Encanto, Colombia, and my hopes for Philippine cinema

(WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the movie Encanto.)



From the moment I first watched the trailer for Disney’s Encanto, I knew I was in love. From the colorful bougainvillea flowers to the houses highly resembling our own bahay na bato, I felt an affinity for the movie. There was a warmth inside me that I couldn’t explain. And when I finally watched it when it came out, I got even more than what I’d hoped for.



Encanto is a celebration of Colombian culture. It highlights the country’s music, cuisine, and even literature - the movie’s premise is very reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. We see lively Colombian songs in the form of the movie’s snappy musical numbers, we’re treated to Colombian food via Julieta’s sumptuous cooking and the town boy Juancho’s love for coffee, and we’re shown the Colombian aesthetic through Casita’s architecture and the clothing of the Madrigals.



But it doesn’t stop there. Encanto also doesn’t shy away from the painful parts of Colombia’s history - Abuela’s backstory, a flashback set to the poignant Dos Oruguitas, features the Thousand Days’ War, a civil war considered to be one of the most destructive conflicts in the country’s history. In the flashback scene, Abuela and her husband Pedro are displaced by the war, forced to flee their home. However, the hardliners, being on horseback, eventually catch up to the civilians and kill Pedro, resulting in the family being given their “miracle” in the form of a magic candle.







Despite the fantastic elements, we are shown a very real and raw picture of how the war devastated people, especially Abuela. She herself brushes it off as a mere backstory for their “miracle”, but the movie shows us otherwise: it is the source of the Madrigal family’s trauma, passed down over the generations. The brutality of the Thousand Days’ War co-exists with the happy tunes and vibrant colors of Mirabel’s town - the movie makes room for that contradiction. It is possible for one to celebrate a country’s culture while also taking a long, hard look at the parts of its history that are violent, difficult, and harrowing. Encanto’s representation is not a shallow, manicured vision of what Colombia is. It doesn’t gloss over things.



This is my hope for Philippine cinema, and maybe Philippine media in general. Can we highlight our culture while at the same time acknowledging the suffering our country has gone through? It’s definitely a challenge - we could easily fall into an either-or situation, where the Philippines’ beauty and charm is favored over its faults and colonial trauma or vice-versa. We need to make room for both the good and the bad if we are to ever tell a complete story about our country. This is my biggest learning as a Philippine Studies major: the Philippines is full of contradictions, and to appreciate it we must open our minds to them. This is why we find it so hard to consolidate and construct an identity: in terms of religion, we’re Christian and Muslim and animist and a lot of other things; in terms of tradition, we’re indigenous and Spanish and American and Chinese and Indian. The list goes on and on. We have both something to smile about and something to cry about when we look back on our history, and to fully appreciate who and what we are, we’re going to have to accept that duality.