Heneral Luna

Heneral Luna (2015)

Nation or self?

Set during the Philippine-American War, a short-tempered Philippine Revolutionary Army general faces an enemy more formidable than the American army: his own treacherous countrymen.

Date of release
2015-09-09
TMDB
7.7 / 10 (50)
Runtime
1h 58m
Genres
Action, Drama, History, War
Director
Jerrold Tarog
Collection
The Bayani Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Heneral Luna is a 2015 Filipino epic war film starring John Arcilla as the titular character Antonio Luna who led the Philippine Republican Army during the early phases of the Philippine–American War. Directed by Jerrold Tarog and produced by Artikulo Uno Productions, it is the first installment of the Bayaniverse franchise. The film received critical acclaim from critics, praising its cinematography, writing, acting and plot. The film was selected as the Philippine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but it was not nominated.

Production

The first draft of Heneral Luna was written in 1998 by E. A. Rocha and Henry Hunt Francia, who chose to write about Antonio Luna after being hired by Cirio Santiago to write a television script for a television series in celebration of the centennial of Philippine independence. When the series failed to push through, Rocha and Francia were asked to rewrite the script as a feature-length film.

Jerrold Tarog, who had separately developed an interest in making a film about Antonio Luna after reading literature about him, learned about the Rocha and Francia script, and asked if he could use it for his planned film. Tarog got permission to re-write the script, which was originally written entirely in English, and then asked fellow director Alvin Yapan to help translate it into formal Tagalog.

Notably, one of Tarog's later changes was to separate the Mascardo and Janolino characters, which at one point had been merged into a composite character, "Mascolino", who would have taken on characteristics of both historical characters. Tarog indicated that separating the characters would help flesh the film out further, and give it more highlights.

The characters of Paco Román and Eduardo Rusca, who were portrayed in a character triptych with Luna in the film, were written to be polar opposites. Román would be a more controlled, logical character who would help bring out a more controlled side of Luna, while Rusca would be a more passionate character who could provide moments of levity throughout the film.

In an interview on Filipino music website Radio Republic, Tarog, who has a degree in music composition from the College of Music at the University of the Philippines Diliman, indicated that he approached Heneral Luna, as with all his other films, from a musical perspective.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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