Across his long career, Lav Diaz has specialised in unveiling the bleakest aspects of Filipino corruption, especially from the era of dictator Ferdinand Marcos to his son Bongbong, the incumbent president. His latest feature, Magellan [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], travels back five centuries to one of its first instances – the nation’s “original sin”, with explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s inaugural voyage to the island paving the way for its gradual colonisation by Spain. Confidently inhabiting the demands of a period epic and bending it to Diaz’s style, whilst skimping on some detail and complexity, the film continued its festival run at Filmfest Munich last week, following its debut at Cannes, in the Cannes Première section.

It’s funny how the characteristics – colossal running times, novelistic plots and variable, non-professional acting – of such an original filmmaker as Diaz can risk over-familiarity, so Magellan immediately commands attention with its new fillips. It’s shot in luscious gold and velvety-green colour by Albert Serra’s DoP Artur Tort (and the Catalan arthouse star also produces), and the now-greying sex symbol Gael García Bernal gets a stunt-casting star turn as the increasingly unhinged Magellan. The Mexican actor (largely speaking here in the explorer’s native tongue of Portuguese) is predictably good in the film, but his natural charisma and ingenuousness to the camera are suppressed; in a screenplay deprived of rich characterisations, he’s far from Klaus Kinski’s ostensibly similar Aguirre, who was more in harmony with his volatile director Werner Herzog’s mise-en-scène.

The more polemical thrust of the film provides its bitter-coffee aftertaste. Amidst still-reigning colonial nostalgia on the Iberian Peninsula, Magellan was celebrated for his Moluccan trip culminating in the world’s very first circumnavigation, reminding us of the Age of Discovery’s role in early modern scientific empiricism. But the conflict between indigenous identity and Magellan’s colonising and Catholic missionary bent is embodied by the slave character Enrique (Amado Arjay Babon), purchased by the explorer on an earlier expedition to Malaysia. His thoughts are occasionally relayed in voice-over, making him the movie’s dawning “true” protagonist, with the conclusion of his character arc allowing the story to be partially reframed as empowering for indigenous Filipinos, hinting that the long arc of history will see them reclaiming their independence.

With the picture running at two-and-a-half hours – around one-third of the length of some of the director’s greatest films – Diaz opts for a linear and factual approach, moving in episodic patches from 1504-1521. Predictably, the movie was initially far longer in early cuts, with more focus accorded to a less familiar part of the story: his wife Beatriz (Ângela Azevedo), who’s sometimes featured hauntingly, if a bit prosaically, in visions as Magellan moves further towards his fate. The “alienation effects” of waiting, anticipation and dread are so critical to Diaz’s cinema, and are executed best with no concessions to exhibition standards of manageable running times; usually, he allows us to “be” with and accompany his characters, Magellan among them, rather than just offer a cursory, functional visit like this.

Magellan is a co-production by Portugal, Spain, France, the Philippines and Taiwan, staged by Rosa Filmes, Andergraun Films, Black Cap Pictures and Lib Films. It was co-produced by El Viaje Films, Volos Films, Ten17P and Ultramarina Filmes. Its world sales are handled by Luxbox.