Mark Reviews Movies: THE KINGMAKER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 7, 2019

Imelda Marcos is many things: the former first lady of the Philippines, a popular figure in that country, someone who loves fashion, a collector of fine art, and a devoted family person. She imagines herself to be many other things: Chief among them is her self-professed role as the "mother of the Philippines." The truth, of course, has little to do with such hollow or imagined descriptions, and The Kingmaker, a documentary portrait of Marcos that only becomes more terrifying as it progresses, cuts to the core of what happens when one person's ego becomes more important than the welfare of a country.

Director Lauren Greenfield begins this biography with Marcos in recent years. She is in her 80s and still pounds the pavement like a politician decades younger than she actually is. She seems nice and kind, handing out money to kids on the street and visiting children with cancer in a hospital she funded, where she also hands out large-dollar notes to kids. Her home is as stately adorned as she is immaculately dressed. After all, when protestors and government agents raided the president's mansion after the Marcos family fled, they discovered more than a thousand pairs of shoes.

The film's structure is fascinating, in that it is and isn't a chronological account of Marcos' life. We get a biography, narrated by the woman herself, whom Greenfield interviews in impeccably staged (by the politician) conversations in Marcos' home. Servants scatter in and out of frame, helping her stand and sit, setting up props, and, in one telling moment, cleaning up a mess of broken glass she has made, while Marcos just goes on talking about all of the world leaders she has met. She is a bit more careful touching and handling those framed photos after knocking down a bunch of them, at least.

The names of those leaders are equally telling. There's Ronald Reagan, and there are members of British government and royalty, of course. That's to be expected. There's also, though, Saddam Hussein, and she also has some kind words about Muammar Gaddafi.

She has nice things to say about a good number of murderous dictators, which, in case it isn't clear, is a warning sign when the number of dictators is greater than zero. She would have compliments and defenses for such men. After all, her late husband is counted among them.

It's difficult to tell when Greenfield drops the veil on our first impression of Marcos, because the lasting impression is too strong, too frightening, and too depressing to recall anything about the woman before the truth comes to light. The actual picture of Marcos, an intelligent and cunning politician if there ever was one, re-defines everything we saw and heard at the beginning. The money she hands out so freely, for example, is probably going back into the hands of children whose parents and grandparents had to pay a significant price for Marcos to enjoy the spoils of power.

The actual story of Marcos' life begins when she met Ferdinand, a politician with great ambition. She tells a sob story about going to an American psychiatric hospital for depression, where the doctors allegedly told her that she basically should suck it up, because there's nothing about which to be depressed. Beyond the doubtful clinical diagnosis, the story certainly does seem perfectly in tune with the picture Marcos has created of herself: of a martyr, who has given up so much, simply because she loved her country and its people so much.

Again, the truth has little to nothing to do with the picture. The truth is that her husband became president, seized power, set up a government-run program to detain and execute his political opponents, and only abandoned his position when an election was obviously fraudulent and the people revolted. Among the husband's targets was opposition leader Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., who was arrested in the 1970s, left for the United States in 1980, and was assassinated upon his return to the Philippines in 1983.

The weird part of the story is that Marcos dated Aquino before meeting the man who would become her husband. The unsurprising part of the story is that Marcos denies any knowledge or involvement in Aquino's murder. She didn't have a motive, Marcos insists, just before saying that Aquino was a threat to her and her husband's hold on power. The only justice, perhaps, is that Aquino's widow and son each became president, serving a single, six-year term, as dictated by a Constitution that was revised after the Marcos family fled after 21 years in power.

In a just world, that would have been the end of this story. Instead, it's simply a minor roadblock for Marcos, who returned to the Philippines in 1991—five years after running away and two years after husband's death. She was elected to the House of Representatives. One of her daughters became the governor of a province (where, not so coincidentally, the dead dictator's body was held after its return was banned). Her son Bongbong, a nickname that was more politically tenable than the actual name he shares with his father, became a senator. In 2016, he ran for vice president in the same year that Rodrigo Duterte, who has engaged in an open war on the poor with his deadly drug-enforcement rhetoric and policies, was elected as president.

Greenfield makes it clear that Marcos' story hasn't ended, and like her husband's, it likely won't end even after she is dead. The Kingmaker tells this story, and it also shows the price for such power-hungry and amoral dynasties, from a personal zoo of exotic animals, who are now destroying themselves, to a population that has to ask an impossible question: Is it better to be killed in secret or out in the open?

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