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Amigo
English Translation: Friend
Additional Languages: Cantonese, Spanish
Year of Release: 2010
Director & Screenwriter: John Sayles
Based on research used in John Sayles’s novel A Moment in the Sun (Mc Sweeney’s Books, 2011); Tagalog translations by Jose F. Lacaba
Producers: Anarchist’s Convention Films & Pinoy Pictures
Cast: Arthur Acuña, Irma Adlawan, John Arcilla, Merlin Bonning, Hoffman Cheng, Reymart Colestines, Ermie Concepcion, Chris Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Garret Dillahunt, Miguel Faustmann, Brian Lee Franklin, Joe Gruta, J.P. Jagunos, Ronnie Lazaro, Rio Locsin, Diana Malahay, Raul Manikan, Spanky Manikan, Pen Medina, Raul Morit, Lucas Neff, James Obenza, Jemi Paretas, James Parks, Bodjie Pascua, DJ Qualls, Lady Jane Rellita, Bembol Roco, Bill Tangradi, Stephen Monroe Taylor, Joel Torre, Ka Chun Tsoi, Yul Vazquez
Rafael is the cabeza or head of the small rural town of San Isidro, while his brother joined the anticolonial revolution against Spain, which has transmuted into the Filipino–American War. American troops arrive and take over the town and instruct Rafael to continue his function while freeing the incarcerated Spanish priest, even as Rafael’s adolescent son flees to join his uncle’s resistance army. Rafael finds himself caught between the revolutionary leadership’s instructions and the commands of the new occupation forces, who provide a carrot-and-stick strategy to win the cooperation of the townfolk. They set up telegraph wires to communicate directly with the US administration in Manila but the rebels massacre the Chinese coolies that the Americans brought over. Lt. Compton, with the priest as go-between, organizes an election to select a new leader, but the qualified voters (males at least 21 years old) write in Rafael’s name; true to his promise, Compton honors their choice and even accedes to their plans for their annual town fiesta. The arrival of Col. Hardacre, who’d earlier instructed his troops to fence off the town to prevent San Isidro from providing insurrectionists with support, restores the tense relations between the natives and the US Army, as Rafael is waterboarded and forced to lead the US soldiers to the place where his brother and son might be hiding.
The resonance of the brother-against-brother conflict in Amigo is so schematic, biblical even, that it proves a relief when John Sayles opts to focus instead on the regular interactions between Rafael and the people in his community, even including the foreign invaders. Amigo demonstrates that authors of Western film and literature can only begin to understand their own societies’ prosperity-driven triumphs by confronting their colonial records. John Sayles’s political honesty and moral clarity enabled him to come up with the first US-made critical text on his country’s occupation of the Philippines, and one can see the approach’s usefulness in how Western film critics eagerly read contemporary American political concerns in their appreciation of the release, including a covert attempt by the official whom Rafael had won over, to subvert his own superior. There were also a lot of reservations expressed about the work compared to Sayles’s earlier output, although we might be able to take the cue from the quandary that Rafael finds himself trapped in: try as he might to reconcile the demands of either side, their inherent antagonisms will result (as they did in the plot) in either division deciding that their best interest will be best realized if they get rid of him. In this respect, it would also prove productive to see how Sayles, inadvertently or otherwise, anticipated several then-forthcoming developments in Philippine politics: the population’s frustration with democratic processes, the acceptance of militaristic violence against elements configured as outlaws, the vulnerability to influence-peddlers who have their own agenda to advance. The viewing experience has always been difficult for anyone, regardless of nationality, invested in the story’s historical implications—which is tantamount to saying that more ambitious plans announced by other American film artists might encounter greater difficulty in reaching an audience. Amigo might therefore remain for some time the only overt progressive treatment by Americans on their only successful overseas colonial adventure (to our long-term detriment, needless to add), and it serves as a fitting cap to its filmmaker’s exemplary career.
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