Module 5- Lesther Papa

Critical Reaction: Dekada ‘70

As I was watching this movie I noticed that the main feature wasn’t really about a storyline but about the static or dynamic changes found in the characters. From them, you could get a real feel of the attitudes and beliefs of the people from that time period in the Philippines. The focus was on one family which was made up of a father, mother, and five sons.
The father, Julian, made it clear that he was the leader of the household and had a macho, sometimes chauvinistic attitude. This attitude is one I believe most men probably followed during the seventies but even though he could be condescending to his wife and instilled similar macho beliefs in his children, he was still a loving father and caring husband. The evidence for this was all over the movie. Julian would always be at the head of the table, his wife needed to get his approval for things, at the beginning of the movie he declared his beliefs of how it was “a man’s world” during one of the family’s meals and made derogatory jokes about women to which the children laughed and chimed in their own. But this isn’t to say that he was tyrannical or harmed his children and wife. He was quite protective of his family and always cared about his wife even though he may not have understood her complaints or worries. He was also quite supportive of his children even though they may have made bad decisions.
The mother, Amanda, showed how little women got in the way of freedom and that women were not taken very seriously. Her husband’s macho attitudes often meant she was indirectly put down or not taken very seriously. One example of this was when Amanda asked Julian permission if she could get a job, Julian told her she couldn’t get one and even scolded her for inquiring about a job from one of Julian’s friends. Later in the movie she started get more and more sick of her husband’s attitude and her lack of freedom so she threatened to leave her husband. This threat made her husband take her more seriously and allowed him to relax some of his attitudes. At the end of the movie Amanda is seen protesting and this can kind of stand as a metaphor of a protest of her husband’s macho attitude.
The oldest child, Jules, represents the political aspect of the movie. During the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, there were many demonstrations, rallies, and resistances that wanted to end Marcos’ regime. In college Jules started to get really involved with these groups and eventually ran away to join one of these resistances against Marcos. His actions affected his whole family because they were always worried that he’d get caught and be killed. This kind of scenario must have been similar for many of the other families in the Philippines who had their family members involved with the resistance.
The next child, Gani, represented the attitudes about sex. Gani in the movie was seen as the horny child. This was completely evident because during one of his phone conversations with his girlfriend Evelyn he started touching himself right there in the living room. Then later in the movie Gani and Evelyn are caught sleeping together in Gani’s room and are brought immediately to Evelyn’s house. Evelyn’s parents were clearly upset and Gani’s parents were angry and also ashamed. The solution for the situation led to Gani and Evelyn getting married. Clearly sex during that time period was seen as an embarrassment if you weren’t married yet. But I thought this was quite ironic because one of the jokes Julian told involved having sex and promiscuity.
The third child, Em, was also involved with politics but from the angle of a writer/reporter. He often wrote articles for a kind of newspaper that was banned by Ferdinand Marcos. The newspaper kept people informed about the resistance was doing. Em was also the person Jules contacted when he was away with the resistance.
The fourth child, Jason, was the joker at the beginning of the movie but later turned into the tradgic teenager towards the end of the movie. Jason was always telling jokes and was the comic relief character in the movie but that only happened when he was a child. Later when he became a teenager he became rebellious by staying out late all the time and not listening to what his parents said. This eventually led to tragedy because one night he didn’t listen to his parents and stayed out all night even though there was a curfew going on. He went to prison and later was released but before he could even get home he was killed and thrown behind a dumpster. What happened to Jason happened to many other people who broke curfew or maybe did nothing at all. Jason kind of stood as a metaphor for the tragedies that happened because of Marcos’ dictatorship.
The youngest child, Bingo, becomes a kind of innocent victim of the choices of his older brothers and of the dictatorship. Bingo is the innocent one throughout the movie and at a young age has to deal with Jules leaving, Gani getting married and later joining the military, Em and his illegal paper, Jason’s death and a raid of the house by the police.
This family as a whole represents a whole society just by their beliefs and actions. The family as a whole can represent how even though they all have these different views and attitudes they can still live together pretty harmoniously and overcome the adversity that faced them.