YMMV / Dekada '70

• Award Snub: In the 2002 Metro Manila Film Festival, the film only won 3 awards but Vilma Santos, Christopher de Leon and writer Lualhati Bautista (who also wrote the film's screenplay) were snubbed, prompting the whole cast to walk out during the ceremony.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Reading the novel or watching the film to this day would make one realize that History Repeats after Ferdinand Marcos' wife and children were allowed to return from exile and re-enter politics, and especially in recent years with the resurgence of Marcos supporters, no thanks to misinformation (some would say deliberate propaganda) on the internet that perpetuates that the Marcos era was a "Golden Age". Then in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte had Marcos buried in the "Libingan ng mga Bayani" (Heroes' Cemetery) despite the fact that his war medals are fake, let alone his crimes against the nation. It doesn't help that Duterte has close ties with the Marcoses and keeps making threats against his detractors. What makes it sadder is that Marcos' son ran and won for president in 2022. It makes one feel that the struggles of the people fighting against the Marcos dictatorship and Martial Law (including the characters and author of the book) has become All for Nothing. As many historians and analysts stated, the failure of the post-EDSA administrations to hold the Marcoses and their cronies accountable for their crimes and the country's failing and outdated education system to impart the lessons of Martial Law to the younger generation led to the return of the Marcoses into political power. In fact, the late film director, Lino Brocka, mentioned that the Marcoses should have been executed instead given that they're Easily Forgiven without any attempt of atonement for their actions.
• Vindicated by History: Nearly 2 decades later, this movie is simply another Filipino classic with an extraordinarily important message. At the time of its release, however, there were local film critics who actually disliked the film — not because of any political message it contained, but because of its perceived quality (or rather lack thereof).

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