Lino Brocka is perhaps the greatest director the Philippines has produced so far. He created numerous films, like Wanted: Perfect Mother, Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang and Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko Ng Liwanag, to name a few. Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko Ng Liwanag, or translated in English, Manila: In The Claws of Light can be counted amongst his greatest works. Some critics have come to consider this particular film as the greatest Philippine film ever made. Brocka paints a dark picture of Manila, as a political cesspool, as a crime-filled and hopelessly desolate place.
This film is an impressive film noir that reflects the ugly truths and harsh realities of Manila, from the exploitation of construction workers, to the slum areas where children have to rummage through garbage to find something to make ends meet, to prostitution and the sex slave trade. The film revolves around Julio Madaga, an innocent boy from the province who works at construction sites, and his love, Ligaya Paraiso, who was recruited by a certain Mrs. Cruz, unknowingly, into a sex slave trade and who was thus sold to a Chinese man named Ah Tek.
He has many symbolisms in the film, and he plays with his characters like the Fates and the Olympians do with the Greeks of old. It is pretty ironic that the boy, Julio, whose name means “patience”, completely loses it in the film when he hears about Ligaya’s death. Ligaya Paraiso, a name that means “joyful paradise” experienced a world that was probably the total opposite. Lino Brocka utilizes different elements from different film waves, from Italian Neorealism, to the Kuleshov Effect and fragmented editing that can be attributed to Soviet Montage.
He experiments and takes risks, and they all work out perfectly, like in one particular scene, the scene where Julio finds out about Ligaya’s death, that her blood is on the hands of the Chinese pimp, Ah Tek. The scene is supposed to be absolutely devastating and depressing, and Brocka managed to emphasize the mood and the atmosphere of that scene through asynchronous sounds – parallel to the terrible news Julio heard, Julio was surrounded by such laughter and joy.
Brocka’s creativity together with that of his cinematographer, Mike De Leon, and the rest of those who helped in the production of this film, Maynila: Sa Kuko Ng Liwanag, created such a masterpiece despite it being a low-budget, independent film. It’s no wonder that it has become such a breakthrough hit, that it has brought home numerous awards, and that it has been dubbed as the greatest Filipino film of all time by audiences from within the Philippines and from all over the world.
