Quezon, unscripted, unsettling

By Herman M. Lagon

I still feel the heat and buzz of that WVSU hall when the Quezon team walked in—Kuya Bodjie cracking jokes, Jericho Rosales talking about stepping into a life larger than legend. I hosted the pre-launching program with hundreds of students and educators, a good old campus moment where curiosity meets craft. We had Luna in our bones and Goyo somewhere between admiration and ache. None of us knew the third film would barge into our dinner debates. On opening day in Iloilo, watching with my daughter, I could not stand right away when the credits rolled. The film felt like a hand on my shoulder that also nudges you forward—“Look again.” So I did: at the movie, at the history beneath it, and at a country that keeps repeating scenes with a new cast.

What Quezon gets right is how power performs. Director Jerrold Tarog stitches silent-film vignettes, propaganda reels, and campaign shorts into the story like mirrors turned at different angles. It is not a gimmick. It is a reminder that statesmanship, in the age of mass media, is theater with consequences. The camera falls in love with charisma; the edit decides truth. Rosales plays Quezon like a man who understands this—part conductor, part magician, part tired human trying to keep the music going when the brass section is out of breath. The cadence, the posture, the practiced intimacy: they feel less like mimicry than diagnosis. That chilling line—“I am the Philippines”—does not land as triumph. It sounds like confession. The performance swallowed the person, and we learned to applaud the swallowing.

Still, the film is arguable—and that is its value. I share the discomfort of those who felt Emilio Aguinaldo was softened too much, especially for viewers who carry the weight of Bonifacio and Luna. How much fiction can you pour into the gaps of the archive before the whole container warps? That is a fair classroom question. We live in a country where textbooks argue with each other, libraries are thin, and movies often double as lesson plans. When Quezon’s descendants say the film diminishes their lolo, that pain deserves space beside the defense that art must provoke. Two truths can share one room: artists should interrogate power, and artists should be clear about where imagination begins, because millions will treat the film as a teacher.

As cinema, Quezon is confident. Power hums in small rooms—offices, corridors, living rooms with curtains drawn. The 1930s look lived-in, not embalmed. Rosales risks largeness, reels himself back before parody, and convinces by rhythm more than resemblance. Romnick Sarmenta’s Osmeña steadies the sparring with tact; every scene feels like a negotiation beyond policy and into brittle friendship. Mon Confiado finds a tired dignity in Aguinaldo; you may disagree with the tilt, but the humanity is compelling. The craft—framing, color, costume, score—serves the argument without shouting. When the movie toggles between staged reels and “real” scenes, the thesis clicks: a country becomes what its edits allow.

The teacher in me kept jotting mental notes. Students love heroes until exams demand nuance. Quezon continues the trilogy’s habit of knocking marble off the pedestal, which is healthy. The risk is stopping at rubble and calling that wisdom. The film points to the broken stage, then sometimes dims the lights. In a nation where many kids struggle to read, satire and history blur too easily. That is not a reason to avoid the movie. It is a reason to teach it better.

I keep returning to Joven Hernando and his daughter, Nadia: two cuts of one story, two futures depending on which reel survives. It is a small masterclass for campus journalists and media students. Doubt the edit. Trace the source. Ask who paid for the camera. Doubt, in this sense, is care in motion. Pair that with a quiet discipline we try to form in school: examine your motives, own your complicities, and choose the more just action even when it costs you applause. Quezon shows how charisma, unchecked, curdles into entitlement. It also hints that self-scrutiny, without courage, freezes into inaction. The sweet spot is action grounded in honest reflection—the kind teachers try to model when we give credit, admit a grading error, or step aside so others can shine.

Watching with my daughter, I filtered the film through local classrooms. Students here juggle tight budgets and tighter commutes—buses on Mondays, last jeeps on Fridays. When a movie argues that politics is performance, I hear echoes in student councils, faculty rooms, alumni groups. The lesson lands when paired with habits: post budgets, publish minutes, show your work. Culture shifts when small, boring things are done on time. If there is a thread from Luna’s fury to Goyo’s tragic youth to Quezon’s showman statecraft, it is this: we keep confusing spectacle for substance. Train the eye by checking receipts, not reels. It is not glamorous, but it builds nations quietly.

The backlash—family rebukes, studio statements, heated columns—should not scare schools from screening the film. It should push us to frame it well. Put praise and critique side by side. Ask students which scenes are documented, inferred, or invented to serve a point. Read a chapter of The Good Fight, the autobiography of MLQ, then watch the corresponding scene. Add short readings on patronage and colonial administration to make sense of the Wood–Quezon push and pull. End with two concrete questions: Which habits from that era do we still reward? Which one can our class, school, or barangay stop rewarding this semester? That is how a film fuels formation, not fatigue.

So, did I like it? I admired the craft, wrestled with the choices, and found it necessary. The courage is in refusing to polish the bust. The risk is how easily satire gets misfiled as record when classrooms lack the tools to parse. Before any of this blew up, that hall at WVSU simply wanted a good film that makes young people ask better questions. After the first screening in Iloilo, the questions came—urgent, uneven, personal. Maybe that is how this trilogy should end: not with a toppled statue, but with a conversation that refuses to end at the credits.

The best compliment I can give Quezon is what I did right after watching: reached for books, then messaged my friends—“Discussion on Saturday. Bring coffee and notes.” Read, reflect, respond. That small muscle felt awake again. It kept me from the two lazy exits—blind defense and blanket dismissal. Films like this do not demand camps; they demand growth. We can honor real achievements—the rescue of Jewish refugees, civil service reforms, the march to independence—while scrutinizing the costs and the patterns those victories hardened. We can feel a family’s hurt and still insist that public memory is bigger than lineage. We can praise craft and still ask for care when art enters dinner tables, classrooms, and work lounges.

We stepped out into a windy Iloilo night, the kind that flips umbrellas and clears the heat. My daughter asked if great leaders must also be great actors. “Leadership is a role,” I said. “Acting is a tool. Conscience is the director.” She rolled her eyes, laughed, and added, “Then we should teach people to tell when the performance is for them, not for the country.” That, I think, is Quezon’s quiet gift. It does not hand us a hero. It hands us a lens. If this trilogy began by cracking statues, let it end with a habit: read closely, think deeply, act justly, and keep going when nobody is clapping.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.