REVIEW The Realist Cinema of Lino Brocka Jose Gutierrez III his essay characterizes the cinema of Lino Brocka as principally realist by (1) underscoring his consistent use of realistic material; (2) highlighting pronouncements by various ilm scholars on the realist aspects of the Brocka ilm; (3) identifying realist ilm tropes distilled from the preceding step; and inally, (4) putting forward the Brocka ilm’s engagement with the life-world as a way to understand the auteur’s brand of cinematic realism. One of the foremost characteristics of the Brocka ilm is its being based on events that actually happened. his reference to reality, constituted by the Brocka ilm audience’s purview of these events, signiicantly factors into the spectatorial experience. his has served as the foundation for the auteur’s interaction with his public. In the case of Orapronobis (1989), Brocka came up with the ilm concept when he heard about a sanctuary in the city for village folk who led from armed groups in their native far-lung province; later, the director developed the story with his scriptwriter, Pete Lacaba, for the ilm (Maglipon, 1993, p. 141). David (1990) commented on how the ilm binds documentary events to its narrative that has ‘drawn voraciously from known facts—hence sandwiching the presentation between history, on the one hand, and realistic imagery, on the other’ (p. 189). A combination of real-life events—a strike at a small factory and a robbery-hostage case—was the basis for Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim/Clutching a Knife (Brocka, 1985) (Hernando, 1993a, p. 18). Besides drawing directly on documentary events, Brocka also portrayed recognizable personalities to create his cinematic Plaridel • Vol. 14 No. 2 • July - December 2017 169-178 characters (Hernando, 1993b, p. 48). Gumapang Ka Sa Lusak/Dirty Afair (Brocka, 1990), for example, was replete with such characters. he basis of the costume, make-up and igure movement of the mayor’s wife character was the public persona of the former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. To drive the point home, the ilm even has a scene where the mayor’s wife is violently attacked—this was largely seen as an overt parody on an assassination attempt on Imelda Marcos in 1972 (Hernando, 1993b, p. 48). Aside from public events, Brocka’s personal life was also a source of material for his ilms. Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang/Weighed but Found Wanting (Brocka, 1974) drew on the auteur’s childhood memories (Hernando, 1993a, p. 16). On the mad woman character, Kuala, in this ilm, Brocka recounted, “some years later, she came to me as a symbol of my childhood and I wanted to do a ilm on her” (Sotto, 1993d, p. 220). Tahan na Empoy, Tahan/Stop Crying Little Boy (Brocka, 1977b), a “showcase of his childhood griefs” (Dalisay, 1993, p. 78), was based on his “turbulent childhood” (Sotto, 1993e, p. 101). Brocka’s opening up of his personal life to his actors enriched his connection with them. An actress in Inay/Mother (Brocka, 1977), Laurice Guillen stated how this facilitated her performance: “the ilm was based on his life and I already understood the material very well because he had told me everything about his family’”(Torre, 1993, p. 92). Known as an actor’s director (Hernando, 1993a, p. 15), Brocka would “coax the authenticity of emotion” (Sotto, 1993e, p. 115) from his actors. Gina Alajar, who played the lead actress in Orapronobis (Brocka, 1989), relayed, “Many of the elements of the story came from his personal experiences— the scene where I left the courtroom, when I was abducted, he himself had seen someone being abducted—so he was able to make the situation very real to me” (Torre, 1993, p. 90). Brocka believed that the characters in Insiang (Brocka, 1976) were “real” since they were based on actual referents in the slums; further, the director commented that other ilms that show the slums use “characters adapted from the komiks” (Sotto, 1993a, p. 228) which were popular during the era. Insiang, according to Brocka, manifests his “preference to show people who ight in order to survive with dignity in the most abject of conditions rather than show the merrymaking of public relations agents” (Sotto, 1993a, p. 227) that serve the propaganda of the Marcos regime. he realist aspect of Brocka ilms has been noted by ilm critics and scholars. Hernando (1983) remarked that Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag/ Manila in