonio Luna biopic. It’s the 1896 Revolution Cinematic Universe! That would make Robin Padilla’s Bonifacio Groot. Because he dies but lives on, what did you think we meant?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
January 10th, 2015 at 21:48
That 1896 Revolution Cinematic Universe may be forthcoming indeed.
During the MMFF Awards Night, Robin during a speech bemoaned the fact that they spent 100mil on the film and had just earned 10mil at that time, actually called upon Daniel Padilla fans to watch the movie, and asked people to watch the film so they could earn because he was planning to do a Gregorio Del Pilar movie soon.
And true, I think no one except the Aguinaldo movie really insinuates Bonifacio was a traitor. It’s really Aguinaldo who gets that reputation.
This movie makes me wish the makers of 1997’s Rizal would do a proper Bonifacio film. As my friend put it, this seems to be another in a line of Padilla-family-showcasing movies, and let’s face it, Robin is ageing gracefully, but his acting is limited to a few expressions, trumped only by Kristin Stewart.