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Yliaza John M.
Beneranda STEM 12 C
“HIMALA”
By Ishmael Bernal
The film “himala” by Ishmael Bernal reflects not only the society today but it also shows
how cruel and harsh life can be or how money and greed can do to a person.
The characters in the story mirror different kinds of people in the society. It shows how faith
can change the priorities and perspective of a person and how ones vision and actions can
influence other people either in a good way or in a bad way, just like Elsa. In the film, she
supposedly can see the Virgin Mary and apparently can heal the sick. At first, I thought that she
could really see the Virgin Mary and heal the sick but as the film goes on you could see signs
and actions which proves that she might just faking it and telling lies.
There are a lot of characters in there that really annoys me especially those people who
took advantage of Elsa’s supposed healing powers to gain profit just like Mrs. Alba and Nimia.
There are also people who were blinded by their faith and beliefs in Elsa that they even forgot
their responsibilities towards their children like Sepa and also Chayong who fully believed and
trusted Elsa which resulted why she committed suicide. It also mirrors people who will do
anything for their own personal benefit like the filmmaker who only cares about his film that he
didn’t even help Elsa and Chayong when they were harassed on the hill. Nevertheless, Elsa’s
visions and beliefs helped their town to be popular and attracted a lot of tourist and became an
opportunity for her townsfolks to gain profit, particularly for “faith healing”. This is also the
reason why the people in their town believed that Elsa was the one who can remove the curse.
Elsa’s supposed healing powers cause uproar not only in their town but in different places
as well which brought a lot of attention towards her. At first, everything was going smoothly
until she and Chayong was raped and harassed on the hill while they were praying. This
incident drove Chayong to commit suicide. Because of this Elsa, finally realized the results of
her lies, felt guilt and regret that she stopped “healing”. I really like this part of the film
because, even though she only realized her wrong doings when Chayong and Sepa’s sons died,
she’s willing to take responsibility and to put everything in to end even if it will cost her life.
After she realized everything, she decided to call everyone who believed in her on the hill,
where she will tell the truth. During that part, I was really moved because that part of the film
was really well known all throughout the country because of the lines “Walang himala! Ang
himala ay nasa puso ng tao, nasa puso nating lahat! Tayo ang gumawa ng himala! Tayo ang
gumagawa ng mga sumpa at ng mga diyos…”
At the beginning of the film you could see the situation and livelihood of their town, it is far
from the city and the people in there are also having a hard time with the water supply.
Because of this circumstances, they believed that their town was cursed, and when Elsa started
her supposed faith healing, they began to believed that she’s the one who could remove the
curse without realizing the truth and they were also blinded with false faith that they didn’t
know how to distinguish the truth from lies and even willing to risk everything just for their
prayers to be heard.
For me, this film really showed how the faith and beliefs of Catholics work, since it shows
how they worship Elsa instead of directly praying to God. In there, it gives emphasis on how
people shamelessly blames God when something bad happened to them without realizing that
most of it is their doings that us humans are the ones responsible for the outcome of our
future. God is only there to strengthen and guides us to the right path for the common good of
the humanity. The lines “Walang himala! Ang himala ay nasa puso ng tao, nasa puso nating
lahat! Tayo ang gumawa ng himala! Tayo ang gumagawa ng mga sumpa at ng mga diyos…” is
really a timeless line that even today anyone could really relate to it. To conclude, this film
truly marked in the Philippine history, where in even today it is still acknowledge on how the
story flowed, and how religious beliefs, faith and faithfulness, morality and reality are leveled
throughout the film.

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