Film review: Pedro Calungsod, Batang Martir Defining sainthood

MANILA, Philippines - An entry to this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), HPI Synergy and Wings Entertainment’s Pedro Calungsod, Batang Martir, written and directed by Francis Villacorta, is a valiant effort to dramatize the life of our second Filipino saint. Valiant because this is not an easy task given the paucity of historical material other than the circumstances of his tragic death in Guam in 1672, at the hands of the Chamorros the Jesuit mission was trying to convert to Catholicism. A young catechist who was the right hand man to mission head Father Diego, Calungsod’s very place of birth is a matter of contention, with both Cebu and Iloilo among those claiming Calungsod as their native son.

So what we have is a narrative that opens with his fateful death, followed by flashbacks to life in the Guam Jesuit mission, his early childhood and his life in the Cebu Jesuit house before departing for Mexico and Guam. Totally committed and devout throughout the film, the depiction of Calungsod in this film does not have an “arc” — no moments of personal doubt or conflict. In fact, the dramatic highlight of the film comes from an unlikely source — the Chamorro chief who’s the main villain. When he exhorts his fellow Chamorros to reject the trampling of their beliefs and customs by the Spanish priests, it’s the closest the film has to an Independence Day/Pacific Rim speech moment. The ensemble cast does its best, and kudos to Rocco Nacino, Christian Vasquez and Jestoni Alarcon for their standout portrayals.

While watching the film, I was reminded of the Palme d’Or-winning The Mission of Roland Joffe, which also explored Jesuit missionary work, but in South America. There, Jeremy Irons and Robert de Niro represented conflicting philosophies on how to approach missionary work, and you had the added friction between Church and State. It’s this aspect of shifting facets, depth and texture that the lack of real historical material on Calungsod struggles to create. What I did like was how the film tries to humanize Calungsod, as in the scene where he’s instructing a class of Chamorro youngsters on the concept of our Lord as shepherd.

For earnestness and sincerity, I’ll give high points to this Calungsod film, and the cinematography work has much to commend it. That you had the characters too often talking in platitudes (those in the Jesuit mission), or in strident indignation (the Chamorros), had me wishing for a different approach to the screenplay; but yes, there was this need to make Pedro Calungsod’s life a film subject, to bring home to more people an understanding of how he earned sainthood.