Manila. Fisherman Julio arrives to the capital and finds a job as a construction worker at a building. He befriends co-worker Atong and realizes that the workers are exploited by the boss, who withholds a part of their salary until he can find enough funds, in a scheme called "Taiwan". Julio is actually searching for a woman from his village, Ligaya, who was recruited by Mrs. Cruz to work in Manila, but who has since mysteriously vanished. After he gets fired from work, Julio spends the night on the open, where he is recruited by a male prostitute who initiates him to do this job. By following Mrs. Cruz, Julio finds Ligaya in a church. Julio and Ligaya land in bed, and she admits that she works as a prostitute, and that her pimp is Chinese Ah-Tek, but that she cannot leave because of her baby. Julio persuades her to meet him later to escape. However, he reads in a newspaper Ligaya allegedly fell down stairs and died. Julio goes to Ah-Tek's apartment and stabs him to death. He is chased by a mob and attacked in an alley.
The only Filipino film included in the book "1001 Movies You Must See" by Steven Jay Schneider, "Manila in the Claws of Light" is a dark and sober social drama that ostensibly talks about the hero's search in Manila for the woman who disappeared from his village, yet along the way it also depicts a wide array of socialist criticism against work exploitation and the plight of lower class in the country at that time. For instance, already in the opening act (which switches from black and white to color the minute the protagonist Julio appears on screen), Julio finds work for 2.50 peso, yet is coerced into signing a misleading contract that feigns it is paying him 4 peso, more than he is actually getting. Prostitution plays a major role in the story, implying that people have to "sell out" completely to finance a living. The director Lino Brocka crafts the movie surprisingly fluent, including association flashbacks of Julio imagining Ligaya walking on the beach, to symbolize his yearning for her and nostalgia for a better past, and adding allegory, such as during the sequence of the visit to the slums of Manila, where Pol spots three kids happily playing in the sea, just to comment how they will soon grow up and experience how harsh life is, which can be applied as a foreshadowing of the fates of the three characters of Julio, Ligaya and Atong. However, the movie is still a tad too conventional, routine and grey, failing to truly become outstanding in any other field besides the depressive mood. It all ends in a perdictable tragedy, yet it is all effective and humane in its essence.
Grade:++
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