Essay: Long story short of romancing the Superstar
By Michael Obenieta
(1st of Two Parts)
In the slums where a transistor radio was the only home appliance many can afford, the neighbors would usually gather at and sneak a peek from the steel-lattice fence by the window of someone well-off enough with a TV set. A seven-year-old boy was one of them, moonstruck by the singing voice of Nora Aunor— the host of an evening musical show called ‘Superstar.’
One Sunday night in 1975, she invited her viewers to watch her forthcoming film, teasing them with a few snippets of scenes from something prehistoric. An exodus of loin-clothed pilgrims searching for a home in a vast mountainscape. A boulder tumbling down along with the sound of screaming. Wild boars screeching and their hunters cheering over a feast. Tribal warriors raising their stakes and hacking each other to death. And a woman in the midst of it all mired in a blood-soaked saga of passion and redemption.
Three men fought for her heart, and the boy by the window— transfixed as if by an apparition— was haunted with a wish: to keep on watching this woman’s movies with no less than the three warrior’s desire to possess her. And though the boy never got the chance to see ‘Banaue’ (Stairway to the Sky) in the big screen, he grew up as good as engorged in a love affair.
***
Reviewing that movie, the critic Noel Vera noted the grandeur of mounting a genesis tale of the Banaue Rice Terraces. Once renowned as one of world’s eight wonders, the range of Ifugao’s mountains also reflected Nora Aunor’s ambition and vision as an artist.
That the tale’s heroine was named after the imposing landscape exemplified as well her wish not to be boxed in. With her risk-taking refusal to be trapped by two rival studios cashing in on her massive popularity— she churned out blockbusters one after the other, “over 70 movies in eight years”— she ventured out with her own production outfit to make films that reflect her own desire to loom larger than her box-office potboilers. Never mind earning the ire of her producers and alienating her fans enamored with her song-dance routines.
Though she was as crowd-pleasing as any of today’s top celebrities, she dared at 21 to push herself beyond the brim of her fame. She sought a collaboration with the country’s top directors, hiring the great Gerardo de Leon— soon to be named National Artist for Cinema— to helm what was then considered the most expensive narrative ever filmed. She had to sell some of her properties to bankroll the creative behemoth that spawned Vera’s assertion: “A remarkable achievement in both performance and film production, by a young woman who at the time of the film's release had not quite turned twenty-two. I imagine that if the real Banaue somehow crossed the thousand years separating her age and ours to watch this film, she'd wholeheartedly approve of what Aunor had done--not just established a long and fruitful career as daring film producer and even more amazing actress, but given an old master one last chance at creating a masterpiece.”
Thus she blazed the trail for independent filmmaking now en vogue with today’s generation of digitally deft storytellers. With her maverick mindset, Aunor’s amazonian drive went headlong against the leading-lady stereotype. As the eponymous protagonist, her portrayal of a filial and avenging daughter has also intuited layers of sexual and social expectations about womanhood that her character surmounted with such ax-striking abandon. That Aunor’s protagonist “might be the Philippines' first proto-feminist,” Vera attested: “Aunor plays a variation of her celebrity persona, a woman irresistible to men--a persona not too far off from reality, as her complicated private life might suggest... a remarkably complex and thought-provoking thesis for what was supposed to be just another caveman drama, with a popular Filipina celebrity at its center.”
In the process of working with de Leon and other masters (Mario O’Hara, Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, etc.), she has created characters that hoisted her superstardom to the realm of the monumental. In light of her craft, carving a legacy of fearless filmography, Ms. Nora Aunor has become in Vera’s argument “the country’s greatest actress... the face of Philippine cinema.”
***
Last night, on the eve of La Aunor’s 67th birthday, I finally saw ‘Banaue’ (Stairway to the Sky’) in its digitally remastered glory. Cozy on my couch in front of a smart-trendy TV that occupies half a wall, I moved closer to take photos of this woman whose voice, face, and eyes initiated me to a maniacal obsession with movies. There I was, still catching glimpses of greatness— too near yet too far from outgrowing the wonderstruck boy who stuck his neck out from someone else’s steel-cloistered window.
(About the author: Michael Obenieta is a well-known poet and writer from Cebu and self-confessed big fan of National Artist Nora Aunor. He was the recipient of the 2021 Gawad Balagtas (Lifetime Achievement Award for Cebuano poetry) awarded by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL).
Obenieta is now based in Topeka, Kansas where he finished his Sociology and Criminal Justice (Master’s degree) from Washburn University.
This essay was first published on the writer’s Facebook account on May 20, 2020. We publish Obenieta’s work with permission to honor the memory of Ms. Aunor, the Philippine superstar.)
