Tale of a sinner, soldier and saint
Ignacio de Loyola is a unique film production anyway you look at it.
It takes us back to the late medieval period in Spain when a young nobleman (the youngest in a brood of 13) decided to lead a battle against French invaders at age 17 but failed.
While recuperating from his injuries, he discovered the beauty of meditation and contemplation, bringing him closer to the Divine Turf from which he drew inspiration for his well-documented spiritual exercises.
If you expect miracles in this film, you’d be disappointed. To one’s relief, the story focused on the man and his evolution from exsoldier to being a sinner and later entering sainthood.
With its foreign setting (Spain) and foreign lead actors (Spanish and English dialogue), you’d think this is a foreign production released locally by an independent distributor.
Directed by Filipino filmmaker Paul Dy, Ignacio de
Loyola has many things going for it.
Its lead actors are incredibly superb that it is easy to be drawn to the film’s strong spiritual appeal even as the characters look thoroughly human.
In the first part of the film, you see the soldier (Andreas Muñoz) fighting a makebelieve opponent while being watched by the royalty in the castle (Tacuara Casares as Princess Catalina). He is at once charmed and restraining himself, he apologizes and an unusual bond commences.
Exceedingly drawn to a life of contemplation after he failed in the Battle of Pamplona, his brothers decide to bring him back to worldly life by treating him to a gathering complete with wine and women for hire.
In that seduction scene, the future saint gently tells his seducer that there are by far better things a man can do with his life. He tells her to imagine Jesus Christ sitting on a chair opposite them and to her surprise, the imagined figure becomes real and tells her sinners have hope and that she is not being judged by her occupation.
Muñoz is the kind of actor you can credit for being natural, sensitive and inordinately passionate. Indeed, he dominates the film and succeeds brilliantly in every frame.
Happily, the film humanized the saint who bravely coped with church inquisitors while fighting his own personal demons. In these heart-wrenching scenes, Muñoz was at his best and at his most human.
For another, the ensemble acting is excellent especially in the trial conducted by the church inquisitors.
The locale of the film was made more dramatic with superb cinematography by Lee Briones Meily who captured the Battle of Pamplona with such eye for detail you’d think you are watching a Cecile de Mille production. It’s easy to see the mark of Mike Idioma as sound engineer.
What this film tells you is that people can evolve from sinner to saint and gradually aspire for spiritual redemption in the end.
There is so much spiritual wisdom in the screenwriting of director-writer Dy that you’d think he is anywhere in his senior age. But if one is not mistaken, this is his major film debut and he must be only in his late 20s or early 30s. But then the result is totally gratifying. The deft handling of the cast, the choice of scenery and the thoroughly fleshedout screenplay reveal a lot about the overwhelming promise of the director.
The choice of film scorer (Ryan Cayabyab) is an excellent one and here we hear the encompassing and thoroughly inspiring sound totally absent from his contemporary output.
Interpreted by the ABS-CBN Philharmonic Orchestra under Gerard Salonga, the film scoring magnifies the film’s spiritual message and, indeed, you have to break free from that musical bondage or else you end up leaving the theater becoming the spiritual follower of St. Ignatius de Loyola. The choral finale with the Ateneo Chamber Singers brings a lump to your throat and indeed, it is so hard not to like this film.
The film brings one back to that time when Filipino filmmakers use classical singers and instrumentalists last seen in such grand output as Marilou DiazAbaya’s Jose Rizal and Muro-Ami, among others.
For the record, Ignacio de Loyola was earlier screened at the Salle della Filmoteca in the Vatican last June 14, the first Filipino film screened in that city-state.
The last known biographical film made on the subject was in 1949 with Captain from Loyola where the subject was played by Rafael Duran.
If you didn’t know it yet, St. Ignatius of Loyola is the founder of the religious congregation Society of Jesus, the Philippine members of which founded the Ateneo de Manila.
Truly deserving of the Grade A rating by the Cinema Evaluation Board, Ignacio de Loyola is a triumph of ingenuity of Filipino filmmakers.
It should resonate well with both “sinners” and “saints” of the contemporary milieu.
It is now showing in cinemas.