This is the official American version of MacArthur's hagiography, justifyingly triumphalistic with nary a heartbreak that does not heal. It is also the version of colonial history that Filipino schoolchildren learn from the grades through high school and college.
It is all true, of course, and I love it. Gregory Peck is brilliant as the beloved General, mesmerizing with familiar, well-paced, inspirational, all-American soundbites.
Elsewhere across the Pacific, people wish the movie had made MacArthur a little more human than just a plastic saint. The General did not spend all his time in the Philippines in the battlefield, dealing exclusively with soldiers. He also had personal interactions with ordinary people that showed he really meant it when he said the Philippines was his "home." He participated in their festivities; forged close friendships with families of Philippine leaders; stood as godfather in a few baptismal ceremonies, and (after his divorce) maintained a long-running, if tragic, love affair with a Filipino woman. (One negligible blooper: When locating Leyte beach on the map, Peck actually points to Lingayen gulf.)
Formal biographies of national heroes are generally devoid of romance; so is this late MacArthur story. The General's wife has a very limited role. Same with "Ghandi," where the wife stays in the background.
Relationships with larger-than-life figures sometimes lead to disappointments, as when Filipinos in the post-war years realized Japan, the former enemy, was getting more nation-rebuilding benefits from the US than the equally war-torn Philippines, its soon-to-be released colony. It was the atom bombs, of course.
It is all true, of course, and I love it. Gregory Peck is brilliant as the beloved General, mesmerizing with familiar, well-paced, inspirational, all-American soundbites.
Elsewhere across the Pacific, people wish the movie had made MacArthur a little more human than just a plastic saint. The General did not spend all his time in the Philippines in the battlefield, dealing exclusively with soldiers. He also had personal interactions with ordinary people that showed he really meant it when he said the Philippines was his "home." He participated in their festivities; forged close friendships with families of Philippine leaders; stood as godfather in a few baptismal ceremonies, and (after his divorce) maintained a long-running, if tragic, love affair with a Filipino woman. (One negligible blooper: When locating Leyte beach on the map, Peck actually points to Lingayen gulf.)
Formal biographies of national heroes are generally devoid of romance; so is this late MacArthur story. The General's wife has a very limited role. Same with "Ghandi," where the wife stays in the background.
Relationships with larger-than-life figures sometimes lead to disappointments, as when Filipinos in the post-war years realized Japan, the former enemy, was getting more nation-rebuilding benefits from the US than the equally war-torn Philippines, its soon-to-be released colony. It was the atom bombs, of course.