‘Magellan’: Lav Diaz’s white whale

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

Mention a Lav Diaz film and truly yours can already imagine slouching on a seat in a sparsely filled cinema house, whiling away four to seven hours (a generous estimate) of film footage. The storytelling would crawl with languid and meticulous detail, subtle nuances, and sporadic dialogue. Cinematic segments begin to resemble scenes from a play, the acting cut for a Brechtian delivery. Then, as abruptly as it begins, the film is over. You leave the cinema overwhelmed and listless, and yet, after the grueling hours of taking in all the minute details of cinematography and characterization, you still feel aesthetically refreshed and filled.

Now, the director returns with another cinematic epic, a white whale of historical aspirations. As if to relentlessly chase the elusive soul of history, Diaz takes potshots at the first circumnavigation and presents a montaged (and mangled?) narrative of the voyageur. But ‘Magellan’ is not biography – nor does it aspire to be. Perhaps, we can take it as a retelling of a historical figure’s story done in vignettes which our Filipino sensibility would be most attuned: themes like conquest and colonialism, subjugation, injustice, and even the blind religiosity prevalent to this day, make their unabashed appearance.

Gael García Bernal in the titular role has the gravitas of the world-weary – no posturing, no braggadocio. He is put alongside figures like conquistador Afonso de Albuquerque, inebriated with drunken delusions of conquest, or Humabon (played by Ronnie Lazaro) deviously scheming while playing the foreigner’s political game. Or even Enrique, the interpreter plucked from obscurity to serve as Chorus in the film. Diaz has no qualms in maximizing artistic liberties: chronicler Pigafetta is nowhere to be found and Lapulapu becomes a figment of the skeptical European imagination. Surprisingly, absence of character deepens the plot.

For the performance is the narrative. As is usual of Diaz’s films, the script is lean: one needs to sit in rapt attention to soak it all in. Setting plays a much more prominent role: there are portrayals of tattooed natives in the nude, the tropic jungle of palm trees and tangled herbage, the stuffy cabins of the carracks dripping with rope and sailcloth. Musical scoring is absent, to great effect. Birdsong and insect-hum, and the ceaseless monsoon with its rumbling storm and whistling wind persist in the background – and they surprisingly suffice to keep taut the tension.

Caught in the film’s crosshairs are the usual themes which incessantly beset society. But ‘Magellan’ neither attempts to mythologize or dehumanize history. Instead, its charm and magic lie in the transmutation of a film about history as theater, where each frame projects a dramatic mise-en-scene sans script or score. The juxtapositions work well: we see Enrique with his incantations and ululations to the old gods, in sharp contrast to the restrained confessions of the sailors and the trite ocean crossing. The Savonarolan zeal with which Magellan’s men fanatically burned the crude anitos contrasts the gravitas of their leader. The primeval nudity of painted bodies in ritual gestures sets off the burnished cuirasses and the repressed uncertainties of the conquerors.

There is no violence in the film; rather, there are only aftermaths of violence. There are scenes of mutiny, carnage, and bloodshed – even several decapitated heads – but never the actual act itself: not even the babaylan’s butchering of a pig is shown in the film. It is as if our attention is directed towards a consequential realization that what we do in the present echoes throughout history: acts only matter in so far as they resonate through time.

Eventually, Diaz’s pursuit and interrogation of history is shared by the audience: so what are we searching for in ‘Magellan’? Is it the exploration of the flawedness of historical characters? Is it about what history can remember and which ambiguities it leaves to its students to forever debate and discuss? No, Magellan is not a hero figure in the film; he is not villain either. He is but a restless soul in search for fortune and glory, fueled with a fanatically naïve and fiercely devoted faith – and for all our biases and our lessons in Social Studies, Lav Diaz once more leaves us to nitpick what is lost between the pages and lines of our history books.

Like his other feature films, Diaz’s ‘Magellan’ will not be a crowd-pleaser. It will only appeal as an acquired taste to some, but the magnitude of its subject will surely be a subject of conversation. But watch at your own risk; as elusive as the core of its cinematic soul, the film invites its audience to reexamine the familiar past albeit through an aesthetic lens – and for one film to be able to do that to dusty history is no easy feat. The chase for the Oscar statuette is but icing on top of that.

(The writer is a language and literature teacher in one of the private schools of the city. The film poster is from IMDb.)