Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang: the Movie
Lino Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang: A Personal Reading
Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang is a story of two social “outcasts” in a small town in Nueva Ecija. These two marginalized characters namely: Kuala, the town’s demented character is the central sensibility of the story whose life gets entangled with the town’s other characters. The second character is Berto, a leper, whose life is the symbolic signification of the community’s hypocrisy.
First , let me give you the summary.
Kuala, (played by Lolita Rodriguez) is made mad by the traumatic abortion. She walks aimlessly around town taunted by men and children. In her aimless wanderings she attracts the attention of Berto, a person afflicted with leprosy, who brings her to his nipa hut which is just adjacent to the town cemetery. Together , they make a couple far from the prying eyes of the community. Junior,(played by Christopher de Leon) a teenager who is the secret boyfriend of the town’s prettiest girl, Evangeline. It is only Junior who is able to enter the world of Kuala and Berto. In his short but memorable friendship with these two characters, he learns about human nature especially of society’s treatment of people with disabilities and deformities.(the marginalized so to speak)
Just like any typical lay organization in our local church, the Associacion de las Damas Cristianas becomes the Greek chorus who serves as the community’s censor or the “town’s judge” which dispenses what is morally right and wrong. Scandalized by the pregnancy of Kuala, the Associacion members suggested that Kuala should be under the custody of Lola Jacoba (the town’s rich matriarch and a member of the Associacion ) Junior shows up and helps the pregnant Kuala make her way back to Berto’s shack. He entreats his father to help the hapless Kuala but the latter chided his son for meddling in the life of a demented woman. The father , Cesar Blanco(played by Eddie Garcia) is a womanizing politician who is
Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang is a story of two social “outcasts” in a small town in Nueva Ecija. These two marginalized characters namely: Kuala, the town’s demented character is the central sensibility of the story whose life gets entangled with the town’s other characters. The second character is Berto, a leper, whose life is the symbolic signification of the community’s hypocrisy.
First , let me give you the summary.
Kuala, (played by Lolita Rodriguez) is made mad by the traumatic abortion. She walks aimlessly around town taunted by men and children. In her aimless wanderings she attracts the attention of Berto, a person afflicted with leprosy, who brings her to his nipa hut which is just adjacent to the town cemetery. Together , they make a couple far from the prying eyes of the community. Junior,(played by Christopher de Leon) a teenager who is the secret boyfriend of the town’s prettiest girl, Evangeline. It is only Junior who is able to enter the world of Kuala and Berto. In his short but memorable friendship with these two characters, he learns about human nature especially of society’s treatment of people with disabilities and deformities.(the marginalized so to speak)
Just like any typical lay organization in our local church, the Associacion de las Damas Cristianas becomes the Greek chorus who serves as the community’s censor or the “town’s judge” which dispenses what is morally right and wrong. Scandalized by the pregnancy of Kuala, the Associacion members suggested that Kuala should be under the custody of Lola Jacoba (the town’s rich matriarch and a member of the Associacion ) Junior shows up and helps the pregnant Kuala make her way back to Berto’s shack. He entreats his father to help the hapless Kuala but the latter chided his son for meddling in the life of a demented woman. The father , Cesar Blanco(played by Eddie Garcia) is a womanizing politician who is