The founder of this site, one of the great film critics, once pronounced, “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough.” That’s a very reliable critical yardstick. After applying it, all one has to do is determine whether a given movie is any good.
The Philippine director Lav Diaz makes movies of variable duration; I don’t think any can be called “short.” I recall watching his nearly five-hour 2014 picture “Norte, the End of History” in a state of fascination sometimes soured by near-exasperation. Its oblique treatment of no less a monumental work than Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment toggles between brutal and banal. Diaz uses a good number of elaborate tracking shots in his work, but the camera moves so slowly that the viewer doesn’t apprehend them as such. His visuals want to immerse rather than dazzle you. While they won’t satisfy viewers whose idea of cinema leans heavily on narrative momentum, I’d reckon that his movies are, in fact, “good.”
And here’s more ostensibly good news: his latest picture, “Magellan,” about the titular Portuguese explorer, clocks in at a relatively tidy two hours and 45 minutes, making it practically an ideal starter picture for those curious about Diaz’s work. In addition, its title role is played by a genuine movie star, international division, the venerable Gael García Bernal, who’s by no means an old man, but if you have fond memories of him from “Y tu mamá también,” you might be startled by all the gray in his explorer’s beard.
The movie begins in 1511, as Magellan lands on the Malaysian territory of Malacca. The shots of swampy territory teeming with reeds evoke the last episode of Rossellini’s great “Paisan.” Here as there, the story is partially one of man against nature. Among Magellan and his men, there is little talk of ideology, few noble pronouncements about bringing Christianity or “civilization” to “heathens.” They concentrate on the task at hand. There is only conquest, and the slaughter that brings it about. You can almost smell the death, the stinking smoke of an extinguished firepit. The cry “Viva Portugal” rings hollow. After that, Magellan is free to pontificate that “Once Islam has perished, Christianity will be eternal.” The action surrounding him, however, strongly suggests that he’s delusional. And his own practice of Christianity is dubious. Sure, when he discovers a couple of his ship’s men engaged in buggery, he summarily has one of them beheaded in front of the crew, as one does. But when he worries that the ship’s priest might betray one of his confessions, he arranges to strand the man of God on a deserted island.
As portrayed by Diaz, he’s not a would-be colonizer with his eye always on the prize. Back home, he has a beautiful wife, Beatriz, who comes to him in dreams on his varied journeys. His tender side doesn’t make him particularly sympathetic; in fact, it tends to amplify his odiousness. An odiousness, Diaz unhesitatingly reminds the viewer, that ultimately made some vital inroads for, well, Western Civ.
