The two 2024 Metro Manila Film Festival entries written by National Artist for Film and Broadcast Arts Ricardo “Ricky” Lee seem to have contrasting box office appeal. 

Green Bones, with its lead cast of prominent actors Dennis Trillo, Ruru Madrid, Michael de Mesa, Wendell Ramos, Iza Calzado, and Alessandra de Rossi, will likely do well at the box office.

The musical Isang Himala, with its cast of actors (led by Aicelle Santos and David Ezra) who are more popular to habitual viewers of straight plays and musicals in theaters, may not do well at the tills — even as Isang Himala is an adaptation of a film top-billed by “superstar” Nora Aunor in 1982 at the height of her popularity. The  film has since been adapted into a straight play and a musical. 

This year’s festival entry was directed by Pepe Diokno (whose real first name is Jose Lorenzo, as per his credits in the film) and it was shot like a stage play. Since an actual stage is not shown, those who will watch Isang Himala, but have never watched a stage play, may not sense that right from the film’s opening shot, the characters’ blocking (formation) in front of makeshift nondescript wooden houses is a theater convention (formula?) to indicate what a big cast it has and what sorts of characters activate the narrative. It’s a justified opening shot for Isang Himala since the film’s narrative is set in an impoverished town in the boondocks known as Cupang. (It’s a quaint name, though, in a country whose towns and cities are named after saints and other personalities with Hispanic monikers.)

The narrative, of course, is about a young unmarried religious woman who reveals first to her adoptive mother that the Mahal na Birhen (Blessed Virgin) has appeared to her on top of a hill in that town suffering from prolonged drought. The young woman, Elsa (Santos), is soon found to be capable of healing the sick — even as the parish priest doesn’t buy her yarn about seeing the Blessed Virgin. 

Life changes in Cupang. The sick and their caretakers came in hordes and swarms. Tourists turn up, though mostly domestic ones. (We did not espy foreign tourists in Diokno’s film). A lone media photographer (Ezra) turned up and hanged around indefinitely for his exclusive coverage, which will eventually include a violent scene that seems to disprove that Elsa is under the aegis of the Blessed Virgin. The scene also involves Chayong (Neomi Gonzales), Elsa’s bosom friend who prays with her on the hill at the wee hours of the day.

Isang Himala is a good film despite being stagey. People ought to watch it and possibly learn from it what faith is about and what it is not. Isang Himala is not religious at all, though it may imply  something about faith. Everyone sings and acts fairly well, though Santos is (almost unarguably) the best of them all. The 2024 Elsa is not exactly the same as the Elsa of 1982. This year’s Elsa is ambitious, relishing media exposure, somewhat a schemer thwarted by life’s harshness.