Nothing Personal, Just Politics: A Review of Jerrold Tarog's Quezon

 directed by Jerrold Tarog

written by Jerrold Tarog and Rody Vera

It's hard to believe it's already been ten years since Jerrold Tarog launched his "Bayani" trilogy with the narrative tour de force that was Heneral Luna, and seven years since its sequel, Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral.  Yet, here we are with the third film in the trilogy, Quezon.

Set primarily during the tumultuous years before Manuel L. Quezon (played here by Jericho Rosales and Benjamin Alves as his younger self) was elected president of the Philippine Commonwealth, the film tells the story of Quezon's ascension to the power, including the people with whom he clashed, like former President Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado), Speaker of the House Sergio Osmena (Romnick Sarmenta) and Governor General Leonard Wood (Iain Glen), and the many compromises he had to make in pursuit of his avowed dream of an independent Philippine Republic. This narrative is framed through the perception of Tarog's fictional avatar, Joven Hernando played by Arron Villaflor as a young man and by Cris Villanueva in his older years. I have a lot to say about this character later.   

There's a clear trajectory here for Tarog's historical protagonists; General Antonio Luna of Heneral Luna was easily Tarog's "purest" protagonist, untainted by any kind of corrupt motive and who acted purely for the good of the nascent Filipino nation, even to his own detriment and eventual destruction, which was largely brought about by his own arrogance.  In Manuel L. Quezon, Tarog presents the most morally compromised character of his entire  "Bayani" trilogy. 

The problem for me is that, to be properly considered compromised, there needs to be some good to go along with the bad. Even most villains in fiction nowadays are depicted as flawed people who made really bad choices, often in the name of some perceived greater good.  The problem with Manuel Quezon, as depicted in this story, is that he simply has no redeeming qualities. This film presents a deconstruction of this larger-than-life persona that is so thorough, so merciless that it borders on a being a demolition job.  The man is a liar, a womanizer, and possesses  virtually every one of the most despicable qualities of the worst of Filipino politicians. One might argue he's even the godfather of modern-day patronage politics, though the film stops just short of saying that.  To depict the man as a saint would, of course, have been idiotic, but it feels like Tarog has gone too far in the other direction. 

Every good thing Quezon is depicted as doing in the film is underpinned by some darker truth, some act of wanton betrayal of either the people he trusted, the Filipino people or even just basic human decency.  That the film would shine a light on the darker side of a career politician who made many, many shady deals in his relatively short lifetime was an inevitability, and one appreciates the candor on display here, but the problem here is that there is no nuance, just as Heneral Luna felt somewhat like an hagiography, this is basically the complete opposite. The Manuel L. Quezon of this film is such a bastard that one even wonders how this film can be called part of the "Bayani" trilogy. Tarog even torpedoes narratives he pushed in his previous films, such as Emilio Aguinaldo's very strongly-hinted hand in the deaths of Antonio Luna and Andres Bonifacio, by out-and-out declaring the Quezon made it all up. As is usual with films like this, it has been declared that creative license was taken with historical facts, so one wonders how much of Quezon's onscreen depravity was based on actual events an how much was a product of Tarog's mind?

This brings me to the part of the film that I quite vehemently disliked; fictional journalist Joven Hernando goes from audience avatar, a passive observer and recorder of events to an active character in the story, who interacts quite closely with all of the principal characters in the story, and who eventually gets screwed over by Quezon when he dares write unflattering things about him.  This part was the last straw for me. This was where story went from an earnest attempt to tell the complicated, flawed legacy of one of the Philippine republic's most important figures to a mean-spirited smear job. Another thing that irks me about this glaring creative liberty is that Fernando feels like a narrative crutch that Tarog leans on. Ironically, of all the three films, Quezon takes place in the most recent period of history, at a time when more information was available than during the previous  two films, which would mean that stitching a cohesive narrative together should have been even simpler given the available data. It confounded me quite a bit, then, that Tarrog seemed to take even more liberties here than he did with either of the previous "Bayani" films, by expanding the role of the fictional character. 

My final critique is with the acting. Now, in the previous two films, I found the acting to be mostly beyond reproach, with John Arcilla's booming line delivery still ringing in my mind.  To Tarrog's credit, he assembles a mostly competent lineup of performers here, too, but there were two things that stood out. First of all was Scottish actor Iain Glen's turn as Governor General Leonard Wood.  In the final analysis I thought Glen turned in a mostly decent performance, but I was struck by how for several of his lines early in the film, Wood had a distinctly British accent, which he dropped as the film went on. 

The biggest problem for me, though, was Jericho Rosales as Manuel Quezon. Now, I have nothing against Rosales as an actor, but to my mind, he was simply out of his depth here, and it did not help matters any that the film's makeup department couldn't be bothered to age him beyond giving him a gray dye job (or wig). Rosales is 46 right now, but the Quezon he was depicting was in his late 50s and quite haggard as a result of the tuberculosis that ravaged his body.  Sure, he mimics his voice and mannerisms, having no doubt pored over newsreels of the Commonwealth president, but too often, his performance feels like it strays into caricature, and Rosales fails to elevate his character past the teledrama villain that the script so clearly makes him out to be. 

I really, really wanted to like this film. Like its predecessors in the trilogy, it has excellent production value, and outstanding performances from the likes of Bodjie Pascua (as Aguinaldo's running mate Raymundo Melliza), Mon Confiado as Aguinaldo, and Benjamin Alves, who in a rather confusing turn plays both the younger Manuel Quezon and an actor who plays Quezon in a series of propaganda films made by Hernando's daughter Nadia (Therese Malvar) for Quezon's presidential campaign.  It has some pretty good humor and is a winner from a technical standpoint, with some pretty sharp editing and music scoring, both courtesy of Tarog. 

I like to imagine there's a draft of the script somewhere that contains a more nuanced portrayal of Quezon, one that, while not necessarily making him more heroic, makes him a bit more sympathetic. Whatever his flaws may have been, and I'm sure there are many, Quezon managed to make a significant contribution to our country's efforts towards independence, and I feel he deserved a portrayal even just a tad more sympathetic that what we got here.

6.5/10