By Angela Mae Bonilla and Mariah Louise Fadera

 

Genre:             Drama

Director:         Eddie Rodriguez

Produced by: Viva Films Production

Cast:               Snooky Serna – Agnes

                         Tonton Gutierrez – Joemari

                        Ricky Davao – Romano

                        Vina Morales – Carmi

Do you ever experience or witness a woman being violated at home or in your workplace? Is the perpetrator family-related or an acquaintance? How did the victim overcome the abuse done to her? Does life makes her more miserable with its consequences? Abot Hanggang Sukdulan is a Filipino film released in 1989 that portrays the life of a 21-year old woman who was raped by her admirer whom soon became her husband with the addition of life problems and conflicts.  The director of this film is Luis Clemente “Eddie” Rodriguez, also an actor, writer and producer. He acted on Philippine movies with leading ladies Gloria Romero, Nida Blanca, Nora Aunor and many more under the Virgo Film Productions. Some of the films he was recognized as a cool and suave actor are Kapag Puso ay Sinugatan, Nakakahiya (parts 1 and 2), Sapagkat Kami ay Tao Lamang and Malupit na Pag-ibig. As a writer, his works were Ikaw Lamang, Sana’y Ikaw na Nga and Megamol. Rodriguez died on October 2001 because of cardiac arrest and lung cancer.

Agnes with her family and boyfriend Joemari were living a quiet and normal life. Agnes is an executive secretary in an investment bank while Joemari is reviewing and preparing for his bar exam. Romano is a son of a popular Congressman in their place, was mesmerized with Agnes’ strong and smart beauty one morning whom both working in the same building. He tried to impress her by giving chocolates and flowers, asking out for dinner; he was determined to have her as his wife. He was dumped by Agnes after several days of courting, admitting that she is already engaged with his boyfriend. Because of this incident, Romano commanded his men to kidnap Agnes after her work shift so that he could have her. Agnes was raped, physically abused and was thrown in a dark street. Media press nationwide paid more attention in the rape case because of the involvement of a Congressman’s son as perpetrator. Her family felt pain seeing Agnes’ condition so they filed a case against Romano and determined to put him in jail. The Congressman tried to fix the issue by shortening the needs of Agnes’ family by deliberately firing out Agnes’ father in his work so that they would cancel the case. However, they were not shook and still determined to provide justice for Agnes.

After a month of recovering, Agnes found out that she is pregnant of Romano’s baby. She was traumatized of the rape incident so she decided to undergo abortion but her mother stopped her. Romano’s family offered marriage between their son and Agnes for two reasons; so that the child will have a better life since they are rich and to clean the name of the Congressman against bashers and negative news. Agnes decided to accept the offer thinking of her social and moral responsibility for her family; it was a heavy decision for her boyfriend Joemari would surely get hurt. After the civil wedding of the two, they headed to their new home. Agnes and Romano were getting along at first but at their first night as husband-and-wife, another traumatic experience happened over Agnes where Romano sexually abused her. He is a sadist, he loves to hurt her physically and sexually, and a drug user, he forcedly let her intake drugs so that they would both agreed to have sex. Romano did not think what might happen to their child because of those drugs. He is also a heavy drinker and brought a prostitute at home one night making Agnes decided to leave. But because of Romano’s dominance and cruelty, she stayed.

Agnes gave birth of a baby boy and regained her strength. After, she accidentally met Joemari again and feels like all their emotions and love came back. They both are very careful because Romano is a dangerous man and has deadly connections. Agnes and Joemari secretly meet each other in the UP Library. The two planned to escape and go abroad to live their life peacefully and happily. Then one day, Romano sensed something fishy so he followed Agnes in the said library and found out the escape plan. Because of anger and feeling of being cheated, Romano beat Joemari and warned the two to avoid each other or else they will be dead. He also grounded Agnes leaving their house. Romano’s sister witnessed the abuse done on Agnes and helped her to run away together with the child. Agnes escaped successfully and secretly lived with her aunt and uncle. Due to the absence of Agnes, Romano kidnapped her sister Carmi, a mute innocent teenager and raped her so that Agnes would come back to him after knowing what he did. Agnes felt sorry and enraged because her sister included in their war so she was determined to kill Romano and his men to finally get revenge.

After watching the film, we recognized critical theories applied namely Marxism Theory, Ideology Theory, and Archetypal Theory.

