Magellan

Longtime TIFF favourite Lav Diaz returns with Magellan, a grand, decolonial retelling of the 16th-century Portuguese explorer’s life and career. Celebrated international star Gael García Bernal delivers a bold performance as the film’s lead, who we encounter initially as a rebellious idealist, angered by the narrow-minded avarice of kings. Before long, however, he’s given shared command of an expedition by Spanish ruler Carlos I, and transforms into a petty, paranoid, and hypocritical tyrant, terrorizing his crew and ultimately the inhabitants of Cebu and Mactan, where the brutal colonizer met his end. Only in moments with his wife Beatriz (scene-stealing Ângela Azevedo) do we see a more humanized and complicated portrait of the figure.

Diaz has regularly dedicated himself to Filipino history, almost always presenting epochal events through the experiences of commoners rather than historical figures. But Magellan may be Diaz’s most forceful debunking of conventional histories and myths yet, contrasting the scale of human actions and preoccupations with the obdurate force of the elements. For his first colour feature in more than a decade, Diaz, along with Artur Tort (frequent cinematographer and editor for Albert Serra, a co-producer of the film), conjures the sublime, suggesting each raindrop and each blade of grass carries a power infinitely greater than Magellan’s self-importance. Perceptive viewers will sense echoes of anti-colonial classics by filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Gillo Pontecorvo, and even the work of Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira (whose Aniki-Bóbó features in this year’s TIFF Classics programme). But, true to form, Lav Diaz ensures this historical epic urgently resounds with today’s ongoing struggles against imperialism and oppression.

ANDRÉA PICARD