From strength to strength

Mike de Leon directs Max Collins (center) and Atom Araullo. —Jeffrey Tictic/Contributor

We’re happy to learn that acclaimed filmmaker Mike de Leon has started shooting his new film, “Citizen Jake”—but, we’re disheartened to hear that he intends it to be his final motion picture.

We hope that, once the film is shown, it will be enthusiastically supported and patronized by viewers, so that he will be encouraged and inspired enough—to change his mind!

Being one of our best and most consistent film masters (in fact, we’ve cited him to become our next “logical” National Artist for Film), De Leon shouldn’t rest on his laurels just yet.

But, we understand his disappointment at the less than strong support that some of his movies have gotten.

After all, he’s put his own finances on the line to fund some of them, like his 1999 historical drama, “Bayaning Third World,” which didn’t recoup its production cost at the box office.

Still, it isn’t too late for Filipino viewers to retroactively wise up and make amends, by supporting “Citizen Jake” when it’s finally completed and screened, hopefully before the current film year ends.

Will it make it as an entry to the 2017 Metro Manila Film Festival and turn out to be both a critical and commercial success?

It’s the least we can do for a filmmaker who’s devoted 40 years of his life to exciting and enlightening us with his exceptional cinematic gifts and vision.

It was in 1976 that Mike first made the film world sit up and marvel at his debut film, “Itim.” Brilliantly changing style and tack, from dark drama to rousingly lovely romance, he next came up with “Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising” in 1977.

The year 1980 saw him gleefully going for political and social satire with “Kakabakaba Ka Ba?” then back to dark and dangerous themes the very next year with “Kisapmata.” How prodigiously versatile could a filmmaker get? Very!

De Leon’s other movies in the ’80s saw him going from strength to strength when it came to the production of politically perceptive, engaged and daring films, with “Batch ’81” and “Sister Stella L.”

“Batch ’81” used vicious frat initiations as a springboard for inveighing against political control and violence, while “Stella L” traced the evolution of an initially reticent nun into a freedom fighter.

In 1985, Mike radically changed tack again, coming up with his most commercially successful movie to date, the lushly romantic “Hindi Nahahati ang Langit.”

Producers were delighted to see that he could be so “popular,” and urged him to do more of the same—but De Leon went back to less trivial themes with “Aliwan Paradise” and “Bayaning Third World.”

What about “Citizen Jake”? The film starring Atom Araullo is billed as “an investigative crime story with political overtones.” Other lead players include Cherie Gil, Luis Alandy, Max Collins, Teroy Guzman and Gabby Eigenmann.

This early, we’re making a mental note to watch and support it as soon as it starts its run. With the consistently excellent Mike de Leon at the helm, it should end up as the season’s best film—and not his last!