'Quezon' as theater

I'm coming late to the party, having been away for a couple of weeks, but even in faraway Frankfurt, I was itching to come home to see what the brouhaha over the “Quezon” movie was all about.

- JOSE DALISAY

Rarely does a Pinoy movie stir a hornet's nest like this one did, and even without seeing it, I took that as a good sign for our film industry, especially big-ticket projects which sometimes leave people wondering why they were even made.

What especially piqued my interest, of course, was the reaction of Quezon family members and friends who thought the old man's cartoonish depiction as a womanizing, scheming and power-hungry politician despicable.

Now, my own grandfathers led pretty quiet lives, so I'm sure that if anyone called them womanizing, scheming and power-hungry, I'd be mighty upset, too.

The difference is, unlike my lolos and going by what the historians suggest, Manuel Luis Quezon seems to have been all of the above — which isn't to say he wasn't much more than all those negatives put together. It was apparently that “much more” that the Quezonistas were looking for-MLQ the patriot and freedom fighter to balance out the picture, especially since most young Filipinos know nothing of the man except as a place-name. Had that been shown, the outrage might arguably have been muted, the image softened.

But of course that wasn't what the movie's makers were going for. As has already been noted by dozens of reviewers before me, “Quezon” is no documentary (and let's not forget that even documentaries can be biased - just watch Leni Riefenstahl's adoring portrayal of Hitler and his Nazis in her bizarrely beautiful “Triumph of the Will”). From the outset, it declares that it is mixing up history with “elements of fiction,” which is just as good as using that old commercial come-on, “based on a true story.”