Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral

Jerrold Tarog's follow up to 2015's Heneral Luna, Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral, cannot be any more antipodal compared to its predecessor. While Luna was outwardly loud and furious, full of fire and brimstone, Goyo looks inward, a contemplative, numbing calm before the storm. Even their posters are diametrically opposed: Luna with his tattered, bloody uniform, Goyo, unscathed, with a pristine uniform. The two are heaven and earth, fire and ice. Yet both films manage to interrogate the concepts of heroism and nation in interesting ways.

The film begins days after Luna's death in the previous film. The revolution let by Emilio Aguinaldo (Mon Confiado) is on the run. While the Americans plan to rout Aguinaldo's remaining forces, Gregorio Del Pilar (Paulo Avelino) stays in Pangasinan for five months. These five months, as we come to find out, will be squandered by the revolution, with Aguinaldo and his men twiddling their thumbs as the Americans loom over the horizon. Or perhaps, at least on a subconscious level, the revolution knows it has failed with Luna's death, perhaps even before that.  It's a far more somber work than the more accessible Luna. This period constitutes what, in his book A Question of Heroes, Nick Joaquin calls the revolution's Gotterdammerung, a twilight of the gods. Yet these are false gods, whose grandeur and legacy are taught to us in schools; they are but men who ended up worshiping their own hype, whose follies and flaws as people ultimately doomed them to failure.

In that sense the first half or so of Goyo will feel slower and much more deliberately paced compared to the explosive and often funny action of Luna. In a sense it feels more like the 2004 film Der Untergang (a.k.a. Downfall), that film about the last days of Hitler and his men, where an active denial of reality undercuts the Reich's last days. The Gregorio Del Pilar of this story is far removed from the hero we remember in textbooks: here he is a womanizer, Joaquin's Lord Byron in spirit, content to party and hang out with his brothers and friends rather than prepare for the revolution's Ragnarok. He has turned from a loyal and brave soldier into a person who believes his own legend, whose greatness is thrust upon him forcibly, a greatness that he cannot handle. Del Pilar doubts this legend himself, but throughout the film he uses this denial as a mechanism to cope with the premise of his own mortality.

Perhaps one of the film's faults is that while it elects to show us Del Pilar as he was during the end, it does not show Del Pilar as he was when he was starting out in the Revolution, including the exploits that created his legend. In certain interpretations of the film, it makes the internal struggle incomplete. On the other hand, showing us Del Pilar at his most vain and deluded ties well into what the film is trying to tell us about heroes.

The film ties this internal struggle into the story of our nation itself, comparing Del Pilar's love to the love of country. In fact it could be argued that the true protagonist of the story is Apolinario Mabini (Epi Quizon), who acts as the nation's conscience. His words in the film, taken from his memoirs, ring true even today. Mabini himself undergoes a journey in this film - wracked by the inability to physically effect change, trapped in a paralytic's body, he can only lament and accept the passing of one age into the next. I wouldn't be surprised if Tarog intended this, as he pulled off something similar with 2013's Sana Dati.

The film also challenges and deconstructs the lessons from Luna, in that while we should rise up to help the nation as a whole, we should not do so by glorifying strongmen or false idols. Our feelings do not make us bad people, but we should not be prisoners to our feelings.

The film inevitably moves towards the fateful battle at Tirad Pass, a moment depicted as a glorious moment in other forms of media, perhaps most gaudily in Carlo Caparas' Tirad Pass (1996). But here we see the truth of the situation, we see a defending force with the advantage of terrain overtaken by a tactically superior force in less than six hours; though it is not spelled out overtly, the lowlanders' arrogance and discriminatory nature betrays them in the end. There is no glorious shot of the young general on his steed leading his troops into one last stand - Del Pilar's fall is unceremonious, even mundane. His realization towards heroism comes, but it is tragically not enough. And one scene gets into the core of what the film is trying to say, when Del Pilar is stripped of his clothes and belongings, also a metaphorical undressing of the legend we have been taught to revere - General, Agila, Hero, Lover - revealing a man, just a man, underneath.

This encapsulates the film's core tenet: there are no heroes, yet all of us are. Historical figures are men just like you and me, prone to their own failings, and they will fall, but the idea of country - land, national identity, people and culture - will always be constant. There are no saviors, no magic bullets to solve our problems. Blind faith towards false idols is dangerous and foolish. We change the world, ultimately, through our own selves.