Eddie Romero’s films gratefully remembered

By his own puckish recollection, National Artist for Film Eddie Romero, who left us earlier this week at age 88, was only 15 or 16 years old when he started to write screenplays for the Gerry de Leon.

What wonderfully precocious luck and pluck for the young Eddie to have begun his filmmaking career under the prized tutelage of the acclaimed film master!

Even better, the time came soon enough when Romero himself was hailed as a filmmaker nonpareil in his own right, and became a National Artist like his revered mentor. —Really, nothing beats the best learning from the very best!

Now that Eddie is no longer with us (we thought he’d live and continue to make movies “forever!”), his films will have to speak for him—and, what an eloquent tribute they clarion forth!

Not only was he a precocious filmmaker, directing his first movie while still in his teens, but he was also the sterling precursor of the Global Filipino, his filmmaking talent thriving not just here, but internationally.

Early on, this was due to the fact that his father was our ambassador to England, so while Eddie was with him in London, he steeped himself in the latest film techniques, and interacted with some acclaimed film masters, like David Lean.

Perhaps using Lean as a model, Eddie was one of the few Filipino writer-directors who bothered to learn the all-important art of editing, and subsequently spliced together some of his own films.

There came the time, however, that Romero so despaired of the artistic prospects of the then usually formulaic Filipino film that he made movies for the American market, instead. The “coproduction ventures” did well, and enabled Eddie to work with American actors who would later become big stars, like Jack Nicholson.

Theme

But, even as his “international” career flourished, Eddie still longed to make Filipino movies—not formula melodramas, but films that had something significant to say about our unique makeup as a people—a theme seldom dramatized in local movies, because it was so difficult to “capture.”

But, being the exceptional and visionary film artist he was, Eddie sensed that he was up to the task, and patiently waited for the opportunity to prove his point.

It came out of the blue, when he heard of the unexpected success at the box office of Lino Brocka’s “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang,” which enjoyed the patronage and support of Catholic schools.

If “Tinimbang” could make it, perhaps other significant Filipino films now also stood a fighting chance of ending up in the black? Romero decided to try again, and “gambled” with “Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon”—and the rest is cinematic history.

That movie is remembered for its many virtues, but its standout scene for us is its concluding sequence, in which some children awkwardly and movingly start articulating the view that the place in which they live is not just a stray smattering of unrelated isles—but could become a nation!

Romero presented that key scene so masterfully that it hit viewers where they lived and breathed! To Eddie Romero, for these and many other cinematic gifts and graces, our love and gratitude! A major film retrospective is decidedly in order.