Three Years Without God (1976) User Reviews

O Hara's masterpiece about Japanese time

[Sirfaro11 · 7/10 · 6 June 2012]

This movie tackles the story of Rosario, a teacher, who was raped by a Japanese- Filipino during the Japanese occupation in her small town in Laguna. She got pregnant and had to live with the prejudice of her town mates after her family accepted Masugi.

It was not long before Rosario accepted her fate, she bore her child and married Masugi. But when the war came to an end, she had to face again the fury of her town mate, and they were unforgiving.

The movie depicts the horror of war, the fear that it creates, the dilemma of the people trapped in the struggle to survive. But most of all, the movie tackles the love and aspirations of the three main characters, their faith and before the movie ends, hope.

This movie really surprised me, the story and script were superb. The pace was believable, Rosario falling for Masugi's charm was not forced. You emphasize with the characters and their plights as they move through the three years of darkness ,without God. Christopher de Leon playing Masugi is also believable as the half Japanese born in Manila. I am glad he didn't play a character who for example, is really a Japanese but just so happen to speak Tagalog fluently; a scenario not uncommon in other Filipino movies.

My only scene that didn't go well is when the town folks cut Rosario's hair. Yes , yes I get it but Nora's face after her hair was cut was too funny and felt out of place. The music is a little redundant, playing the same song throughout the movie.

Overall,this movie is well made, worthy to classify this as a classic, and perhaps O Hara's best movie of all time.

Arguably the greatest Filipino film ever made.

[noel v. · 10/10 · 28 March 1999]

What makes Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years without God), about the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines during World War II, such a great film? O'Hara's style is thrillingly simple: each scene begins and ends like any other scene in a well-shaped drama. But there's a quiet undercurrent that builds, sequence upon sequence, with the smoothness and power of a rising tsunami, until it pulls your feet out from under you, breaking high over your head, overwhelming you.

I can cite similar examples: Hemingway's simple, sinewy prose, which (as he once described it) was like keeping an alcohol flame as low as possible, until it explodes. Or Jean Renoir's films, which Tatlong Taong most resembles (if it resembles any film at all). Renoir and O'Hara (in Tatlong Taong at least) share several virtues. An unassuming yet undeniably cinematic visual style (O'Hara's shots are so good, yet serve the story so well, you might want to watch the film three times just to find out why they are good). An unerring sense for understated drama--you find yourself perched at the edge of your seat wanting to learn what happens next. And an amazing--Godlike, yet intimate--empathy for the people in their films.

That empathy is, I think, the source of Tatlong Taong's greatness. Sympathy for wartime Japanese has always been in short supply, with the words "comfort women" and "wartime atrocities" being rattled about in Asian newspapers like so many closeted skeletons. The Chinese have no love for World War II Japanese; you just have to watch films like Farewell To My Concubine, or Red Sorghum (with its horrific flaying scene) to appreciate how little they are loved. Even the Americans have done their share of Japan-bashing, with films like Rising Sun and Black Rain.

There have been exceptions, mainly in American movies: Bridge On the River Kwai, Sayonara, the awful Come See the Paradise. There's even one Thai film that featured a sympathetic Japanese soldier.

But Thailand and America were never conquered by Japan; they never tasted the pleasures of Japanese Occupation firsthand. Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos is unique in Philippine cinema--in all the world--as being the only film, made in a country once occupied by the Japanese, that treats those same wartime Japanese as human beings.

Not that the Japanese soldiers in Tatlong Taong are sweetened versions of the real thing: they are shown as killers and rapists, capable of performing all kinds of brutal acts. But they are also shown to be capable of regretting their acts; they are shown to be deserving of our sympathy--even of our love.

As an act of understanding, almost of forgiveness, this is totally unheard of. It could easily be seen as a mistake, a foolish gesture made out of weakness by one small, Asian nation to another, far more powerful one.

I don't think so.

I could go on and on, talking about technique and story and historical context; I could talk about Vincente Bonus' contribution to the production design (he was responsible for every accurate detail about wartime Philippines), or Conrado Baltazar's glorious color photography, or Ms. Minda Azarcon's lovely chorale music. But Filipino filmmaker Tikoy Aguiluz (Boatman, Rizal Sa Dapitan (Rizal in Dapitan), Segurista (Dead Sure)) sums it all up nicely with a simple formula: he measures a film's greatness by the impact it had on him personally. By that standard, I think Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos is the greatest Filipino film ever made.

This movie carries something universal beyond the Philippines

[shi612 · 10/10 · 26 June 2004]

I had very strong impression from this movie "Three Years Without God".

It is a story in the Philippines from 1942 through 1944, the time the Philippines suffered Japanese ruling.

There are three main characters: Rosario is a young school-teacher. Chrispin is her fiancé. Masugi is a soldier of Japanese army. Masugi was born in Manila as a son of a Japanese father and a Filipina mother. After Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, his parents were confined in jail, and killed by Filipinos in jail. Masugi speaks fluent Tagalog.

After Japanese occupation troops came into the Philippines, Chrispin joins the anti-Japan guerrilla.

One day, Masugi happens to come to Rosario's house, being drunk. Masugi finds Rosario and rapes her.

Then Masugi often visits Rosario. He says, he doesn't regret because he likes her. Rosario never accepts him. Her parents accept foods he brings. Also he manages to let her father freed when all men in the town were confined in the church by Japanese troop. Rosario gets pregnant and bears a boy. Masugi says he wants to marry her. After birth Rosario went out holding her baby, and from a high bridge she is about to throw the baby but cannot. Chrispin knows what has happened on her. But he goes underground again. The night Rosario and Masugi get married, the guerrilla attacks their house and Rosario's parents and her younger brother are killed. One day after Rosario and Masugi are attacked by the guerrilla, Chrispin comes their home heavily injured. After healed Masugi sends Chrispin to the guerrilla forest.

The US comes back and bombs the town. They escape by a truck of Japanese army, but it is attacked by the guerrilla. They manage to hide in a abandoned cottage in the forest. At night Masugi never sleeps but watch outside. Rosario wakes up. Masugi tells her to escape with the child. Rosario says she doesn't want to separate from him. For the first time after their marriage(perhaps) they make love. But the cottage is surrounded by the guerrillas. Masugi lets her run away with the child but he is shot. His dead body is hung on a tree.

Holding the child Rosario comes back to the town and meets the priest. She asks the priest if God is. The priest tells her to pray. When she was praying, angry people came in to avenge her. Women cut Rosario's hair, and men killed her. Chrispin finds her dead body at the school. He cries holding her. Chrispin sits on a chair in the church. The priest hands him Rosario's child. Chrispin asks the priest if God really is. The priest points a blind man who came to pray. He has lost eyesight by the war, but still he comes to pray for his lost wife and family. It is for his love. As long as love matters, God is.

This movie portrays something universal beyond particular three years in the Philippine history. The movie does not describe how Japan, the US and the Philippines fought. It describes human beings who sought for love in the situation people killed each other. From the beginning to the end, the movie focuses on this very point.

Heart wrenching

[gwendalyn-17274 · 10/10 · 2 March 2020]

Superb acting and very realistic. The acting of Nora Aunor and Christopher deleon brought the story alive. Every scene was heart pounding. It make you fell as if you are witnessing a real life story, unfolding in your very eyes. You need a box of tissue paper next to you.