Imelda Marcos famously owns 3,000 pairs of shoes, but Lauren Greenfield’s fascinating documentary portrait reveals this is just the gold tip of her excess. With films such as The Queen Of Versailles and Generation: Wealth, Greenfield has emerged as cinema’s greatest chronicler of the obscenely rich, and is ideally placed to document Marcos’ madness. But she also broadens the film’s focus to provide an overview of the rotten state of play of Southeast Asian politics as Marcos plots a return to power after leaving the Philippines in disgrace.
Invites clear parallels with Trump’s America while undercutting Imelda Marcos’ mythology.
The Kingmaker starts with Marcos in her element, surrounded by expensive art in her apartment and handing out crisp bank notes to the sick and poor (“candy for the kids”). She positions herself as a woman of the people but Greenfield undermines the assertion at every turn, via astute observation and talking heads who illuminate the pain she wielded over the country.
The first half charts her rise and time in power as the First Lady of the Philippines, ruling with her husband Ferdinand whom she married after an 11-day courtship. The pair presided over a two-decade dictatorship in the Philippines before being forced to flee to Hawaii in 1986. Greenfield brings out details of her excess (she once chucked 254 families off Calauit island so she could have a private game reserve) that coalesce into a compelling portrait of the way rampant materialism and greed become dangerous when they are afforded a political platform.
For in the second half The Kingmaker broadens its focus as, after years in exile, Marcos schemes to get her son Bongbong elected as the country’s VP, who would succeed the current corrupt president Rodrigo Duterte. In examining Marcos’ post-truth philosophies (“Perception is real, and the truth is not”), the incestuous nature of political dynasties and a country hungry to believe any narrative they are peddled, The Kingmaker invites clear parallels with Trump’s America while undercutting Marcos’ mythology. And Greenfield does it without ever once showing her legendary footwear.