Manila in the Claws of Light

The film moves to the alternating beats created by its characters' hopes and their miseries, by their talk of a different kind of future and the crushing reality of their present circumstances.

The intimate proletarian melodrama The Claws of Light succeeds where so many political allegories fail: With ethical and emotional sophistication, it dramatizes the suffering of the disadvantaged with characters that feel individual yet archetypal.

Lino Brocka's devastating ... melodrama opens with several stunning, grainy black-and-white shots of Manila, striking a beautiful balance between on-the-ground verisimilitude and fable-like eeriness.

For Brocka, [the film] isn’t mere melodrama—it’s a searing indictment. Every institution, from labor to media to law enforcement, fails the characters. Their story isn’t rare. It’s ordinary. And that’s what makes it devastating.