GOYO -- My TAKE
Manila
September 18, 2018
Goyo —ang batang Heneral, sequel to Heneral Luna by the same Director, Jerold Tarog, is a must, an historical film to see. I share with you my reflections after watching this fascinating historical story of our revolution against the American Forces in the Philippines.
Director Jerold Tarog was very careful to present authentic scenes of our cultural past. You really felt that you went back in history to those days. The old houses were of Spanish times, even the furni-ture and accessories. Costuming done with precise taste of the times.
This film helps you to understand Rizal's stubborn concept that you have to first implant in the minds and hearts of the people a sense of nationhood, love of country and readiness to die for the motherland. This was cinematically illustrated by Antonio Luna firing at soldiers running away from deadly battle as he shouted his ‘Artikulo Uno,’ and later his own bloody death at the hands of rival assassins of the same Katipunan! And of course, Heneral Goyo who stood to the last at Tirad Pass.
Now I can understand the battle of Tirad Pass. Sixty soldiers, mostly of Goyo's Bulakeño troops and some 2 dozen remnants of Heneral Luna loyalists volunteered to guard Tirad Pass, allowing General Emilio Aguinaldo and the rest of the army to escape to-wards Ilocos and to the coast. The rear guard didn’t realise that they would be facing 500 Americans of the 33rd Volunteer Infantry Regiment under Major Peyton C. March, including a team of sharpshooters. Upon first evaluation of the topography, it seemed that the revolutionary army need only dig into trenches at the top of the pass and fire at all who dare to come up the hill with little or no cover. But Tirad Pass apparently was a maze of several trails lead-ing uphill to various vantage points adjacent to the principal top trench picked out by del Pilar. Upon the first encounter, the Americans managed to sneak up to higher grounds on hillsides adjacent to the main pass and pick off the revolutionaries at close range. Upon reaching the top, the revolutionaries seeing their companions in the lower trenches dead, began to flee. Left alone, Goyo was shot dead and left unburied for several days.
Oo nga’t pogi si Goyo at saka lady killer, but this did not deter him from his patriotic destiny. Romance was a very minor under stream of the main story.
Ka Pule, or Apolonario Mabilni plays an extended and important historical role here, continuing from the Heneral Luna film, as writer, thinker and interpreter of his ongoing history of those times. He also gives the lie to the posturing of Ka Emiong, Emilio Aguinaldo as a potential hero who missed his call! Aguinaldo was more concerned with his continuing power and position than with the freedom and democracy of the inchoate Philippine nation. Though not outrightly said or written, he was likely responsible in some way for the deaths of Andres Bonifacio and Heneral Antonio Luna whom he considered as rivals to the presidency. As usual, Epi Quizon, son of Dolphy aptly portrayed the sublime paralytic, Mabini, even more smooth in the Goyo film.
The movie also shows the long term rankling among the ranks of Luna loyalists who were firmly bent on liberating the Philippines from the Spanish and the Americans, thus grating against President Aguinaldo's orders seemingly to give in to US forces rather than wage a bloody battle for democracy which the revolutionaries could not win. In the film Aguinaldo himself says, he gave in to US colonialism.
The Director's use of the traditional names Goyong, Ka Pule, Ka Emiong et alii also show in 'tongue language' the social relation of those people to each other: those who call Aguinaldo Ka Emiong and those who say Mr President. Subtle but full of social differences and social distances!