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Christine G. Erojo
Literature A 2016 2nd Semester
Professor Miel Kristian Ondevilla
02 April 2016
Manila in the Claws of Light:
A Movie Analysis on Lino Brockas Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag
Brockas movie is palpable, deeply lived-in realism is among its great attractions, largely
because the film isnt just a story about a young Filipino Everyman, but because its also a de
facto record of Manila in the 1970s. The movie begins with a whisper and ends with a howl. In
between, there are escalating horrors and the peripatetic journey of a country mouse, Julio
(Rafael Roco Jr., later known as Bembol Roco), in the big city. Its a story of struggle, survival,
endurance and defeat that was filmed down in Manila when the Philippines was still in the grip
of the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The story centers on Julio, an innocent young man from the provinces working in the
construction sites of Manila in search of his long lost love Ligaya (played by Koronel), a victim
of human trafficking and white slavery. When the story opens, Julio has been in the city for about
seven months. Hes broke, homeless and rootless, and has little to call his own but the clothes on
his back, a small diary and a painful, archetypal back story thats revealed piecemeal. He soon
finds work on a construction site helping to build a (relatively low) high-rise. The pay is pitiful,
he asks for P3.00 a day and receives P2.50, but he takes the job only to faint from hunger shortly
afterward. During payday, he would only receive P4.00. This is what they call back then
Thailand. The foreman would exploit them by lending them their own money, substantially
depleting a portion of their wages to atrocious money-making schemes of those above them.
Julio experiences urban poverty and the citys unfair labor practices, and is then driven into male

prostitution. He is wooed into becoming a street hustler for a chance for quick cash. He sells his
body, his dignity, his manhood for the original promises of a bright future by the neon lights that
tempt everyone to enter the city. When he finally finds Ligaya, he learns that she has become the
captive mistress of a Chinese-Filipino with whom she has a baby. The lovers plan to escape back
to their province, but the Chinese-Filipino stops Ligaya and kills her in the process. Julio
avenges the death of Ligaya and is consequently mobbed near the residence of the ChineseFilipino.
The movie is something that can easily be seen as an imitative of the Greek myth of
Orpheus' traveling to Hades to rescue his wife. Brocka's Hades is of course Manila, with its
injustices hidden by affluence and commercialism as paraded by the several high-rise buildings
and the neon lights that dot the metropolis. The tale of Orpheus is subjected to the test of modern
reality where hell is not another world, but a city where sweat, blood, and tears are within
commerce, and those who are ignorant enough to get enchanted by its grandiose promises are
oppressed and forever trapped in its clutches. A part of the story there is an interesting
comparison that Brocka drives. Julio befriends Atong (Lou Salvador), one of the laborers who
welcomes homeless Julio to his house in the slums. Atong's fate is tragic. He is practically killed
for a mere squabble leaving his sister to prostitute herself in a bar, and his paralyzed dad to burn
to death when the slums area suspiciously catches fire during the Christmas season. Another of
Julio's companions in the construction site however hits it big and is employed in an advertising
company. In a stroke of circumstance, the lucky one gets to meet Atong's sister in the girly bar,
and presumably pays for her services. Interesting is the fact that former companions become
each others' oppressors, and a stroke of luck might change one's status, and from there, turn
himself, probably unknowingly, into one of the victimizers in this urban hell.

I think the movie is very interesting simply because Brocka exposes the exploitation of its
construction workers, some of whom were killed when Marcos jerry-built a huge complex to
house his annual film festival. The movie also looks at Manila's slum dwellers, whose children
pick through huge rubbish dumps for something to sell. Also, it casts its eye over the nocturnal
underground of the city, where prostitutes ply their trade. The film I think is telling the truth
about the countrys poverty under Marcoss dictatorship.