the Claws of Light (Brocka, 1975) is “the most honest and realistic story of the cruel city” (p. 212). Even Brocka’s early ilm, Santiago (1970), while executing the demands of the war ilm genre, had “suicient serious 170 Gutierrez • The Realist Cinema of Lino Brocka content and realistic characterizations to impress critics” (Hernando, 1993a, p. 14). hroughout his career, Brocka was distinguished for making his “characters more realistic” (Hernando, 1993a, p. 14)—in the auteur’s words, “I was introducing the Filipino audience not to caricatures but to characters, a character study” (Garcia, 1993, p. 217). It was also important for Brocka to be realistic in terms of the shooting location. In shooting Lunes, Martes, Miyerkules, Huwebes, Biyernes, Sabado, Linggo/Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, hursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday (1976), when his crew ofered a more convenient alternative to shoot in Manila instead of a faraway city in the north, Brocka insisted otherwise, as he believed they would not be able to capture the “ambience and reality of the ‘Sin City”’ if they merely used production design to simulate the original setting (Hernando, 1993b, p. 39); at that point, the crew then understood that ‘the director wanted the “truth”’ (p. 45). Another factor that inluenced the realist cinema of Lino Brocka was his advocacy for developing the Filipino audience; in particular, the popular auteur deployed his realist aesthetics to address the prevailing escapism in mainstream cinema. Brocka observed that although more and more people were seeing ilms than ever before, they were “watching movies that are as far removed from their lives as possible” (Aufderheide, 1987, p. 75). Brocka had always been conscious of his realist approach: “My irst ilm, Wanted: Perfect Mother (Brocka, 1970) was directed at a time when Philippine cinema was full of clichés. I decided to make the characters more real” (Sotto, 1993a, p. 229). he Brocka ilm goes against the grain of the escapist cinema in which “dreams are shown on the screen rather than analyses of the human condition” (Sotto, 1993a, p. 229). In his second ilm, Santiago (1970), Brocka was marked for his sense of realism in “the most improbable of local ilms, an FPJ movie” (Parel, 2010, p. 238). he founding in 1976 of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP) [Filipino Film Critics], the only critics group in the Philippines at the time, propelled the realist and auteurist Brocka ilm to jump-start the “Second Golden Age” (Tolentino, 2012, p. 121) of Philippine cinema. he MPP established the Gawad Urian ilm awards, the criteria of which “preferred cinema that deals with Philippine social realities over those which are merely skillfully or artfully made” (Lumbera, 1984, p. 208). It signaled the emergence in local ilms of a “new sensibility which consists principally in a deep respect for the audience and manifests itself in an analytical exploration of character and realistic awareness of social realities” (Lumbera, 1997, p. 116). Brocka infused his ilms with a “sense of realism” and “projected the creeping poverty that is eating up the moral fabric of his characters” (Hernando, 1993b, p. 41). he director enunciated his ilms on the same wavelength as the ilm critics—Clutching a Knife Plaridel • Vol. 14 No. 2 • July - December 2017 171 (Brocka, 1985) in terms of its “unrelieved sense of social repression and the tragedy at its end” (Guillermo, 2001, p. 211) and Bona (1980) as a “case study” of a certain social phenomenon observable in contemporary social reality (Sotto, 2001, p. 272). By being principally realist, the Brocka ilm has been critically remarked as having the ability to “lead the viewer to draw certain disturbing conclusions about the society in general” (Francia, 1987, p. 213). On the auteur’s signature “social drama ilms” that were set in particular locales such as the slum area, small town or factory (Tolentino, 1996, p. 374), Brocka declared his preoccupation “with truths for the individual and with exposing a town to its festering corruption” (Sotto, 1993d, p. 222). Brocka ilms tackle various evils in government and the police-military, from the “suppression of the ugly truth practiced by powerful politicians to the summary execution by the authorities or private armies of individuals who are a threat to the status quo” (Hernando, 1993b, p. 40). his characteristic treatment of socially relevant subject matters