The film “Heneral Luna” is an immediate cinematic pleasure. A historical moment is captured, and it becomes ours. It satisfies our rebellion against mortality because it holds back the remorseless rush of time. Likewise, it satisfies our basic sense of logic and harmony, and their consequence constitutes relief and achievement. As with all states of consciousness, there are degrees of satisfaction, and therefore degrees of pleasure. It is in the approximation of the absolute where we find our deepest pleasure.
The script is based on Vivencio Jose’s “The Rise and Fall of Antonio Luna,” which was submitted as a dissertation for a PhD in history in the College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines Diliman, and published in a special volume of the Philippine Social Sciences and Humanities Review. Organized in rigorous methodology and written in prose, it met the high academic standard expected of a doctoral tome. As his colleague in the UP faculty in 1973, I have but admiration for his having written the truth in a historical period of great tension.
Who is Luna in a historical context? He was widely regarded as the ablest general of the Revolution. Three descriptions would suffice: a soldier trying to win a war but was thwarted at every turn by those on whom he should have been able to depend; a nationalist at a time when the new nation he would save was already disintegrating; the ignored champion of an ilustrado class divided against itself.
A patriot obsessed to resist and repel the Yankees, Luna had a temper that appeared brutal simply because we were a society that prized pakikisama. And after the Cavite clansmen, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, deliberately refused to defend Caloocan—the gateway to the North—the Revolution’s fate was truly sealed. Had they obeyed Luna, Mountain Province could have become a fortress of the republic where it could have adopted guerilla warfare for national independence.
There are dramatic scenes and poignant themes that exacerbate the profession of arms with its high virtues: discipline, courage and loyalty. Watchful of itself, the army must expel from its ranks, like dead bodies, those elements who do not belong to it in spirit and whose hearts do not beat in unison with its own. How can one conceive of a cowardly soldier, a traitor who betrays his homeland? When cowardice and treason arise, there is no force, there are no troops, and there is no army, p-ñeta!—only a multitude in arms, and for that very matter more dangerous than any other.
Luna is one with Oliveira Salazar in “El Pensamiento de la Revolucion: Nacional”—the soldier has no purok, municipio, provincia or region, only the motherland: in all its material expressions, in the totality of its sentiments and traditions, in all the beauty of its historical evolution and its future ideal. For her he surrenders all: safety, comfort, peace of mind and life itself.
“Heneral Luna” attempts to ascertain the truth of the past through historical data and interpretation. Sadly, there will never be finality to the record of events. In this morass lie the historian’s travail and opportunity for lifetime careers, professorial chairs and the fascination of endless scholarly disputes.
But would we recognize the truth when we do find it? Why should we be concerned about finding the “objective” truth, particularly about the dead past? Some would say that the universe is an exactitude in its processes. We are one with it, and though we may be erratic in our moods, the tides of our blood and the processes of our being may be expressed in mathematical logic.
It follows from this view that we yearn for order, logic and objective truth. Our search for the truth is the expression of our inherent desire to render ourselves congruent in all matters with the order and harmony of the physical universe. On the mystic level, this comes out in St. Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”
Another attractive view is that we hate death: We reject its futility, impermanence and “absurdity.” The “dead past” is a threat to our security and to all our yearnings and hope. Pitifully, we reject even this, and forever attempt to resurrect the past. If we cannot bring back the dead, we can keep them with us as mummies—or we can bring back their stories.
Utilizing this idea of mortality, and taking advantage of our penchant for harking back to the past for role models and legitimizing authority, may also become a political tool. A people may be united with a national objective. Thus, historical truth most further contends with the modifying effects of propaganda maneuvers. How little, all too often, do our children realize that their hearts may beat to a clever composition more alive than life itself.
And why is this done? Because it works. Attila as a role model indeed evokes a taste for blood and aggression, while St. Francis as a role model has led many souls to the service of the Church. Demonizing Ferdinand Marcos for human rights abuses is a lot easier than putting him in a historical context to explain palpable human wrongs, and the historical circumstances that gave rise to a Marcos and martial law in the first place.
Thus, the whole concept of historical veracity must forever admit of a sea change. Only a rigid process of shifting and checking, counterchecking and piecing and weaving together, can ever move us finally to the objective truth.
“Heneral Luna” is a work of art imitating life.
Reynaldo V. Silvestre, a retired army colonel, bemedalled officer and multiawarded writer, belongs to Class 1968 of the University of the Philippines Vanguard, Diliman. He was teaching political science at UP Manila when called to active duty as first lieutenant in 1975.