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IN WRITING AND producing the documentary film “The Making of Quezon City” (2018) directed by Fil-Briton filmmaker Jowee Morel for the Quezon City Public Library, I had to refresh my Manuel Luis Quezon biography and other related materials by rereading and researching more about the man as founder of the capital city of the Philippines.
Not only that.
I had to write or approach resource persons and institutions, family relations, filial contacts, historians etc. for interviews and if they agreed, scheduled them for shoots.
One of our subjects was Ricky Avancena, one of the grandsons of MLQ with daughter Maria Zenaida Quezon Avancena.
Yes, Ricky Avancena who passionately reacted negatively about how his grandfather was portrayed onscreen at a talkback session after one of the screenings of “Quezon,” the movie, in the presence of its director Jerrold Tarog and titular actor Jericho Rosales.
One of Ricky’s revelations in our exclusive interview was the genealogy of his lolo.
“Bihira ang nakakaalam na ang lolo ko ay apo ng prayle (Only a few knows that my grandfather was a grandson of a friar.
Or Prof. Xiao Chua’s account that as a young boy, Quezon, was kind of a bully to his playmates in Baler so his father had to dress him down one day.
These details make for an interesting and exciting view of how Quezon himself took and carried himself later in life.
Although these pieces of information aren’t included or even glimpsed at in the full-length feature currently showing in cinemas nationwide, these could as well spur a lot of colorful and intriguing reel interpretations of Quezon, the way the film has unearthed facts and figures on the life story of the first president of the Commonwealth woven them together to present a so-called creative documentary of sorts bordering on feature film or shall we say, creative non-fiction film.
Historical accounts as texts are lent with subtexts, contexts and pretexts to make them more palatable and relatable without necessarily being conclusive yet discursive.
In the opening scene alone after a prologue, black and white footages are framed onscreen like vintage silent movies prevalent during the turn of the twentieth century movies (whose sizes were smaller than the spread of a wider screen or widescreen) with Quezon (Benjamin Alves) as a young man visibly already a politician being cheered up by his supporters in his Tayabas province as a fiscal and as a councilor in Lucena, the provincial capital city before he was governor of the whole of Tayabas eventually until his presidential victory in the 1935 elections (portrayed by Rosales) where scenes are transformed in color.
These smaller frames are breakers to lead-in anew to the political drama of Quezon like his victories during his representation at the Philippine Assembly and other national posts like being Senate President to his reaching the apex of his ambition to be the president of the republic.
These recurrent images are devices to remind the audience that what they are watching are movie clips taken together to complete an impression of Quezon in his diverse personalities.
The alternate portrayals of Alves and Rosales’ generational Quezon emphasize the changing mood and atmosphere not excluding the hero’s psyche and motives as a politician to lead the country.
Why else is he described by his own wife, first cousin Aurora Aragon Quezon, as a chameleon?
In its non-linear approach to narrative, “Quezon” has risen above in most local historical films as a mastery in the modernist persuasion without losing credibility and plausibility as a general tone of resonance of traditional, patronage politics in today’s landscape.