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‘Magellan’ Review: Gael García Bernal Plays the Famed Explorer in Lav Diaz’s Mesmerizing, Myth-Busting Biopic
Starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the famed Portuguese explorer, 'Magellan' is among Filipino auteur Lav Diaz's shortest and most approachable films.
The spirit of slow cinema is alive and languid in this stunningly mounted, politically rigorous work, which confronts any viewers hoping for a sweeping biographical romp with a frank post-colonial perspective, thoroughly and violently dismantling any romanticized legacy trailing the eponymous Portuguese navigator. As Magellan, a reserved, well-cast Bernal gets notably few close-ups, mostly held in wide shot by Diaz and his co-cinematographer Artur Tort — a regular collaborator with Albert Serra, whose fevered, revisionist austerity as a filmmaker does feel like an influence here — in meticulous compositions that rarely prioritize humanity over its natural or built surroundings. The film’s extended centerpiece portrays a three-year, disease-blighted sea voyage to the Malayan Archipelago, during which Magellan hardens into a sadistic, obsessive commander — cuing a particularly ruthless campaign of conquest and Christian conversion in the Philippines, where Raja Humabon (Ronnie Lazaro), a defiant tribe leader on the island of Cebu, stages a cunning counter-attack.
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