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| Ang Larawan (2018) | Banner |
Loy Arcenas’ Ang Larawan (2018) is a movie adaptation of Nick Joaquin’s play entitled, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. Although the story is primarily set inside the house of the Marasigans, an educated but financially unstable family, Arcenas elevates the opening and end sequences by the clever use of cinematography.
Arcenas’
Ang Larawan starts with a black-and-white
close-up of one of the gates of Intramuros. Upon close inspection, you can
almost see the majestic stone lions, symbolizing the Imperial Spanish, carved
on the intricately chiseled stone façade that bears the phrase Puerta del Parian and below it Año de 1732. The first scene, totaling
about four minutes, shows a black-and-white montage of pre-World War II life
inside Intramuros. The opening sequence invites the Filipino audience to enter
the old yet familiar memory of the Spanish-colonial times, as the black-and-white
close-up of the Puerta del Parian
with the Imperial Spanish insignia suggests, in order to fully understand the
world of the Marasigans.
Although
the film starts with a black-and-white montage of vintage clips, the opening
sequence eventually turns into a colorized spectacle as the camera focuses on a
young reporter, Bitoy Camacho, entering the grand yet old-fashioned Spanish
house of the Marasigans. Arcenas draws our attention not to Camacho entering through
the front door, but to the majestic and monochromatic façade of the house.
Arcenas does this by shifting the camera to the back of Camacho so that only his
head is seen in the foreground while the façade of the house takes up almost 95
percent of the screen. Bitoy Camacho, who symbolizes the emerging modern
Filipino identity, comes face-to-face with the Spanish-colonial traditions and
identity, as portrayed by the house of the Marasigans. As Bitoy enters the house,
the camera slowly shifts from the illuminated streets of Intramuros to the
stark and grim underbelly of the house. He encounters furniture and other old Spanish
muebles covered in white cloth (whether
for disposal or safe-keeping we do not know.) In this scene, Arcenas points out that even
though the Spanish-colonial traditions and customs are majestic and dignified
like the façade of the Marasigans’ house, the practices, however, are actually
the old Spanish muebles in the basement of the house: obsolete, old-fashioned,
and outdated.
Bitoy
Camacho eventually climbs to the antesala
of the house where he is greeted by Candida and Paola Marasigan. Together the
three of them reminisce about the Tertulias
and Bailes done during their
childhood days. The camera then focuses on the three characters in the
foreground (symbolizing the present) narrating about the days where Tertulias and Bailes were still the norm while the background (symbolizing the
past) displays men and women elegantly dancing in the style of the Spanish Bailes. The use of the
foreground-background technique emphasizes the rapidly disappearing nature of
Spanish traditions among the younger generation of Filipinos. The young
Filipinos, as portrayed by Bitoy and the Marasigan sisters, recognize the
antiquated Spanish-colonial traditions as dim and hazy memories which can only
be remembered through their collective reminiscing.
After
their moment of reminiscing, the three walk inside the sala to look at the portrait painted by Don Marasigan (Paola and
Candida’s father). The camera looms over from a distance to show the side
profile of the mysterious painting on the far right while Bitoy stands in the
middle and the sisters on the far left side of the frame. As Camacho and the
Marasigan sisters inspect the painting, the camera shifts so that they are
looking directly at us. Paola explains that the work, titled as Retrato del artista como filipino, depicts
her ailing mestizo father. Upon
hearing this, Camacho goes on a tangent and explains that the scene is far from
anything Filipino. We are then led to believe, as Candida puts it, that the portrait
depicts the escape of Aeneas from the burning city of Troy. On the other hand,
Paola contends that, to her, the painting is a horrific, nightmarish depiction
of a man with two heads. The confusion between the three characters draws
parallel to the incertitude of the Filipino identity through the multiple
interpretations of the Retrato. The
portrait as “the ailing mestizo father”
symbolizes the decay of Spanish traditions in the Philippines while the
painting as “a man with two heads” signifies the amalgamation of western American
ideals and Filipino-colonial culture.
On
the contrary, the end scene shows the complete opposite of the beginning
sequence cinematography. During the end sequence, the two sisters and their
father peer through the balcony at the last procession of the La Naval (just before
the start of World War II). The camera focuses from the Marasigan family to the
face of the Lady of La Naval. Of all the possible points to focus on, Arcenas brilliantly
chose to end the last scene with a close-up of the Lady of La Naval. The last
close-up of the religious icon focuses on the most important, symbolic
culmination of all the colonial traditions and customs the Spanish had given to
us: Catholicism.
Finally,
Arcenas elevates this scene by applying a gray filter to it. The transition
from a multicolored scene to a dichromatic one is symbolic of the disappearing
world of the Marasigans and the Spanish-colonial traditions. Almost
immediately, the end scene transitions from the close-up of the Lady of La
Naval to footages of World War II bomber planes destroying the walled city of
Intramuros, signifying the loss of the old, colonial world.
Loy Arcenas’ movie adaptation of a
Filipino classic play is a remarkable one. His aesthetic blends perfectly with
the theme of Nick Joaquin’s play: the amalgamation of old Filipino identity
with contemporary ideals. By integrating
the background-foreground techniques, filters, and transitions, Arcenas was
able to add another layer of symbolism to the opening and end sequences.
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