Annie O’Connor
Asian 210
Professor de la Cruz
November 25, 2019
Film Analysis: Metro Manila
Metro Manila follows the journey of Oscar Ramirez and his family as they move from
their rural home in the rice fields to Manila in search of economic prosperity. The film revolves
around the common motif of venturing to a city to find work and the importance of family.
While the movie is well-written and entertaining, it was created and directed by British director
Sean Ellis, who wrote the script in English originally and based the plot off of one visit to the
Philippines in which he witnessed an argument between two armored truck drivers. The
perspective that Ellis takes clearly exhibits an outsider’s view of the Philippines and many
examples of the colonial influence of Spain.
In the film, Oscar and his wife Mai leave their home at the rice fields and head to Manila
when they do not make enough money to buy next year’s seed. Oscar and Mai both struggle to
find work and are taken advantage of by veterans of the city, but eventually Mai finds a job as a
sex worker and Oscar takes a job that is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in Manila, an
armored truck driver. His partner, Ong, takes Oscar under his wing, but Oscar soon discovers the
ulterior motives Ong holds and finds himself covering for his partner’s immoral acts in order to
support his family. When Ong allows Oscar and his family to live in the apartment Ong said that
he had rented so that he could visit his girlfriend there, Oscar feels he has no choice but to be
loyal. Ong’s previous partner had been robbed and killed, and he said that the thieves had taken
the box with the money in it. Oscar later discovers that Ong had took the box for himself and was
hiding it in the apartment that he was letting Oscar live in, but getting the key to the boxes would
require a dangerous mission and a betrayal of his employer. When Ong is killed, Oscar decides
that he will try to get the key in order to lift his family out of poverty, but he is shot and killed
while trying to do so. His wife later discovers that Oscar had imprinted the key in putty inside
the locket he was wearing, which he knew would be returned to his wife.
Location plays an important role in both the plot and the meaning of the film, but its
portrayal must be viewed critically as coming from the perspective of an outsider. The contrast
between Banaue, where Oscar and Mai had lived before, and Manila, the setting of the movie, is
stark. Ellis conveys life in Banaue as overly simplistic and remote. When their daughter
complains of a toothache, Oscar responds that there are dentists in Manila (6 minutes), which
implies a dependence on the city that may not have been accurate. This is a reflection of Spanish
colonial thought, that “As the heirs of Greco-Roman urbanism, the Spaniards instinctively
identified civilization with the city, whose origins go back to the polis of ancient Greece”
(Phelan, 44). Additionally, rural communities in the Philippines even centuries ago had structure,
with datus as the central leaders. It is unlikely that all forms of community structure have
disappeared in rural areas today. Manila was pictured as a violent city with ruthless residents,
which is a blunt distinction to how the rice fields were pictured. Even within Manila, the slums
are viewed as separate from the rest of the city. At one point, Ong tells Oscar that if the company
finds out that he lives in the slums, they will fire him (1 hour 3 minutes). The disparity in the
description of the settings in the film reveals that the director views the Philippines as violent in
urban areas and remote outside of the cities.
The characters in Metro Manila are portrayed differently based on both their class and
their gender. Masculinity is depicted in a traditional, patriarchal manner and Mai is depicted as a
submissive woman who must sell her body for work. Oscar, as the “man of the family” goes off
to do a very dangerous and male-dominated job in order to support his family financially, which
it is implied that he is expected to do. Mai’s role as the caretaker of the children and a sex worker
stems from the patriarchal structure of the Philippines when it was colonized. According to
Brewer, when priestesses were denied power in the Church upon Spanish arrival, it damaged the
position of women in society for the rest of Philippine history. She states that “With these strong
women banished to the periphery, other indigenous women were left without role models of
female religious leaders to balance the patriarchal hegemony of Hispanic Catholicism” (Brewer,
86). When Oscar is interviewing for the truck company, his boss asks him to tell a joke, and
Oscar repeats one that Ong had told him. The joke asked which of three women to hire at a bar
based on what they would do if they found money on the ground, and the punch line was “the
one with the biggest boobs” (24 minutes). This disparaging comment towards women
exemplifies the view of women in the Philippines.
The relationship between Ong and Oscar also demonstrates the interaction between
different people of different classes in the Philippines. The interactions between the two
characters are largely shaped by the power dynamic, as Ong is wealthier and therefore more
powerful. Throughout the history of the Philippines, power was often directly correlated with
wealth. Wealthier Filipinos in earlier centuries would go to study in Spain to get the best
education and come back to the Philippines, and they were viewed favorably by Spaniards in
comparison to the peasants. Although Ong would not be considered a member of the elite class,
his relative wealth compared to Oscar made him more powerful within the company and forced
Oscar to submit to is requests. Through both gender and socioeconomic status, Ellis creates a
visible divide between groups of people that reflect divides rooted in Philippine history.
Throughout the film, there are multiple instances where colonial influence is evident.
Whether or not Ellis fully acknowledged the origins of these signs is unknown, but the movie
clearly demonstrates the Spanish colonial influence on the Philippines. Specifically, signs of
Catholicism and appeared consistently throughout the movie. Missionaries’ main goal was to
convert native Filipinos to Catholicism at the beginning of and throughout Spanish colonization
of the Philippines, and they succeeded to some extent. Metro Manila, set in the modern-day
Philippines, demonstrates this success. In the first apartment that the family moves into, there is a
picture of the Virgin Mary, a prominent Catholic figure and the mother of Jesus, on the wall in
the hallway. Additionally, the armored truck drivers make the sign of the cross when
remembering their friend who had been killed in a robbery. Although these signs are minor, it is
an indication that “the Filipinos were Christianized in the face of severe handicaps of a shortage
of priests and a dispersed population speaking a bewildering variety of languages” (Phelan, 71).
Colonial residue from centuries before this movie was made demonstrate the vast influence that
the Spanish had on the development of the Philippines.
By chronicling the attempt of a family to gain economic prosperity in the Philippines,
Metro Manila reveals important truths about the history of the country and its current state.
However, the stereotypes that the settings and characters fall into are evidence of an outside
source producing the movie. While the stereotypes may reflect some truths about Filipino
culture, they fail to address many other aspects. The film was entertaining and artfully produced,
and was also able to contrast many aspects of life in the Philippines to express both important
truths and cultural stereotypes.