At the dawn of the modern era, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Gael García Bernal) navigated a fleet of ships to Southeast Asia, attempting the first voyage across the vast Pacific Ocean. On reaching the Malay Archipelago, the crew pushed to the brink of madness in the harshness of the high seas and overwhelming natural beauty of the islands, Magellan’s obsession leads to a rebellion and reckoning with the consequences of power. A vast, globe-spanning epic from Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (NORTE, THE END OF HISTORY), MAGELLAN presents the colonization of the Philippines as a primal, shocking encounter with the unknown and a radical retelling of European narratives of discovery and exploration.
“Played with pungent severity by Gael García Bernal, this Ferdinand is at once opaque and obvious, a man of his time, a harbinger of the future, and an instrument of terror…. Here, history and story tend to convene in crystallizing moments, in faces, gestures, actions and in blunt, cruel words. The most arresting way that Diaz telegraphs, though, is through the sheer beauty of his images. The movie is often visually intoxicating, at moments gasp-out-loud ravishing.” —Manohla Dargis, NYT Critic’s Pick, New York Times “It’s at once a sprawling historical epic; a quietly subversive indictment of global politics; and a visually breathtaking meditation on violence, grief and power…. At 160 minutes, MAGELLAN is one of the shortest and most accessible of Diaz’s films…. But the scale of the film remains resolutely epic, in part because Diaz is patient and in part because he’s insistent on telling this story of conquest and domination on his terms.” —Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post “With a breathtaking eye for one-shot scenes and unwavering confidence in the demands he makes on our monkey-brained attention spans, Diaz has crafted a stunning piece of time travel, its languidness and exquisitely hued imagery working in perfect sync.” —Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