Karl Marx is well-known by his writings about capitalism and socialism in the 1800’s and he had many suggestions of how society is split in two major classes, Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. In films, viewers can identify characters’ social class by observing how the person dress, what do they eat, their kind of living, where they live and how do they make a living. In the Abot Hanggang Sukdulan film, we can observe Marxist class, the characters’ difference in social class and how this social class made way for Agnes (main protagonist of the film) and her family to have struggles in life. As for the characters, Agnes, Joemari and Romano have different social class. Romano is on the higher social class, he is living in a rich and wealthy family and his father is a Congressman which gave them more power to do things their way. While Agnes and Joemari, they are not in the so poor state but still they are in lower class compared to Romano. There are a lot of scenes where Romano used his social class superiority to oppress Agnes and her family. First is when he set up a lunch date with Agnes through the help of her boss. Agnes’ boss did not refused to Romano because he made an investment to his company and maybe Agnes’ boss is afraid to lose a major client that’s why he agreed to Romano’s offer.

Another scene is when Romano’s father, the Congressman, commanded his lawyer to investigate about Agnes’ family and be hard on them to make Agnes’ family to move back the lawsuit they file against Romano. Romano’s family made everything to suppress Agnes and her family. They made Agnes’ father lost his job so that they will not have earnings to support his family and so that they will stop the lawsuit. In the said film, it is clearly shown that people in the high social class has the power to oppress people on the lower social class. The time when Joemari was bruised and get near to die showed how helpless Agnes was from Romano. That event made her mind to decide to run away with her son from Romano. Luckily, Romano’s sister helped her. But still Romano found a way to torture Agnes’ feelings by kidnapping and raping Carmi. This particular event urges Agnes to have vengeance to Romano’s cruelty to her and to her innocent sister. This part of the film shows that helpless people can rise up and fight back against their oppressors wherein according to Karl Marx; socialism (represented by Agnes) can rise up in the face of capitalist oppression (represented by Romano’s cruelty).

Another theory we recognized is Ideology Theory. From our class, it is stated that ideology is related to concepts like world view, belief system and values. In the film, maybe for others it’s just a small part of the film wherein we can see the religiousness of the protagonists in the film, Agnes and her family. But for us, Agnes’ beliefs had a big impact to the story of the film. We can conclude that Agnes’ family is just in the middle class but they are intact, happy and like what we mentioned, religious. In the film we saw that they pray before starting the meal, when Agnes is brought to the hospital after being raped and abused, Carmi told her to still have faith in God. Another ideology we can see in the film is Agnes’ belief that she doesn’t deserve Joemari after she has been physically and sexually abused by Romano. She believed that she already lost her purity as a woman and she doesn’t be worthy of a good man like Joemari. One more scene that we saw in the film is when Agnes found out that she is pregnant, she felt devastated because what’s inside her womb is the result of Romano’s molestation to her. She thought of having abortion but her mother stopped her because it is a sin.

Agnes’ kindness and fear to God is one reason why she endures everything that Romano did to her. Even when he always beats her, of course Agnes will get mad and feel full of hatred to Romano to the point that she cursed him, told him that she will kill him and she also attempted to murder Romano few times but she always hold back. Not until Romano made his biggest mistake of hurting Agnes’ sister that pushed her to her limits resulting to Romano’s death. Last theory we identified is Archetypal Theory wherein it is a way of looking at and defining the world that has numerous uses. There can be archetypal characters, in the film, Romano is the symbol of patriarchy wherein man dominates woman. He always want to get what he wants, even it is getting by force, he also wants that Agnes will do everything he says and gets mad when Agnes refuses to. He has the dominance as a husband over Agnes, her wife.

Applying other critical lenses in the film, we have observed that the sounds effects are appropriate with the story even the background theme songs supports it very well. The acting of the characters is convincing especially Ricky Davao as Romano being the antagonist of the film. He really looks like a drug-addicted spoiled rich son of a Congressman. We would also praise how Snooky Serna as Agnes act as she was violated, traumatized with the rape incident, and she recovered making hard decisions in life. We can really feel the pain in her acting when her sister was molested by her own husband, the pain losing her only love Joemari and the pain killing Romano even she has the doubt and fear of hurting her perpetrator. Since this film “Abot Hanggang Sukdulan” is a 1980s Filipino movie, the quality of how the movie presented are not that high. Some scenes are a bit blurry.

But overall the film is great; it is very realistic, and raises awareness for girls and women to be careful of their admirers. Turning down boys and men should be in a nice way to avoid them being offended and disappointed. We don’t know how they would react on it and how they behave so to prevent harsh intended abuses, one should be respectful explaining her side. It is a lesson for us to stay alert and safe outside even you are with someone you know. In the aspect of marriage, women should know their rights and when those are being violated by their own husband. Anything done with them unwillingly or forcedly can be considered as women violence. They should know what to do and where to find help when they experience abuse. Women should not be afraid to tell their parents even authorities if they feel they are being harassed and abused. In addition, a marriage should be happy and healthy. Husband and wife can achieve a so-called perfect marriage if they respect and care each other, and always put God first in the center. Everybody especially women and girls should always remember the old rule of not talking and trusting strangers to avoid dangerous incidents that could harm us.