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Today, Evelyn and I ventured to do something which we haven’t done – in my recollection – since 1998. And that is, watch a Filipino movie. In 1998, to commemorate the Philippines’ Independence Day Centennial, Filipinos produced a movie on the life of its national hero, Jose Rizal. I would give that movie three stars, but by Filipino standards, that’s an excellent rating.

This time, we watched Baler (buh-ler), a love story under the backdrop of the Siege of Baler during the Philippine Revolution of 1898. The two main characters are Celso (Jericho Rosales), a Filipino-Spanish solider in the Spanish contingent, and Feliza (Anne Curtis), a village lass who is also the daughter of a revolutionary commander. The couple carried on a secret love affair in those difficult revolutionary conditions, torn between the soldier’s loyalty to Spain and the father’s (Philip Salvador) hatred for the oppressive Spaniards.

Baler is a small isolated town about 200 miles northeast of Manila, then accessible only by foot. (It’s now the capital of the province of Aurora.) On June 29, 1898, Filipino revolutionary forces started their attack on the church in Baler where the Spanish forces holed up. The Spanish forces endured 337 days of hunger and disease, refusing to surrender while waiting for reinforcements that never came. Also unbeknownst to them was the defeat of the Spanish armada in Manila Bay by American Admiral George Dewey on May 1 and a ceasefire between Spanish and American forces on August 13 of the same year.

Throughout the siege, Celso and Feliza, and another couple, Lope, Celso’s friend who was also a Filipino soldier serving with the Spanish forces, and Luming (Nikki Bacolod), Feliza’s friend, tried to keep their relationships alive with secret meetings and messages.

The movie has several obvious flaws. My first complaint was the script, since the conversations would have been more authentic if the language used was more fitting with Filipino culture in the 1890s. The producers could also have used a dozen or so Spanish-speaking mestizos who are easily available in the country. The scene transitions seem to be broken up, the village huts look too fresh, the soldier’s uniforms are way too tattered (the photo after the siege doesn’t show so much wear and tear), and the puppy never grows in almost a year. The American Marines who attempted to rescue the Spanish were in Navy uniforms. And although there might have been a very slight chance that a couple of Filipino village girls would have the looks of Anne Curtis and Nikki Bacolod, it is very slim indeed. Acting, as usual in Filipino movies, is overdone, particularly by Salvador who is always screaming mad in every scene.

But there are a few things I like in this movie. It is well-researched, with actual events and other details of the siege accurately portrayed. The surrender demands by the Filipinos, the water buffalo that wandered into the church area, and the Spanish emissaries and newspapers given to the Spanish officer, Saturnino Martin-Cerezo, were all true to history. What impressed me was the attention given to how Cerezo was convinced of the truth of cessation of hostilities. The Filipinos sent Spanish newspapers to Cerezo so he would be able to read about the end of the war, but Cerezo was not impressed until he saw an article announcing the upcoming wedding of a fellow officer he knew in Spain.

The story of five deserters were also in the movie, two of them used in the story of Celso and his friend Lope. Two soldiers who were imprisoned at the baptistery of the church for helping a fellow soldier desert were executed on orders of Cerezo one day before the surrender.

This attempt at a historical epic by the Filipino movie industry – notorious for its pandering to moviegoers well-known for their love of crass sex, violence and plain trash and nonsense such as Iskul Bukol, Desperadas 2, One Night Only – is commendable. Just for this noble attempt, in addition to its historicity and picturesque shots of the countryside, I will give it three stars.

Perhaps Filipinos should emulate American producers and dig into the riches of Philippine history. Anyone out there who would make a movie about other Filipino heroes such as Andres Bonifacio, Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar, Apolinario Mabini, Gomburza, Trece Martires of Cavite and Bicol, Miguel Malvar, Macario Sakay, Diego Silang, Francisco Dagohoy, the Balangiga Massacre, and “Hell-Roaring Jake”?