by Adrian Nguyen
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Gael Garcia Bernal, Ângela Azevedo, Amado Arjay Babon, Ronnie Lazaro, Hazel Orencio, Brontis Jodorowsky
Intro:
Gael Garcia Bernal is a revelation …
Through his hypnotic, post-colonial approach to the Philippines’ often volatile political climate, Lav Diaz stands as one of slow cinema’s most prolific directors. Most of his best known work is arduously long – Norte, the End of History is four hours and ten minutes, while Melancholia is eleven hours – but his latest effort, Magellan clocks in at a leaner 163 minutes. Featuring Gael Garcia Bernal in a career defining performance, as the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the film is bathed in static medium shots, which linger over dead bodies of the indigenous tributes that Magellan attempts to conquer. Diaz also uses the foreground and background of shots to allow actors to line up in blocking, resulting in a haunting evocation of the eeriness of time and the characters that populate it.
What is also evident here is Diaz’ attempt to complicate established historical narratives. Diaz has said in an interview that Magellan “is an invitation for discourse,” given that it challenges the heroic myths surrounding Ferdinand Magellan’s colonial campaign to conquer the indigenous tribes in Cebu and convert them into Portuguese culture. One of those myths challenged here, surprisingly, is towards the elder Lapulapu, whose tribe’s victory over Magellan’s men is revered as an act of resistance against Spanish colonisation, yet his image, in modern times, has been exploited by corrupt politicians in the Philippines. In the film, Magellan dismisses Lapulapu as a phantasm, and once his men were killed, the island’s ruler Humabon was revealed to have led the crusade.
These choices allow Diaz to add complexity to Magellan, whose campaign was an attempt to impress Portugal’s ruler King Manuel I, after he rejected an earlier expedition to go across the Molaccas. His tyranny resulted in the death of some of Magellan’s crew members before they reached Cebu.
Gael Garcia Bernal, who usually plays heroic and likeable characters, is a revelation here, crucial in making the grim look eerie.
For anyone who has yet to see Diaz’ work, Magellan – his first film not spoken in his native language Tagalog – is perhaps his most accessible film and a promising introduction to his extensive filmography.
