‘In Our Image’: Juicy Slices of Marcos Intrigue

The debate over commercial TV’s so-called “reality” programs--which feature dramatized versions of actual events--is again heating up. Do they exploit? Do they distort? Do they do more harm than good? Have they run their course?

Meanwhile, the real reality is occurring elsewhere.

A three-part documentary airing on consecutive Mondays, “The U.S. and the Philippines: In Our Image,” premieres at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15, and at 10 on Channel 24.

No actors. No re-creations. No gossipy speculation. No titillating embellishment. No heart-stopping music. No spangles. No tricks. No melodramatic host.

Just good journalism--clear, thorough, incisive, factual, illuminating, meticulously documented reporting.

Oh, one of those programs.

Hold the yawns! There are times when this thick slab of TV from PBS plays as compellingly as good fiction, when the juicy political intrigues it relives are as fascinating as the best of docudrama, when you find yourself mesmerized by its story.

That’s because the history of American-Filipino relations is so absorbing, because its recent key characters are almost too amazing to be believed, and because the demise of the Marcoses and Corazon Aquino’s swift rise to power represent the world political version of “Rocky.”

With reality like this, who needs a script?

The reporter and narrator for “In Our Image” is Stanley Karnow, a veteran journalist who covered the Philippines and was one of the principal contributors to the acclaimed PBS documentary “Vietnam: A Television History.”

“In Our Image” starts a bit slowly. After firmly planting its historical roots, however, it blossoms into a vivid narrative.

It traces the genesis and impact of United States influence in this Americanized former colony, which achieved independence as a nation in 1946 yet remained a cultural and political dependent of its longtime patron.

Using interviews with Aquino, the Marcoses, other prominent Filipinos and many Americans who had key roles in the Philippines, “In Our Image” manages to make the complex clear, understandable and even irresistible.

Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr.--whose murder years later will alter the course of the Philippines--first surfaces as a young journalist in the late 1950s. We meet Ferdinand Marcos as the winner of the 1965 presidential election.

Their destinies will merge in the coming years.

Protests against Marcos grow. In 1972, he jails Aquino, now his top political rival. Eight years later, Marcos allows him to go to the United States for heart surgery on the condition that he return afterward. But Aquino and his family remain stateside.

In 1983, Aquino does decide to return to the Philippines, and the drum roll begins.

What a horrifying--and captivating--thriller this is (and no wonder it made such powerful docudrama in HBO’s superb “A Dangerous Life”).

Previously little more than a name to most of us, Ninoy Aquino comes to life here, his charismatic presence making it easy to see how Marcos must have feared this popular politician.

Videotape of Aquino inside the jet taking him home is replayed suspensefully. He nervously jokes about the fate that could await him on the ground. He is escorted off by government soldiers. There is chaos. Then come the gunshots--sounding like loud pops--that set in motion the tumultuous events that will ultimately topple Marcos and put Ninoy’s widow into the presidency.

The last 15 minutes of “In Our Image” are devoted to the crushing social, financial and political problems now facing Corazon Aquino.

So the Hollywood ending is still incomplete. Rocky had his continuing problems, too, but unlike him, Aquino has no scriptwriters to ensure her ultimate triumph.