MANILA BY NIGHT, MANILA ALL DAY
There isn’t a more familiar sound to anyone who grew up in any semblance of a Filipino household, no matter how diluted by choice and circumstance, than the full-throated bellow of a mother’s threatening voice. The rapid succession of words firing off in a single physicalized huff of breath, complete with hands either frantically gesticulating mid-air or propped on the side of the hip is enough to set any stubborn pain-in-the-ass to straighten their spine in saintly obedience. No hay-Diyos-ko-itong-batangito-talaga-oo was (and still is) spared, even a very young, pre-Bagets breakout matinee idol in the making, William Martinez in the dark and gritty visual essay of dictatorial protest, Manila By Night.
In the 1980 seminal classic cast in the permanence of celluloid by Ishmael Bernal, the visceral exposition explores the intimacies and connections that command the arteries of the Manila underbelly, a rotting excuse of a city ensconced in neon lights, ironic architectural infrastructures, and the trappings of the nouveaux rich. Even before the day could enjoy its relenting to the grip of the night, the film’s opening chorus of a hum of the 80s-style sedans whirring, what sounds to be a dog-like whimper, and the mindless drawl and mumble of the adolescent motley crew of Martinez’s turn as Alex is rudely punctured by the shrill of Virgie, his incandescent mother clad in a vivid blue caftan, given so much matriarchal pomp by the incomparable Charito Solis.
While his childhood was arguably worlds away from Alex in what would later be renamed (a no-choice conceding of the film’s producers to Imelda Marcos, then First Lady and Governor of Manila, who thought the original title spoke ill of the city), his formative years were filled with the very same nagging, panic,
