Manila in the Claws of Light Uses Restraint To Vividly Capture Its Characters Agony

Julio Madiaga (Bembol Roco) is on a mission, though he isn't exactly upfront about it. He has come from his home in Marinduque to the city of Manila seemingly just for the purpose of finding construction work. It's a job he's able to eventually procure and while on this job he makes a handful of friends, some of whom gradually learn why Julio has come to Manila in the first place. The love of Julio's life, Ligaya (Hilda Koronel), has been kidnapped and brought to the city of Manila and he's on a mission to find her and bring her home, even though he has very little in the way of information on where she could be beyond knowing the identity of the woman who lured her to Manila in the first place.


But Julio won't give up and Clodualdo del Mundo Jr.'s script for Manila in the Claws of Light proceeds to depict all the hardships he faces in trying to find Ligaya, particularly in terms of finding any kind of stable employment. His dangerous construction gig doesn't last for long and eventually Julio has to track down other ways to make money. His search for steady employment, as well as his experiences on a construction site where the death of workers is treated as a nuisance rather than a tragedy, allows him and the viewer a gaze into the corruption of Manila that sees the rich and powerful running rampant while the everyday people like Julio or Ligaya are the ones who suffer as a result of their debauchery.

Though we get an in-movie glimpse of real-life protests against this corruption that were occuring in Manila at the time of the film's release, Julio stays on the outside of any sort of organized rebellion against the powers-that-be. Instead, he serves as an effective audience-point-of-view character for viewers, like myself, unaware of this portion of Philippines history (or any sort of Philippines history in general). Julio comes into Manila in the Claws of Light unaware of the horrors awaiting him in mid-1970s Manila and being constantly surprised by what new experiences await him in his attempts to rescue Ligaya. In addition to functioning as a solid audience POV character, Julio also enters Manila in the Claws of Light as a traditional hero figure out ot save a damsel in distress only for the harsh realities of life to make such a rescue mission much more complicated than expected at any turn.

Of course, Julio's motivation for coming to Manila is a mystery for much of the films runtime, particularly in introductory scenes where the only glimpse of Julio's past come from well-edited brief flashbacks that, much like the masterfully executed jagged flashbacks from You Were Never Really Here, abruptly come and go to simulate how something in Julio's present-day circumstances may send his mind into brief flashes of a more idyllic past. He can keep his motivations for coming to Manila a secret from the people around him, but his own mind keeps reminding him of that past he's concealing from everyone around him and Edgardo Jarlego and Ike Jarlego's editing does an impressively disarming job of visually depicting how the past abruptly creeps into Julio's mind.

Cinematographer Miguel de Leon and iconic director Lino Brocka visually reinforce the more hopeful nature of these brief spurts of the past by coating them in plenty of bright colors that make Julio's home look like something out of a postcard. By contrast, de Leon and Brocka set much of the scenes set in the more dangerous city of Manila in the darkest portion of nighttime, characters like Julio are surrounded by darkness on both a thematic and a visual level. In a lovely subtle visual choice, the one scene of Julio and Ligaya being reunited in Manila see's them talking in a hotel room coated in a shade of green that is neither too bright nor too dark. The two characters being reunited in the city of Manila see's them set against a backdrop that sees the differing visual sensibilities of the film's depiction of Marinduque and Manila coming together for a singular moment.

It's a brilliantly executed touch in one of the most engrossing scenes in a movie full of such scenes as Hilda Koronel agonizingly depicts her character finally being allowed to pour her heart out to someone she loves after spending so much time being dehumanized by everyone around her. We don't need flashbacks to her misery to fully understand what she's gone through, Koronel's performance in this harrowing sequence (all captured in a single take!) is all we need to understand all that she's gone through. This scene choosing to set the focus exclusively on a downtrodden character communicating their pain isn't just a mesmerizing sampling of the talents of Hilda Koronel, it's also a prime example of how well Manila in the Claws of Light explores the experiences of marginalized citizens without reducing those marginalized citizens to simply their misery, the humanity of characters like Julio and Ligaya is clearly always on the mind of director Lino Brocka.

The emphasis on humanity even extends to an appropriately bleak ending that sees Julio's attempted rescue mission going belly-up in a gruesome fashion. Once again, we don't see the horrors inflicted on Ligaya in this chilling development, that's not necessary to get the viewer to understand just how wretched this turn of events is for Julio. All we need is the restrained but striking lead performance from Bembol Roco to make this scene as emotionally gut-wrenching as intended. Director Lino Brocka constantly shows an affinity for the subdued in Manila in the Claws of Light and this creative choice is a key reason why his filmmaking is so vivid in realizing the miserable experiences of characters like Julio and Ligaya that endure throughout this feature.