has been understood by critics, scholars and even ordinary viewers as the activist-ilmmaker’s projections of “a microcosm of the nation’s political dynamics” (Tolentino, 2003, p. 77) and “turmoil during the Marcos dictatorship and the succeeding Aquino administration era” (1996, p. 374). he Brocka ilm is designed as a spectatorial experience that provides insight on the individual’s place in society; this introspection fosters ruminations on possible actions by the collective. By the end of the distinctive Brocka ilm, however, the narrative goes back to the individual who, though not necessarily deciding to pursue the path of mass action, ends up with critical insight into his or her place in society. Brocka’s description of Julio Madiaga, the protagonist in Manila in the Claws of Light (Brocka, 1975) is indicative of this: “He begins as an observer but ends up as a participant. Once he understands the situation, he makes a move, no matter how hopeless it is . . . he ending is the beginning. He is now a man” (Sotto, 1993b, p. 232). When he was asked to explain why this character was a symbol of the Filipino people, Brocka responded: “You can hit him, kick him and he will smile back at you. He will smile and smile again. But if you take out all his hopes, watch out because he will kill you” (Sotto, 1993c, p. 226). he realist Brocka ilm—the form and content of which are shaped by the conluence of historical, technological, aesthetic and sociological factors during and a few years after the Era of Martial Law—can be characterized by the following tropes: (a) “milieu formation” (David, 1990, p. 188); (b) “sweating physicality” (Sotto, 1993e, p. 102); and (c) “characters in the background” (Hernando, 1993b, p. 46). 172 Gutierrez • The Realist Cinema of Lino Brocka With Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde/Miguelito: Rebel Boy (Brocka, 1985) and Insiang (Brocka, 1976) as examples, David (1990) identiied “milieu formation” (p. 188) as a salient characteristic of the Brocka ilm. On the latter ilm, Brocka expounded, “It’s a ight between mother and daughter. I like dramas which are situated in a social milieu” (Sotto, 1993a, p. 227). Laurice Guillen, a Filipino actress who eventually became a noted Philippine director, avowed that part of Brocka’s gift was “that the milieu of his audience was also his own milieu (he came from them)” (Torre, 1993, p. 94). In Manila in the Claws of Light (Brocka, 1975) and in most of his other works, Brocka manifested his “predilection for cinéma verité by incorporating documentary footage and remains faithful to its dictum of minimizing technical manipulation” (David, 2010, p. 216). Tagged by David (2011) as “Brocka’s neorealist masterwork” (p. 88), this ilm is characterized by its unglamourized makeup, low-keyed acting, careful physical typing of characters, and, “without being shrill about its message, eloquently addresses us about economic conditions that grind down people who have only innocence and goodwill as their armour” (Lumbera, 1997, p. 116). Clutching a Knife (Brocka, 1985), David (1990) observed, optimized “reality as raw material, and at one point the action was in fact transposed to an ongoing protest march” (p. 189). Brocka’s inal ilm, Sa Kabila ng Lahat/ In Spite of Everything (1991), contains a “relatively seamless integration of documentary and ictional footage, facilitated by the relexive device of setting its characters in the profession of mass media documentarists” (David, 2010, p. 216). he Brocka ilm was closely associated with the social realist genre during the 1970s to mid-1980s, “when Filipino ilm directors and scriptwriters began using the term ‘milieu movie’” (David, 2011, p. 88) that enabled the ‘depiction of interacting social agents’ (p. 90) that conigure a “social formation—in fact, a social character—within the diegesis of the ilm text” (p. 89). Manila in the Claws of Light (Brocka, 1975) for instance, which has been taken as a realist ilm, is read as a “derailing of the Marcosian project of image- and nation-building” (Tolentino, 2012, p. 124) while “it looks with sympathy on the common man and the human condition” (Hernando, 1993a, p. 17). his “pioneer urban realist ilm” (Campos, 2011, p. 5) tends to “highlight marginal characters and social problems” (p. 6). It was in this ilm that his “realist efect” was irst realized, one of its foundations being Brocka’s “inclination to choose subjects (i.e., main characters) and subject matters that