Ang Larawan: What does it really mean?
Ang Larawan is a story about two daughters of a genius painter and their financial struggles. That’s on the surface. What Ang Larawan is really about is precisely in the title. Image, public image, reputation, their identity and how it can or is being perceived by their neighbors.
The story wasn’t much about the painting itself as the movie only showed it for a few seconds. What it centered on was the people. First off, the painting itself gave them an image of exclusivity. They had people knocking on their door to view the painting. It reached a point that people they knew only visited them for the sake of that painting, and so the spotlight was set on them.
Eventually, Candida and Paula were very wary of their reputation, fearing when they thought that their electricity was cut. When there was a rumor that started about Paula and Tony, Candida did her best and lied to protect her and her sister’s image. She was afraid about what other people would say, and this has been specifically stated in the lyrics of their dialogue.
Added to this, the rich relatives who visited talked and showed a lot about their public image and social class. Doña Loleng and her family were all about the rich lifestyle and they were very proud of it. While the two girls who chased after Tony were excited to ruin the reputation of Paula by spreading news about them at the first chance they could get. The siblings also wanted to no longer be associated with the house because their conscience haunted them. This could be because they left their father and siblings while they continued on to a more classy and extravagant lifestyle.
While the theme could also be about family and tradition in the Philippine setting, I think the whole movie and its goals were all propelled by the want for reputation, to be up on the social class especially during the colonization wherein social classes were more prominent in the Philippine society. How Candida and Paula feared to be seen more lowly, how the siblings carried themselves as if they were better off now, how Tony wanted to change who he was, and how his presence was a threat to the family’s reputation, — the reputation that came with being the owners of the most famous painting. Even the painting, I think, which showed the painter and his conscience had connoted a man vs. man and man vs. society struggle except this time the man is also society, how he carries himself and the weight of a society’s pressure on him. Whether it mean the negativity of his conscience or of society because of this, it talks a lot about one’s identity.
In the end, when Paula burns the painting, she says that she and her sister are finally free. At this part, they no longer care about what others think, because eventually they will forget about the painting. Nobody will come to them for the sake of the painting, and their public image is now out of their hands. Even if they would never be free from the judgment of other people, they were free from thinking about it themselves. They no longer cared, and they knew their principles of family first. Eventually, their story would end along with the war, but this was a story that set the made a mark on Philippine society because it was a revelation of how the Filipino society has come to be.