Joseph Planta's Commentary - thecommentary.ca

Friday, 24 September 2004

Imelda: revealing a nation

By Joseph Planta

VANCOUVER - The documentary, Imelda, by filmmaker Ramona Diaz is at once engrossing as it is thought provoking. It is also wonderfully shot, using 16 mm, when not cutting to stock footage, painting a serene landscape of the land where the drama of this story takes place. The film which has its Canadian première at the Vancouver International Film Festival (Sunday, 26 September, and Tuesday, 05 October 2004), provokes much thought about the mythic nature of the political figure, Imelda Marcos.

The film also reveals a stretch of time in the history of a nation, as well as its peoples own struggle for identity following Spanish, Japanese and American occupation. What's remarkable is that the struggle for identity is played out in the film's obvious star, Imelda Marcos. In a fortuitous piece of casting, Mrs. Marcos channels the conflict that doubtless ensues in that search for identity. The former Philippine first lady is not so much the film's star because there is a need for glamour and personality to colour the history of the Philippines, rather for a significant period in the archipelago's history, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos dominated the nation's history and defined it with their animated verve.

When the Marcoses came to mass public attention in the 1960s, they arrived as a sort of John and Jackie Kennedy for Southeast Asia. The message for voters was hope, especially in that era of post-war materialism that left the Philippines searching for its identity. To define an identity, as is often the case, direction comes from its leaders. The Marcoses were adept at constructing an idea of culture, and that was accomplished through ostentatious nation building exercises that helped sway the opinion of the demimonde but did little else. The Marcoses are charged with plundering a third-world nation's treasury for personal gain and for paying for such merriment. She doesn't necessarily deny spending wads of money on frivolity; rather she claims that beauty and frivolity are necessary in ones life. This is exhibited in her lavish fashion sense, which she claims was expected of her by the same poor people who apparently paid for this existence with abject poverty. Poor people, Marcos claims, felt better, when she felt and looked good.

Surprisingly enough, Mrs. Marcos participates in this film. She participates much as one would expect someone to if they were making one of those run-of-the-mill television documentaries that abound. She claims at the start of the film that her family's legacy has often been misunderstood and that the totality of its legacy is difficult to assess just yet. As well, Marcos laments in the beginning of the film that the totality of hers and her husband's legacy is misunderstood thanks to public perception that has been moulded by history, the media, and misinformation. With the former first lady's participation however, Diaz skilfully avoids tearing down the Marcos mystique by making a film that was very critical of the former first lady, where at the same time she skilfully avoids making a movie that was sycophantic towards the Marcos mystique. Imelda is even-handed and fair, leaving the film's star to her own devices, thus allowing the audience to draw its own conclusion of the controversial political figure.

And of course, there are the shoes. Unexpectedly, the film doesn't dip garishly into the shoe fetish. It rates a cursory mention at the start of the film, and is delved into in the films last quarter, which is good because it really is a perfunctory part of the Marcos mystique, and less important than the greater impact had during their 30 years in power. What is revealing is the excitement and misplaced importance that most put on the shoes, and Diaz adroitly avoids Marcos directly referring to it herself. Journalists and a guide at the museum that houses the remnants of her collection are left salivating at this aspect of Mrs. Marcos's legend. Marcos's only comment about the shoes is that when they fled the Philippines in 1986, her detractors found only shoes, and not skeletons.

One suspects that Mrs. Marcos participates and allows the filmmaker into her lair to ensure that her side of the story is heard. Alas, since, Marcos has worked to have the film banned in the Philippines, calling the film riddled with "malice, inaccuracies and innuendoes."

What some viewers may find exasperating is Mrs. Marcos's penchant for gratuitous namedropping - practically everyone she's met from General Douglas MacArthur to George Hamilton, from Irving Berlin to Muammar al-Qaddafi, to Lyndon Johnson and Doris Duke, rated mentions, and most hardly had any substantive contribution except for perhaps signalling the Marcos desire to be constantly upwardly mobile, socially. As well, Mrs. Marcos's own proclivity for breaking into a song may be too much for some to take. Obviously, in fine voice, even now, what is so obviously a part of her persona and charm is highlighted throughout the film. There was an interesting part in the film where Mrs. Marcos readily engages in a demonstration of her personal cosmology. With some card and a felt tip marker, Marcos draws diagrams and highlights how her spiritual thinking is made up. It's a confusing mess of ink and that ugly noise that markers make, which involves in one fell swoop, God, food, money, happiness, beauty, Apple computers, and Pac-Man. It either reveals her in sync with the great philosophers of history, or exposes herself to be nothing more than a convoluted and delusional bimbo.

Diaz has been quoted as saying, that fans of Marcos, as well as detractors will go to this film with their sentiments in tact and will leave the theatre the same. The film is fair in that sense. What it does do however, and this is where the filmmaker's thesis is revealed, is ask some timely and pertinent questions, questions that Filipinos have yet taken the time to struggle with. What is their identity? Moreover, how can that search for an identity be explained in the light of the Marcos legacy?

Mrs. Marcos seemingly says that beauty - feeling better about yourself and your life - is far more important than those errant political issues both within and without a nation. Despite unpopularity, there are many who revel in glow of the Marcos legacy, least of all Marcos herself, and her two children who have thriving political careers today. Both the film and Imelda Marcos reveal that this is a nation overcome by the power of celebrity. This means, of course, that the Marcoses are at once absolved of their actions, as much as they are indicted; for they were only playing the parts that they were cast in. Perhaps people do get the kinds of politicians they deserve.

***

Imelda, a film by Ramona S. Diaz, will make its Canadian première at the 23rd Annual Vancouver International Film Festival (Sunday, 26 September, 6.40 p.m., and Tuesday, 05 October, 4.00 p.m., at the Granville 7 Cinema). Visit www.viff.org, for tickets and details.

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