MANILA LETTER
Released in early March in the Philippines, the film martyr or murderer traces the political rise of Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino and his assassination on August 21, 1983, from the perspective of… the Marcos family. A shame: exiled to the United States after several years in prison, the number one opponent of the Marcos regime had decided that year to return to his country. He was shot on the tarmac of the airport which today bears his name in Manila, by a member of the military escort who had come to protect him. Several incredible scenarios were then put forward by the authorities to explain this astounding event, before a charade of trials charged soldiers and then acquitted them.
The enormous scandal led to the popular revolution which overthrew Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and brought Ninoy’s widow, Corazon Aquino, to the helm of the country. We still do not know to this day if the order to kill Aquino came from the dictator, his wife Imelda, the army chief Fabian Ver or even a crony (business partner) of the president hostile to Aquino – but this sordid settling of scores is inseparable from a regime that had made him the man to be beaten.
martyr or murderer gives an alternative version of this story: the Marcos, driven into exile and then vilified, weren’t they also victims of Aquino’s assassination? And “Ninoy the Martyr” was he not himself also a ” murderer “, condemned to death in 1977 for an “attack” (in reality by a court-martial on the orders of Ferdinand Marcos)? If you think you’re walking on your head in Martyr or murderer, is that the film is produced by none other than Senator Imee Marcos, 67, the eldest daughter of the dictator and sister of Bongbong Marcos, elected president of the Philippines in May 2022, thirty-six years after the fall of his father .
Trilogy against musical
It’s even the second installment of a trilogy. The first, Maid in Malacanang, released just after the election of Bongbong Marcos, recounted the three days lived by the Marcos in the presidential palace assailed by angry mobs before the Americans exfiltrated them. The last will focus on the family’s exile in Hawaii, where Ferdinand Marcos died in 1989. To their credit, the Marcos children who returned to power did not ban competition: a musical about the heroic life of Aquino, entitled I am Ninoy, was released in theaters in February, just before martyr or murderer.
The Marcos parents were already using cinema to embellish or disguise reality. In 1965, then a dashing senator and presidential candidate, Ferdinand Marcos financed a film about his own life titled The extraordinary destiny of Ferdinand Marcos. He gives pride of place to a decisive event – his acquittal by the Supreme Court in 1940 for an assassination that this university rifle shooting champion and law student probably committed: that, in 1935, of the man who defeated his father in the legislative elections. Marcos, who defended himself with panache, is portrayed as a pugnacious and lucky lawyer. His assiduous courting, for eleven days, of the beauty queen Imelda Romualdez also gives the film the air of a sitcom. It was banned by the censorship at the time, which reinforced its popularity: Ferdinand Marcos was elected president, with the blessing of the American ally.
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