resonate with the “real” or “everyday” way of life of slumdwellers” (Campos, 2011, p. 5). he milieu is viewed from the perspective of a worker, who is part of the migration of large numbers of people from the countryside to Manila and the associated growth of a populace referred to locally as the “urban poor” (Vick, 2007, p. 230). hese Plaridel • Vol. 14 No. 2 • July - December 2017 173 were the people who make up Manila’s cheap labor force and inhabit the city’s shanty towns and squatter settlements. hey embodied up to one third of Metro Manila’s population of around eight million people at that time and have formed a “major element within the developing Philippine proletariat” (Pinches, 1985, p. 152). he Brocka ilm has also been noted for its “sweating physicality” (Sotto, 1993e, p. 102) complemented by sweltering human emotions “ofering a sharp contrast to the cerebral hemorrhage of the pedantic” (p. 102). he physical reality of the shots in Brocka’s urban realist ilms clashes with the idealistic, sterile and airtight imaging of the New Society, which was imagined by the Marcos regime as the “wellspring of the modern Philippine nation” (Tolentino, 2010, p. 98), one in which the Communist and “immoral” citizen was deemed to be subversive (2012, p. 117). New Society also sought to create a new kind of “disciplined” metropolitan citizen through martial rule, as its slogan, “sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan” [for national development, discipline will be essential] (p. 117) makes clear. Another salient characteristic of the Brocka ilm is its cinematic rendering of the “characters in the background” (Hernando, 1993b, p. 46); with this as springboard, the director then examined “how personal relationships and how the environment and the other bigger forces shape the destiny of his characters” (p. 48). Brocka’s forte was in portraying the “little people,” the “generally politically unaware people who are too wrapped up in their middling existence which revolves around love, sex, procreation and a little money to spend at the Luneta [Park]” (Parel, 2010, p. 236). his cinematic engagement with their bodies—luidly shifting between the individual and collective and deeply enmeshed in the sweating physicality of the milieu— cuts across Brocka’s body of work. hese characters in the background serve as the embodiments of emotion, worldview and ultimately, insight into the life-world of the people who were traumatized by violence during the Marcos regime. hese were the people who had to hear about the disappearance of Marcos’s former ally, Primitivo Mijares, and the brutal murder of his son: “he mutilation of the body was typical of incidents, where, to extract information from an uncooperative prisoner, one member of the family was grotesquely tortured in front of another” (Seagrave, 1988, p. 274). In addition, they are the same people who physically experienced the prevailing violence, and the fear and paranoia that it elicited were powerful forces that contributed to the perpetuation of the Marcos dictatorship: “he impression of power and omniscience was exaggerated by showmanship and grotesque extremes of cruelty” (p. 421). he distinctive tropes of the Brocka ilm—namely, (a) “milieu formation” (David, 1990, p. 188); (b) “sweating physicality” (Sotto, 1993e, p. 102); and (c) 174 Gutierrez • The Realist Cinema of Lino Brocka “characters in the background” (Hernando, 1993b, p. 46)—can be employed to understand how the Brocka ilm interacts with its public through the medium’s engagement with the life-world. he power of the principally realist Brocka ilm lies beyond its being chiely based on realistic material or its ability to allude to social issues on an ideological level. What the Brocka ilm has mastered is its resonance with experience—what we discover in natural cognition as the “world,” that is, the totality of individual objects that could possibly be experienced, is precisely what Husserl, founder of phenomenology, calls “reality” (Russell, 2006, p. 22). What Husserl called “everyday lived experience” is characterized by its being caught up in the life-world (Russell, 2006, p. 184), which is deined as “the world given to us most immediately: the world-horizon in which we live without making it thematic as a world” (Husserl, 1970, p. 379). he life-world, or Lebenswelt, is “the surrounding ever-changing world of our everyday experience and perception” (Aitken, 2016, p. 15). he realist ilm tropes distilled