The words posted by Ricky Lee, National Artist for Film and Broadcast, honoring his friend and fellow National Artist, speak volumes: “Kung wala na ang lahat, kung kalansay na lang ako, ang matitira na lang ay ang sinasabi mong sining” (When everything is gone, when I am but bones, the only thing that will be left is what you call art).

Minutes after Nora Aunor’s son, Kristoffer Ian de Leon, announced her passing on the evening of April 16, the reactions of shock and grief and the condolences poured in. She was, after all, the Superstar, a title only she could lay claim to in these parts. She was said to be the Philippines’ best actress of all time, the most awarded and honored of them all.

Sadly, she was also one of the most maligned, most misunderstood and most misread. 

Political moves 

In the 1986 snap election, she campaigned for the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. But she also joined the Edsa People Power Revolt, where she was booed and called an “opportunist.”

During the “Edsa Dos” rallies, she joined the throng calling for the resignation of then President Joseph Estrada, once her benefactor and rumored paramour. She was said to be just “riding the wave.”

In the 2016 presidential election, she rooted for the tandem of Rodrigo Duterte-Ferdinand Marcos Jr. because, it was said, she had pending drug cases. 

In 2014 she was denied the title of National Artist because then President Benigno Aquino III did not want to send the message that “the use of illegal drugs is sometimes acceptable; the message should be [that] it is always bad and illegal.” (Ironically, she was conferred the title by then President Duterte, now detained in The Hague awaiting trial for crimes against humanity in relation to his “war on drugs”).

She was rumored to demand that her talent fee be paid in cash right after work, and then waste much of it in casinos and booze. Only now are stories surfacing about her generosity to lowly paid crew members and how she showered her friends with gifts.

Little is known about her presence and participation in protest rallies and her direct actions on various social ills. But the academic Roland Simbulan wrote about her presence in the Senate in September 1991 during the historic nonrenewal of the bases agreement between the Philippines and the United States. ACT Rep. France Castro recalls how she stood by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers in its campaign for just wages. She was seen in rallies protesting the execution of Flor Contemplacion in Singapore long before she played the role of that overseas Filipino worker, and in a mass action condemning state violence against protesting farmers in Kidapawan, North Cotabato.

Glimpses

It is in reading Nora Aunor’s life as an artist and film producer that one can get glimpses of the complexity of her character.

While at the top of her career in 1973, having gone through a series of teeny-bopper films and low-budget musicals, she embarked on film production and gambled on stories outside the sure-fire commercial realm. She worked with Lamberto Avellana and Gerry de Leon, both National Artists like herself, in “Fe, Esperanza, Caridad,” and again with De Leon on “Banaue” in 1975. 

In 1976, she produced and acted in two landmark films—“Minsa’y Isang Gamugamo” (Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara) and “Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos” (Mario O’Hara). 

All these films garnered recognition from award-giving bodies of the time.

She created two of the most memorable characters in modern Filipino film industry—Elsa in “Himala” and Bona in the eponymous film—megged by two other National Artists, Ishmael Bernal and Lino Brocka, respectively. She was also Corazon dela Cruz (in “Gamugamo”), Flor Contemplacion, and Andrea, among many other ordinary-women characters who made wrong decisions in their lives.  

Tito Valiente of the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, in citing Nora Aunor for the Natatanging Gawad Urian in 2015, wrote: “The characters are not always likeable, better for us to look at how life can be unfair and, well, better. Without us knowing it, Nora has lifted the contravida from the dark side of the stock and the stereotype into the center, the spotlight of importance for us to contemplate both the evil and the good, for us to savor the grays and the anomalous, those inscrutable in-betweens that mark us imperfect, human.”

At the moment

So it was in her personal life. She made decisions that did not sit well with sectors observing her, imposing their morals and aesthetics on someone they deem too accessible to them. An icon, after all, should be a paragon of virtue. But Nora Aunor, while standing above the rest, remained among the rest. She approached her life decisions the same way she approached her characters: going with what is needed at the moment.  

Another critic, Joel David, reposted from an essay in Facebook by Tony DG: “Aunor’s performances were always too legible. Too accessible. Critics praised her as ‘the voice’ or ‘the face,’ but rarely as a method. She was celebrated as phenomenon, never as process… She never fit the idea of Art as defined by the academic and critical infrastructure that surrounded her.”

In her own tribute, Katrina Stuart Santiago said Nora Aunor “embodied rebellion like no other, without knowing so, without meaning to, and she will not, cannot be replaced.”

Perhaps there is no way we can fully understand how Nora Aunor lived her life. As in any icon, as in any hero or idol we place on a pedestal, she will be a mystery, subject to many readings and interpretations. 

But we can get clues and complete the picture, validating the honors accorded her by her fellow actors. Dingdong Dantes, who chairs Aktor (or the League of Filipino Actors), recalled how she sat with him in between takes of a television project and talked “about nothing in particular, and maybe everything that mattered in that moment.”

Dantes wrote: “She was generous with her presence—not just in the scene, but in that in-between space where actors wait and breathe. It’s that kind of grace that stays with you. The kind that reminds you why people like her are legends—not just because of the work, but because of how they carry the weight of it with humility.”

Read more: Always and ever: the Nora Aunor mystique