Demythologizing a revolution
It’s not surprising that nationalist democrats are less than satisfied with the biopic on the martial law (ML) era revolutionary Edgard Jopson or “Edjop,” which was screened in theaters fittingly enough during the 54th anniversary of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s military proclamation.
They have described the Katski Flores film as revisionist, perhaps a result of inadequate research despite years of preparation, and too much attention to the parallel tale of the titular hero’s middle child and eldest daughter, Joyette, a marathon runner coming to terms with her father’s martyrdom and legacy, because it dilutes the main story.
As cinema, though, there’s no doubt that things cohere, its narrative structure going back and forth to explore Jopson’s middle-class background and Jesuit education, fully internalizing the concept of being a “man for others” by taking the struggle to the picket lines and depressed countryside, interweaving this with the modern-day angst of Joyette, the better to connect with the younger audience, mostly millennials and Gen Zs. This after all is not a documentary.
The day we caught the film was on the ML anniversary itself, and the movie house was nearly full with a class of maybe senior high schoolers from an exclusive boys’ school, potential Edjops if God’s grace should so guide them.
It also can’t be gainsaid that the film’s other strength is characterization, particularly the lead roles, played by Elijah Canlas as Edjop and Kakie Pangilinan as Joy, as well as Jodi Sta. Maria as Joyette and the supporting actors Teroy Guzman as Edjop’s father and Menchu Lauchengco Yulo as the older Joy battling the onset of dementia.
What the nat-dems seem upset about is the depiction of the higher-ranked communist officials and cadres as power tripping boors not much different from the entrenched authorities of a system they sought to overthrow. Point well taken, as the real flesh-and-blood activists were there when it happened, and to depart from what to them were realities on the ground was tantamount to taking a reactionary stance. However, the equally imbecilic treatment of the military hunting down Edjop sort of balances out things, proving that not only is all fair in love and war, but both situations inspire heroism as much as stupidity.
For a life rich in battles and ideology, it is disconcerting that the story of Edjop should be allotted around two-thirds of the screen time, in other words, more context should have been given in the transition of an Ateneo boy into a prudent reformist and later firebrand of a cadre organizing labor unions and eventually taking his act to the wilds of Mindanao. And nat-dems were right too in being nonplussed with the subplot of Joyette’s failed romance with her foreign boyfriend, who in an argument asks her, “Who’s your coach?” Same can be asked of Marcos Jr. with the advent of Pax Silica, or even his detractors who see conspiracy theories everywhere.
The period footage was no slouch either, capturing as it did the zeitgeist of troubled times, strikes and soirees and violent rally dispersals, endless discourses in the halls of academe, and also a hilarious scene where Edjop, in what was to be his initiation into manhood and wonders of sex, engaged the in-house sex worker in a discussion on the intricacies of class struggle, much to the amusement of his buddies waiting outside.
“Edjop,” however, can’t be strictly considered as a period film because of the parallel storyline of Joyette, which gives proceedings a more contemporary, immediate flavor and thus be made accessible to the cellphone and laptop toting throng, who otherwise would consider mimeographing manifestos and pounding away on typewriters as strange fruit of a bitter, antique age.
Commendable and deserving of a shoutout was a cameo of the actor playing late writer and poet Alfredo Salanga, one of Edjop’s best buddies at the Ateneo and who in his time in the south helped identify a body or two of those slain by state forces as grief encircled the countryside.
An obvious source material for the film was the biography U.G. by Benjamin Pimentel Jr., which won a national book award from Manila Critics Circle and soberly chronicles the life and death of a grocer’s son-turned-working-class hero. A number of the scenes in the script written by Flores and Jade Castro (of “Endo” fame) might have been derived from this book, providing necessary ballast and gravitas as counterpoint to the Jopson family dynamic.
What upsets the Left most is likely how the revolution is practically used as a backdrop for the family struggle, but isn’t keeping family and soul together in such disjointed times in itself a feat equally revolutionary? Perhaps even more so because stripped of the clutter of ideology, praxis, the resurgent hegemonies that a downtrodden class forever has to deal with.
Maybe not the biopic we were expecting, but “Edjop” more than holds its own as cinema, as entertainment, as a cultural artifact, really a welcome innovation to spur the youth to mull things over, surely better than being pulled into the dark web and led to the guns hidden in their guardian’s safe boxes.
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