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Clarence Tsui

4.5/5 stars
The Cannes Film Festival may be hosting yet another virtual-reality programme this year, but the most immersive event on the Croisette in the French seaside city so far has been the premiere of an old-school, two-dimensional, three-hour movie filmed in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio.
Revolving around its titular Portuguese explorer’s expeditions to Southeast Asia in the early 16th century, Magellan is relentlessly engrossing – an epic in which viewers witness the distress, death and destruction brought about by one man’s delusions of colonial conquest.
By presenting Ferdinand Magellan as a dogmatic, slave-owning colonialist who brooks no dissent from his quixotic mission, Filipino auteur Lav Diaz and his Mexican lead actor Gael García Bernal have delivered a subversive portrait of a complicated figure who has long been mythologised as a benign bringer of enlightenment.


Interestingly, Magellan also sets out to undermine the narrative about the explorer’s misdeeds in Diaz’s home country as well.
Rather than sticking to the orthodox view of Magellan’s death in the Philippines as a glorious victory against colonialism, Diaz depicts indigenous chieftains as scheming manipulators who use this pigheaded white man as a pawn for their own politicking.
None of this would have happened if Magellan had not been ready to serve the greed of tyrants because of his delusions of grandeur.
This trait is evident from the start: Magellan begins with an apocalyptic vision of the devastation that resulted from the Spanish conquest in 1511 of the Malay sultanate of Malacca, a formative experience for the young explorer.

Upon his return to Europe, a dishevelled Magellan is shown struggling to gain support in Lisbon for another eastward expedition. Despite falling in love and marrying his second wife, Beatriz (Angela Acevedo), a grovelling Magellan eventually sets off to sea again with backing from the Spanish court.
Undermining the standing of Magellan’s second voyage to Asia as the first circumnavigation of Earth, Diaz shows his desperation and destitution and that of his men, and how they are doomed by their distorted world view and lack of humanity.
The film is produced by Spanish auteur filmmaker Albert Serra and shot by his long-time cinematographer-editor Artur Tort, who unwraps Magellan’s megalomania through a series of his trademark stationary shots filmed on location in Spain, Portugal and the Philippines.
Scenes depicting battles and bonfires in the humid tropical Asian forests recall the apocalyptic visions in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Chiaroscuro-lit interiors – of houses in Iberia and ships’ hulls in the Pacific – become powerful visual allegories of Magellan’s desolation as he embarks on his misguided venture.
With its stunning imagery and a slow-burning, yet ceaselessly fiery narrative about the lust for power and its discontents, Magellan is a powerful addition to Diaz’s distinctive filmmaking oeuvre.
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Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s epic, visually stunning film presents its subject not as a daring explorer but as desperate and despotic


Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s epic, visually stunning film presents its subject not as a daring explorer but as desperate and despotic.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s epic, visually stunning film presents its subject not as a daring explorer but as desperate and despotic

Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s epic, visually stunning film presents its subject not as a daring explorer but as desperate and despotic