Remembrance and retelling

Two days from now, the Philippines relives the declaration of martial law 45 years ago. On Sept. 21, 1972 (although it was announced to the public only on Sept. 23), Ferdinand Marcos did what he had been hinting at for months, imposing martial law and putting the entire country under his thumb.

I was a freshman in college at the time, and my mother called up my oldest brother Nono to come fetch me from my classroom. Mama’s paranoia stemmed from the fact that I was part of a student group and had been to many street rallies and marches. But I was just small fry, so nothing much happened to me.

For other students, however, the risks of getting arrested and incarcerated were quite real and imminent. One was Bonifacio Ilagan, who would have been quite a catch at the time being the chair of the leftist Kabataang Makabayan (Nationalistic Youth) at the University of the Philippines Diliman. But upon hearing the news of the ML declaration, Ilagan went the UG (underground) route. Meeting up with young journalist Pete Lacaba who had covered much of the “First Quarter Storm” rallies for Free Press magazine just before the declaration of martial law, he and Lacaba were holed up in a safe house when they were captured by a dreaded PC unit and brought to Camp Crame.

This is where Ilagan’s story, told in “a movie within a documentary” titled “Alaala” (Remembrance) takes a grim turn, with tightly edited scenes of torture and degradation. In the early part of “Alaala,” aired on GMA-7 late Sunday evening, Ilagan says he decided to put on record his experiences under detention initially for the Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board, which processes monetary compensation for victims of human rights violations during martial law. But even as he was writing his account, says Ilagan, he found himself heavily editing his memoirs, with some details too gruesome to confront head-on, much less put down in writing.

In many ways, the same “softening” of memory takes place in “Alaala,” which, despite the powerful material depicts the events at a remove, muting emotions and deadening the anger.

It was Ilagan himself, an awarded scriptwriter, who wrote the docu-drama, so I wonder if the same editing of memory was employed here as in his account for the claims board. Director Adolf Alix Jr. takes a light hand with the story treatment and characters, avoiding the temptation to enlarge Ilagan and other characters to heroic proportions. Instead, he portrays them as grounded individuals, prone to weakness and sentiment.

Both Ilagan’s and Lacaba’s stay in detention lasted for two years, marked by episodes of physical and psychological torture. But Ilagan’s sister Lina, who is drawn into activism by her brother’s influence, joins the New People’s Army and was never seen or heard from again. “It is my sister’s memory that keeps me in this fight,” says Ilagan.

Much of the appeal of “Alaala” lies in the drama at its heart, with Ilagan portrayed by heartthrob Alden Richards and Lacaba by Rocco Nacino. They are ably backed by Gina Alajar, who portrays Ilagan’s mother, and Bianca Umali as Lina.

The drama is a powerful depiction of what thousands of Filipinos went through during those years. It is disconcerting, certainly, to see the familiar good-looking actors going through the rigors of torture (especially a scene depicting interrogators inserting a thin reed into Ilagan’s penis) and portrayed as bloodied and covered with black-and-blue contusions.

But the meat of “Alaala” lies with the documentary footage, as well as interviews with historians, including JC Mijares-Gurango, grandson of Marcos propagandist (who later fell out with the dictator) Primitivo Mijares.

Human rights groups estimate that under martial law, some 70,000 persons were detained, 34,000 were tortured, while 3,240 were killed, 884 disappeared, and 612 are still missing, with no word of their fate or whereabouts. This is the remembering we have to do, and this is why we have to keep our resolve to fight for freedom in our land.