Himala

Elsa (Nora Aunor) having the visions of the Virgin Mary

Himala ("Miracle") is a Filipino film directed by the late National Artist Ishmael Bernal of the Philippines in 1982. The film's script was written by multi-award winner screenwriter Ricky Lee based on a true incident on a teenage girl in Cabra Island in the province of Occidental Mindoro between 1966 and 1967. Sergio Lobo was the Director of Photography.

Himalâ was filmed entirely in the province of Ilocos Norte in just three weeks with a budget of only ₱ 3 million. The film premiered at the 1982 Metro Manila Film Festival, and in 1983, became the first and to date, the only Filipino film to be included in the "Competition Section" of the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival. Since then, Himala has been exhibited in a number of film festivals around the world. Initial information from Wikipedia

Main Cast

Elsa - Nora Aunor
Orly - Spanky Manikan
Nimia - Gigi Duenas
Chayong - Laura Centeno
Aling Saling - Vangie Labalan
Mrs. Alba - Veronica Palileo
Sepa - Ama Quiambao

The Curse. Is it the end of the world? No, It's just an eclipse.

Plot:

Cupang is a small town which is believed by its towns people to be cursed. This is because the town seems to be deserted - rare rainy seasons, poor economy and has a big portion of deserted land. The town's fate seems to be changing when a girl named Elsa, have claims to have visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, reaching out to her and she has become a messenger of God. She performs faith healing tasks and became the center of the town people's faith.


Story Analysis:

All people seeks for healing

The story centers about faith in the eyes of poverty. Many of the poor have always misinterpreted faith in God. This takes form in their dependency on prayers, idolatry on Elsa and using holiness for profit. Many of these people seeks healing from Elsa but they all want to be healed first, doing selfish acts by pushing each other away to reach Elsa first. In this kind of situation, people show faith in God but their actions doesn't justify it.

We adore Elsa! ELSA LOVES YOU!

This false belief is not limited to poor people but also in rich people like Mr. Chua, a rich businessman and a rich woman. They believe that when they have faith on Elsa, God will save them when in reality, they stay on feeling superior (examples are Mr. Chua getting special treatment to be healed first even arriving late).

While people has learned to hope, they have stopped on hoping and never grew to take actions that will give them a better life. They stayed on waiting for miracles that they think that will just come out of thin air.

Faith has two faces. When you believe, you should do something to make this a reality. We never wait for miracles, we do something for it to happen. Elsa (Nora Aunor) realized that her intentions of making people believe in God was never attained but made them dependent on miracles instead. As Elsa concludes:

Walang Himala! (There are no miracles!)

"Walang himala!! Ang himala ay nasa puso ng tao, nasa puso nating lahat! Tayo ang gumagawa ng mga himala! Tayo ang gumagawa ng mga sumpa at ng mga diyos..."

In English:
There is no miracle!! The miracles are in people's hearts, in all our hearts! We make the miracles! We are the ones who make curses, gods...

In the end, she died for reasons unknown to the viewers. All that can be seen is someone shot her from afar. Even after her death, people kept believing on their so-called "Faith" and treated Elsa as A saint.

Treating an Idol.

Rating:

-Sound: 

-Cinematography: 

 -Actors:

-Story:

 -Personal Interest:

 -Overall:

Sound. The film just used natural sounds for this film. If they did use even a single soundtrack, it did not help as I was able to forget it easily. The ambient sound really helped but I felt that they should have used more soundtrack.

Cinematography. Some of the scenes are cut abruptly, making it look like it was jumping. There are also lots of sequences that are shown too long, delaying the phase of the film. But, the whole film was colorful as it was able to show different shots as much as possible.

Actors. Nora Aunor was brilliant here. Even though she looked monotonous at this film, the way she acted justified why her character should be like this. Other people with false faith also irritated me too much that I laughed at some of them. I was just worried about Elsa's other patients as they were all people with real illnesses.

Nora Aunor effectively portrays Elsa's disgust on herself

Story. As a feminist, I liked the story because it features a heroine. But what really made me like the story is it shows how religion is taken for granted here in our society.  This is how poverty affects people, because of their hopelessness they had resorted into being reliant to miracles. And this kind of poverty wasn't bestowed on them by themselves, maybe because our society is not run with justice. The story is based on a true story so it's no surprise that this will turn out realistic too.

Personal Interest. One of my interests. Heroines really interests me. Maybe because i'm also one of them, lol. And topics about religion is really dear to me, because this also involves philosophy that shape a society's thinking.

Overall. I recommend this to people and encourage them to watch this. This is one of the classics of Philippine films that you should really watch.