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Biyaya ng Lupa
English Title: Blessings of the Land
Alternate English Title: Bounty of the Earth
Year of Release: 1959 / B&W
Director: Manuel Silos
Screenwriters: Celso Al. Carunungan & Pablo Naval
Producer: LVN Pictures
Cast: Rosa Rosal, Tony Santos, Joseph de Cordova, Leroy Salvador, Carlos Padilla Jr., Marita Zobel, Danilo Jurado, Carmencita Abad
Jose, Maria, and their four children live on a lanzones orchard. All is well until the arrival of Bruno, who resorts to villainy after his pursuit of a new wife was hampered by Jose. To get even, Bruno rapes Jose’s daughter. When Jose seeks revenge, he is killed by Bruno. For Maria, this only marks the beginning of the challenges she has to face while sustaining her family and the orchard.
The past tends to be remembered as idyllic, and this film reinforces that impression in several ways: by being set on a modest lanzones plantation (eyed by a covetous wealthy neighbor), upholding family values and the quiet dignity of rural folk, and emphasizing the indispensability of the bayanihan [cooperational] spirit to communal order and productivity. Even the elements incidental to the narrative—its use of black and white, its half-century vintage, its now-elderly cast—provide a final veneer of nostalgia. Although later filmmakers, notably Lino Brocka, managed to make some of their movie villains understandable, if not sympathetic, Biyaya ng Lupa can nevertheless defend its sole shortcoming, the demonization of the taong-labas or outsider, as less a matter of malice than an act of naïveté.
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