This is not a review of the movie. I don’t know how to write those, and I don’t really watch a lot of movies, unless they’re based on musicals or they have a very interesting premise.
My first encounter of ‘Ang Larawan’ dates back to 2010. I was a junior in Ateneo, taking up Set Design (one of my major subjects). The late National Artist Salvador Bernal had been our professor for about 2 or 3 classes, until Sir Gino Gonzales took over. I will never forget one of our 3-hour classes wherein we had to paint a small piece of illustration board, copying an image of wood. For our finals, we designed a set for this musical.
Ang Larawan, starring Joanna Ampil, Paulo Avelino and Rachel Alejandro
Eight years later, ‘Ang Larawan’ is produced as an entry to the Metro Manila Film Festival, and I can’t let this chance of watching it pass by.
Maybe the final set design project and deadline prevented me from appreciating the material 8 years ago. To be completely honest, if the movie was not released last year, I don’t think I would have listened to the original soundtrack again. While I find it hard to empathize with the characters by just listening to the music, I had been curious as to how anyone could pull off Candida’s laughter-to-tears breakdown during “Walang Ilaw.” You need to be a really skilled actor to deliver that scene truthfully on stage.
It amazes me that Filipinos are so creative and talented that they can create beautiful movies like these – historically accurate (or at least I felt that it was), gorgeous cinematography, and powerful acting by theatre veterans that brings the characters and what’s at stake in scene alive. It deserves all the awards it received during the awards, and 2 hours of your time inside the cinema.
My favorite song from the musical was cut in the movie, but overall, I was very happy. Catch “Ang Larawan” at the Metro Manila Film Festival in all leading cinemas nationwide.
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