'THE KINGDOM' INTRODUCES A FILIPINO NATION NEVER COLONIZED

ALL THOSE WHO HAVE WATCHED "THE KINGDOM" will agree that it deserves the Gatpuno Antonio J. Villegas Cultural Award at the recent Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) Gabi ng Parangal.

- By JERRY DONATO

It transports one to that imagined, never colonized, nor westernized Philippines. Yes, a kingdom that is replete with material and nonmaterial culture (from objects of art and practical commonplace pieces to political, cultural, and social beliefs and language, to name a few).

The film has successfully envisioned and depicted a free country in which its people have Malaya-Malay lineage and interact with groups of people, like, among others, the Thai.

"The Kingdom" contributes to a film discourse on what the Philippines was like pre-colonial times, although the archipelago in the film was only again a creative imagination in the contemporary era.

It complements what one has read or may read in Philippine history books about that particular historical period. Historians such as Teodoro Agoncillo, Fe Mangahas, and Horacio dela Costa have stories on ancient and early Filipinos, with ancestors in the persons of the little black men, sea-faring Malays, and boat builders Austronesians, and their way of life.

The film supports the idea that the Philippines was an independent and sophisticated country or nation even before foreigners set foot in the archipelago, befriended the natives through sanduguan or blood compact, established settlements in the scattered islands, and pacified every village.

"The Kingdom" introduces and reinforms one to the "stratified" lives of people, whose names, and I guess even their surnames, were based on their physical features or some community and natural events, as a custom among our ancestors.

Early Filipinos had only "given names," but since the Philippines named Kalayaan in "The Kingdom" is set in the "contemporary" times, its people also bear surnames like "Nandula" for the nobles and "Tagum" for the common folks.