I’M supposed to be silent about the “Gomburza” film. I do not want to be misunderstood or seen as someone trying to make it appear I was part of it when the Jesuits who produced the film had their own more qualified historians with them. Fr. Rene Javellana, SJ, was constantly at the set to check not only historical matters but also pre-Vatican 2 rituals.

But to his credit, their marketing guy Jon Montesa saw me at the Stop and Salute flag-raising ceremony at the Rizal Park Luneta early this month and excitedly told me that “Gomburza” stars Cedrick Juan and Enchong Dee would like to see me. The two stars personally told me how my “Gomburza”related videos helped them in their preparation, and of course, I was elated by that. And then they gave me some merch like T-shirt and calendar; e madali naman akong makuha sa merch. Mababaw lang kaligayahan ko!

And so I re-shared their posts and told people the film would not disappoint because Jesuit Communications also produced the Filipino-directed international film on St. Ignatius of Loyola. But until the premiere night last Saturday at Gateway Cineplex, I was really hoping that I would really like it, not just in terms of history, but as a film that would appeal to a “regular viewer.”

Even as a historical consultant, I understand that a historical film will never be totally accurate because sources, however detailed, do not contain dialogue. The fears, the doubts, the pains and the joys of the characters have to be felt, and the feeling has to be imagined, not just by the director and writer but by the whole creative team. For as long as the spirit of the story is not distorted and a certain level of believability is achieved, it should not have to be an exact recreation, for that can never happen.

I also try to look at the whole creative vision of the director and try not to impose my preferences. The director, Pepe Diokno, obviously wants to impart to an audience a clear-cut message through clear-cut storytelling. They began with Hermano Puli and how he created the brotherhood of Indio believers when he was rejected from becoming a priest just because of his skin color. Choosing Piolo Pascual to play Fr. Pedro Pelaez, the “Father of the Secularization Movement,” introduces and highlights his role to a new generation of viewers — that as secular, non-regular priests, despite being Spaniards born in the Philippines, the Spaniards from the peninsula made them feel like sh*t. It was a time when merely loving your own culture and land and being more intelligent than the Spaniards was something dangerous. In laying these contexts, the film is able to make us realize that it was a bumpy road before we were able to call ourselves Filipinos, which is why we must cherish it.

There were many indoor scenes that tended to be dark, which may well be an allegory of the darkness that we felt at that time as Filipinos.

The film makes us realize that things change and things remain the same. A 151 years after Gomburza’s death, wanting to change things even if you really do not want to bring down the government is deemed “radical” rather than “liberal.” The priests Mariano Gomes, José Burgos and Jacinto Zamora, who were only fighting for the Filipinization of the leadership of the Church (which would only fully happen in the 1970s) and advocating equality, not only were red-tagged, but they died as victims of fake news.

Cedrick Juan’s portrayal of Burgos is stellar, and in interviews, he appeared to be well-versed already in the literature and mentions the names of his sources: Fr. John Schumacher, SJ, Rene Javellana, SJ, Ambeth Ocampo, even Xiao Chua. As an actor, he was overly generous to the often neglected role of the historian in society.

The rest of the cast: “walang tapon,” even those that have only a few seconds to appear, are too important to be left out because they form part of the jigsaw puzzle that makes the story relevant to the present. But if I had my way, as Dante Rivero, who played Father Gomes, expressed it, I wish there would have been more portrayal of Gomes’s work as a community builder and peace negotiator. I even saw in him a more mature version of FPJ-style acting, and although Father Zamora, played by Enchong Dee, was mistakenly arrested, the film should have shown that he also actively participated in the secularization movement. The film focused much on Burgos. Direk Pepe chose to let loose a lot of complicated narratives to tell the simpler narrative of Burgos’s advocacy for equality, which is easy to understand.

The imagined dialogue between Fathers Gomes and Burgos talking about the country being unfortunate is one I really liked. Because it asks the question, what is the use of so much senseless suffering? The hopeful message is that everything has a reason and that their sacrifice will not be in vain.

Historian Teodoro Agoncillo made the events of 1872 a big thing when he said there was no Filipino nation before it. In discussing the subject with director Pepe Diokno, he told me he was well aware that this was contentious, and I reminded him of how Zeus Salazar actually believes that the Gomburza did not have much impact on the poor in the provinces but more on the elites. Yet when the nation was being birthed, Rizal and the Katipunan conveniently used the Gomburza as a rallying cry.

In the end, it is really about human rights. And it is only fitting that Pepe Diokno, grandson of the Father of Human Rights Advocacy in the Philippines, the first Pepe Diokno, directed this film ably and contributes to remind us that this nation is built on cherished human rights by those who were deprived of it.

“Gomburza” is a beautiful epic. A once in a few years film, watching it is being part of history itself!