Director’s Treatment
AKO SI NINOY
(A MUSICAL ON THE
LIFE AND ETERNAL TIMES OF BENIGNO AQUINO, JR.)
Written and directed by Vince Tañada
Cinema completes the continuum -- from the page to the stage and to the
screen, where images are more or less immortalized in various forms.
As a young student
growing under the shadow cast by the larger-than-life image of Ninoy Aquino, I
was wont to giving praise, fascinated by the facts and fiction of the man who
would have been president that never was. Instead, his surviving wife and
orphaned son became presidents whose respective terms were marked by military
(Cory’s) and “civil” (Noynoy’s) coups d'etat.
The play Ako si Ninoy (2009) was a commissioned
work that I gladly and quickly embraced until its entire run. However, the film
based on the same material is of my own volition. In a sense, it’s my way of
disabusing the mind from a kind of hero-worship that has been overtaken by
events, as it were.
It’s a curious
awakening about heroes and heroism that could be commuted to the Filipino
Everyman, after all. The film depicts, in a slice-of-life fashion, the lives of
11 characters as they reflect or represent, individually or otherwise, the
Ninoy in everyone. In other words, there’s a Ninoy or a hero waiting to happen
in all of us.
As a film, such is not
an original concept though, having derived the idea in part from Mike de Leon’s
Bayaning 3rd World (1999).
De Leon’s film posits the theme of “kanya-kanyang Rizal,” in the same manner
that Ako si Ninoy themes with
“kanya-kanyang Ninoy.”
The play resounded as a
musical, so there’s no reason that its musical film version can’t. (It’s about
time, one might say, considering the history and dismal performance of movie
musicals in the country since time immemorial.) Such syllogism is, of course,
inaccurate, as various factors come into play, particularly in the marketing
and distribution of the film. But I remain undaunted.
While it’s true that
our company, the Philippine Stagers Foundation (PSF), has almost perfected the
marketing of theater or live performances, knowing our demographics and the
nature of native circumstances, I realize that selling films is an entirely
different ballgame. As writer, director, producer and actor in both
disciplines, I indeed wear several hats of familiar or strange sizes and
shapes.
The scope of a musical
film usually mixes style and challenges genre boundaries, yet I prefer not to
fall into a pastiche. The many but distinct characters of Ako si Ninoy have a solid unifying center in (Ninoy’s) heroism and
kindred spirit.
Pushing the limits shall enhance the film’s epic
spectacle, and varied locations in different places/regions must be engaged for
each of the 11 major cast surrounding Ninoy and Cory. The music by Pipo Cifra
(of UST and ABS-CBN) is all original, studied and composed, hewing closely to
the text of the musical material. Ako si
Ninoy is not strictly a period piece; the production’s design showcases
what’s casual and customary at present, juxtaposed with Ninoy and Cory’s
not-so-distant time. And the cinematography breezes the scenes bright and
lovely in most parts.
To portray Ninoy,
Jericho Rosales (or Dennis Trillo) is apt for the role that demands top acting
with good singing ability to boot. Cory’s role has been settled, if unanimously,
in favor of Heart Evangelista, who fortunately belongs to the same pedigreed class.
The rest of the cast
shall be performed mostly by the Stagers, the PSF’s pool of talents, long in
the wings to be discovered by mainstream entertainment. I also dream of casting
about for James Reid and Nadine Ilustre, or their equivalents, in significant
juvenile roles.
As president, artistic
director and main marketing man, I manage and direct the full operations of PSF
from dawn to dusk to dawn, in a manner of speaking. But cinema offers an
entirely different challenge, really a world apart from theater, although I’m
not exactly a stranger to it. (I’ve done and dealt in two films, 2013’s Otso and 2014’s Esoterika Maynila, both directed by Elwood Perez.) The film arena
is more complex, and in perilous times, but definitely more widely engaging and
interesting, despite ,or because of, its current video and digital format.
With the most
successful theater company in the country behind me, I look at filmmaking as
the next sphere of endeavor to explore. The field may be crowded and madding,
but I believe there’s always room for a new seed to grow and bear fruit.
Up until now no feature
film on Ninoy Aquino -- or a similar film feature on Cory, for that matter -- has
fired the imagination of filmmakers enough to put it on the big screen. Except
for some documentaries, the definitive Ninoy or Cory film is yet to come.
To a certain extent, Ako si Ninoy serves as a fitting finale to a presidency and
administration that have been straddling between the question of and the answer
to heroes. Either way, let history judge the good or evil that men (and women)
do, to paraphrase the Bard. Time and the memories of mice and men, with due
apologies to John Steinbeck, shall be the final arbiter to scare or beat the
living daylights out of so-called heroes or heels in any nation’s life.
Finally, Ako
si Ninoy proposes a timely interpretation, an oblique view to the fabled
life and politics of Ninoy through dance and song.
SPJCN Budget: Ph 15M
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