FILM REVIEW: HUNGHONG SA YUTA (EARTH'S WHISPER)

FILM REVIEW: Hunghong sa Yuta: A Mindanao film for the nation
Bienvenido Lumbera/National Artist for Literature
Friday, 09 May 2008 08:11
(http://www.mindanews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4334&Itemid=143)

DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/08 May) – “Earth’s Whisper” as the English translation of the title of Arnel Mardoquio’s film about war and peace in Mindanao easily cues us on how to read this story about a clutch of deaf-mute children in a mountain community consisting of Christians, Muslims and Lumads, and the teacher from the city who introduces them to the alphabet and numbers. War between rebels and the military has devastated the community of Hinyok, its most telling casualty being children born without the ability to speak and hear whose fathers are now intent on training them to become fighters to defend their land. Vigo Cruz, artist and toy-maker, answers a posted notice about Hinyok’s need for a teacher, and his work with the children brings joy and hope to the young war victims and their mothers.

Mardoquio’s screenplay weaves together with realism and symbolism the many contradictions that the war had imposed on the community. The military has been sent by the Manila government to the jungles of Mindanao to decimate the rebels as per the demands of politicians and businessmen who want peace so their careers and business could prosper. The communities are forced to take up arms to defend their farms and homes. With husbands away as guerilla fighters, the mothers find themselves taking sides in the war, suspicious of strangers who come into their midst until Vigo comes to Hinyok and presents himself as a teacher to their children. Thus, armed with the abakada and numbers, the children become persons able to get hold of an alternative to their crudely-fashioned wooden toy guns. Here Mardoquio’s narrative takes a symbolic turn.

Having achieved their identity as persons, the children are on their way to discovering the bond that integrates them as members of one community. This is dramatized in their recovery of the brass instruments that the war had caused to be abandoned in a stream following a massacre of villagers. But the joy of making music is disrupted by the revelation that a man assumed to be a rebel leader turns out to be a soldier spying on the community. The deaths that ensue bring out the lamentable consequences of war that does not spare the lives of men of goodwill such as Vigo, the tribal woman leader Buyag Inggan, the intrepid fighter Wahab, the recalcitrant Amrayda, all of them betrayed by the traitorous Taok

An advocacy project of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart Youth Ministry under the leadership of Br. Noelvic Deloria SC, “Hunghong sa Yuta” is part of what its producers intend as a “mobile peace education campaign.” What distinguishes it from the usual advocacy project is the meticulous care given by the director and his staff, and the passion and excellence of the finished project. Mardoquio as director had been able to assemble a highly competent cast from Davao City theater folk that includes Nelson Dino, Lucia Cijas, Joan Mae Soco, Popong Landero, Mario Leofer Lim and Christine Lim, and the child actors Jaymar Generana and Marvin Mindog blend with confidence with the adult performers.