‘Oras De Peligro’ REVIEW: A convoluted and contrived attempt at a history lesson
‘Oras De Peligro’ REVIEW: A convoluted and contrived attempt at a history lesson
When young provocateur Darryl Yap released Maid in Malacañang—a period film depicting the Marcoses in their final days of the presidential palace—and theater director and lawyer Vince Tañada re-released his own film, Katips—a musical about activists fighting against the violence, injustice and censorship during the life in the Marcos administration—back in 2022, the notoriety of both opposing films have sparked a trend of Filipino filmmakers releasing their takes about the Marcoses.
Whether these films side with the infamous family, or oppose them, the Filipino audiences respond to them with never-ending and inconclusive discourses about their political alignments and personal biases. Anti-Marcoses lambasted Maid’s purpose to distort history and cast a humane portrait of the Marcoses, while portraying the opposition as villainous caricatures. Conversely, the pro-Marcoses did the same with Katips’ illustration of life in the Marcos administration, denying the incidents of cruelty and corruption that happened during that era, and ridiculing its musical format and portrayal of activists as heroes and not terrorists. Furthermore, Tañada’s attempt to counter Yap’s agenda was ridiculed as a failure when his contrarians pointed out its lower box office returns, compared to Yap’s film.
If anything, the discourse between Maid and Katips has proven that these new releases focusing on the Marcos dictatorship feel more like a competition of which film is favored the best by the general public, instead of being a pursuit of enlightening insights and truth about the controversial subject at hand. And given the notoriety and financial success of both films, this will not be a single occurrence.
Flash forward to 2023, the battle commences once again as Joel Lamangan’s Oras de Peligro and Vince Tañada’s Ako Si Ninoy attempt to repel against Yap’s Martyr or Murderer. This review will only be focusing on Lamangan’s film, but there is a need to pinpoint why martial law films and Marcos-led films have become prominent in this current age of Philippine cinema, and how these recent cinematic attempts to re-educate the Filipino people have proven futile as the films’ contents and arrangement fail to communicate a coherent storyline, and their messaging only reaches to the people who already agreed to that political viewpoint, and perhaps even enhance that belief.
Set during the final days of the Marcos administration, most of Oras de Peligro centers around the Marianas, a working-class family living in the slums and trying to make ends meet in the midst of the country’s socio-political unrest. Suddenly, the family patriarch, Dario (Allen Dizon), is murdered, leading the rest of the family to reflect and re-evaluate what is happening around them.
Now, it seems as if the story of the film is simple and straightforward, but the film’s sequence of events is also interspersed with several other scenes of varying levels of relevance. Throughout the film, archival footage featuring the live telecasts of the feud between Ferdinand Marcos, and Cory Aquino and the rebels—along with smash-cuts of Pahayagang Malaya’s actual newspaper clippings spliced in between—are shown to indicate the current time that the main story is at. One can find this segment to be insightful and interesting as it shows what words are actually being said by the people at the time, and how information is being dispersed during that time. It not only features reality as it is because it is real and not fabricated, but it is one of the only times when the visuals being shown speak for themselves. However, the jarring and unexpected transitions from the scripted storylines to these segments, together with obnoxious dramatic boom sound effects, display a tonal disconnect between the two, and undermine the profound effect of inserting real-life footage in the mix.
What further convolutes the film is the excessive number of characters that the film unwittingly follows. The most notorious example is Ma’am Jessa (Mae Paner), the Marianas’ matriarch’s employer and a fellow supporter of Aquino who comes from a bourgeois background. The audiences are first introduced to Jessa as she celebrates the growing revolt, yelling: “Lahat tayo’y nag-iisa! (All of us are in this together!)” And then her maid comes in, agreeing to her statement, even though she goes to pour water for Jessa like the latter is royalty. In this scene, it explicitly shows a significant difference of power between Jessa and her maids in terms of wealth, even despite their mutual political allegiance. And the film could have taken a more incisive and intriguing route that directly addresses and investigates this dynamic. Instead, the film resorts to a series of repetitive and overacted scenes where Ma’am Jessa proudly exclaims her support for the revolution, merely rendering the idea to an oversimplified and misguided statement about equality.
Other examples that further overcrowd this film are: a storyline about a witness to Dario’s murder (Elora Españo) who breaks the news to the family but refuses to testify in fear of the police, goes nowhere as the character disappears right after; a sudden scene of the family stealing Dario’s body from the hospital could’ve been more impactful if it provides a set-up to the action; scenes featuring the police force’s schemes and characters dynamics may depict the corrupt side of the authorities but they are too far removed from the main plot; and the same can be said to the inclusion of Bembol (Alan Paule) who preyed on young women by asking for sexual favors in exchange for supporting them financially, which gives an underdeveloped and hasty commentary on how desperate the times have been for these people that they have to resort to these options.
As a result, much of these stories do not add up to much, because the film’s rough and messy first draft of a screenplay, along with amateurish efforts in both the acting and staging departments, dampen any potential impact to the audiences. Too many subplots cause the film to lose focus on the central narrative, which is the Marianas family’s grief and eventual evolution to be involved in the revolt. And the reliance on wise sayings (“kasabihan”) and obvious statements in delivering its themes and messages makes them feel like a lecture instead of allowing the audiences to think for themselves.
Yes, one can argue that the film is written as if it is a lecture that aims to inform the truth. But then again, without intricately laying out the path for its central characters and the world, the obvious messaging fails to resonate with its audiences unless the audiences already agreed to it. Such an example is found in the matriarch of the Marianas, Beatriz (Cherry Pie Picache). Despite her genuine display of grief and anger, Picache isn't able to save her character from being one-note. Most of the scenes that involve her circulate around her being unable to control her sorrow, being frustrated over the injustice and mistreatment at them by the authorities, and being thankful over those who try to help her in these difficult times. She plays a passive role for most of the runtime that by the time the film tries to pay it off with Beatriz finally standing up for herself and her family, her sudden turn toward an active role does not feel earned even if it is meant to be a climactic hurrah moment for the audiences.
And that's where the film's central problem lies: everything in the film indicates signs of a rushed production, probably as a result of trying to compete against the opposition, Yap's Martyr or Murderer. And although one should acknowledge that Lamangan and his team are only given limited resources to make it, the film's massive scope and ambition are far too huge for this little two-hour indie film. Yes, messages are, indeed, delivered, but at the expense of coherence and character depth that are essential to a good story.
To conclude, one cannot deny the passion and rage that Lamangan has let out in Oras de Peligro, but all of its sounds and furies could have been heard and understood even by its most vicious skeptics if only he took the time to fully flesh out the complete picture as he made it. Oras de Peligro has good intentions of reminding the local audiences about the country's dark history, and reigniting the flames that will prompt people into action, but Lamangan's overstuffed screenplay and rushed production eventually leads to its downfall.
