Ang Katiwala

Ruben loses his job as a carpenter in a small town in Zambales where he lives with his wife Eden and their 10-year old son, Budoy. Desperate to make ends meet, he accepts a job as a caretaker of an abandoned property in Quezon City. Ruben soon finds out that the previous owner of the house is an important figure in the country’s history. When he is interviewed by a TV reporter about this historical figure, Ruben feels embarrassed that he knows nothing about him. Ruben soon starts reading up to get to know more about the life of this person, his accomplishments and what he has done for the people. Ruben’s fascination about the person’s life and his inevitable hero-worship irks the only friend he has in the sprawling compound, the night-shift security guard, Gimo, who jokes that Ruben is slowly being possessed by the soul of his new hero.

The film opens in a province setting, where our protagonist, Ruben (played by Dennis Trillo), and his family live. He was a carpenter of the local government, but was laid off and replaced in his post because he didn’t support the current mayor in the past election. He has a wife and a kid. They are living with his father-in-law, who was a tenant farmer on a piece of land. The land was promised to be given to them but the owner died and his daughter did not honor the agreement. Add to their poverty-stricken situation the incessant pillaging of their “kamalig” (granary or barn) by rebels. Anyway, that’s the scenario in Quezon province that Ruben left, when he went with his Uncle Manuel to work at the President’s mansion in Quezon City. Need I say that the president who owned the mansion was the late President Manuel Luis Quezon? He arrived in Manila and saw a worse situation than the one he left back home when he visited his cousin at a squatter’s area. When he finally came to the mansion, he was awed by the enormity of the house. A striking contrast to the shack of his cousin, where he had just been and slept taking turns because there was not enough space. In the President’s mansion, Ruben tries to learn more about the president and the Philippine history. In the course of his readings, he began to idolize the president and tried to copy him. President Manuel Quezon became his inspiration. He believed that they had a lot of things in common, both coming from a poor family, being sickly as a child, having to walk long distances just to go to school and not speaking or understanding English until they were already adults. Ruben believed that like President Quezon he could also succeed in life and rise up from poverty. Okay…I think I should stop telling the story here, before I bore you. So, did I like it or not? Read full review here: http://heblogs-sheblogs.com/2012/07/ang-katiwala-an-indie-film-from-a-commoner%E2%80%99s-view/