from Brocka ilms serve as fulcrums between cinema and experience. In the Brocka ilm, the drama is enmeshed with the everyday lived experience of the people, involving, for example the sweating physicality experienced by the working class. It is distinctive of the Brocka ilm to luidly map out the activities in the milieu, whether it be in the slums, small town, construction site, market, factory, television studio, convent, the street, etc., and tap into its life-world through igure movement and organic interjections of the characters in the background, which are foregrounded in eclectic, oftentimes poignant, cinematic moments. Brocka used burning human emotions within the familiar but constantly innovating melodramatic style and lived experience—as rendered by tropes such as milieu formation, sweating physicality, characters in the background—to cinematically engage the spectators to contemplate the everyday, not ideologically, but physically. On this plane, they go “back to the things themselves” as Husserl would put it, to allow the phenomena to dictate the terms of their own explication (Russell, 2006, p. 18). his leads the active spectator to gain renewed insight on everyday lived experience, his or her place within the life-world, and resultant possibilities for action. his accounts for the real power of this auteur’s body of work. Plaridel • Vol. 14 No. 2 • July - December 2017 175 References Aitken, I. (2016). Introduction. In I. Aitken (Ed.), The major realist film theorists: A critical anthology (pp. 1-40). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Aufderheide, P. (1987, Nov). Oriental insurgents. Film comment, 23(6), pp. 73-80. Campos, P. F. (2011). The intersection of Philippine and global film cultures in the new urban realist film. Plaridel: A Philippine journal of communication, media, and society, 8(1),1-20. Dalisay, J. J. (1993). From Gingoog to Greenhills: Lino and his writers. In M. A. Hernando (Ed.) 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In M. A. Hernando (Ed.), Lino Brocka: The artist and his times (pp. 86-100). Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines. Vick, T. (2007). Asian cinema: A field guide. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Filmography Brocka, L. (Director). (1970). Santiago. Philippines: Lea Productions. Brocka, L. (Director). (1970). Wanted: Perfect Mother. Philippines: Lea Productions. Brocka, L. (Director). (1974). Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang/Weighed but Found Wanting. Philippines: CineManila; Mever Films. Brocka, L. (Director). (1975). Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag/Manila in the Claws of Light. Philippines: Cinema Artists. Brocka, L. (Director). (1976). Insiang. Philippines: CineManila. Brocka, L. (Director). (1976). Lunes, Martes, Miyerkules, Huwebes, Biyernes, Sabado, Linggo/Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Philippines: Mever Films. Brocka, L. (Director). (1977). Inay/Mother. Philippines: Lotus Films. Brocka, L. (Director). (1977). Tahan na Empoy, Tahan/Stop Crying Little Boy. Philippines: Lotus Films. Brocka, L. (Director). (1980). Bona. Philippines: NV Productions. Brocka, L. (Director). (1985). Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim/Clutching a Knife. Philippines: Malay Films; Stephan Films Brocka, L. (Director). (1985). Miguelito: Ang Batang Rebelde/Miguelito: Rebel Boy. Philippines: D’Wonder Films. Plaridel • Vol. 14 No. 2 • July - December 2017 177 Brocka, L. (Director). (1989). Orapronobis. Philippines/USA: Cannon Films. Brocka, L. (Director). (1990). Gumapang Ka Sa Lusak/Dirty Affair. Philippines: Viva Films. Brocka, L. (Director). (1991). Sa Kabila ng Lahat/In Spite of Everything. Philippines: Viva Films. JOSE GUTIERREZ III is an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI), a filmmaker, and a PhD candidate (Film Studies) at the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). He holds a Master of Arts in Media Studies (Film) degree and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology degree from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. His portfolio as an experimental-documentary filmmaker is presented in his official website: www.JoniGutierrez.com. The research that led to the current article was supported by the University of the Philippines through the PhD Incentive Award given to the author. (Corresponding author: jcgutierrez3@up.edu.ph) 178 Gutierrez • The Realist Cinema of Lino Brocka