Magellan (Lav Diaz, 2025)

Killing fields

Looked down at my notes after just having finished Lav Diaz's latest Magellan (2025) I see-- circled and underlined, on top of the page-- the words: 'so much killing!'

That was the most lasting impression the film made: so much death, almost all of it deliberately inflicted. Not actual violence-- Diaz has declared again and again he doesn't enjoy being explicit onscreen-- but the consequence of such violence, either sprawled on a beach or draped over rocks or curled tight like an injured worm, often with an exhausted or resigned expression on the face, at times elaborately drizzled with a thick peri-peri sauce. Corpse after corpse after corpse and you think maybe Diaz is trying to say something: that it's everywhere; that it comes in all forms; that it gives rise to every consequence, from vengeance quests to military reprisals to international conflicts to-- and this strangest of all-- a unique and private peace. Some of the bodies show a serenity and lack of suffering they never had when alive; one wonders what Diaz himself thinks of death, if he seems to obsess with its depiction on the big screen. 

This film is actually a first for Diaz: previously he's devoted himself to telling the Filipino experience, at most (in Batang West Side (West Side Avenue)) the Filipino-American experience. With this feature Diaz focuses on Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (in his native language 'Fernao de Magalhaes')-- an important figure in Filipino history, not so much for 'discovering' the existence of the Philippine Islands (at this point a loose collection of kingdoms living in uneasy truce) as for directing King Carlos I's attention to the islands' natural wealth, ripe for exploitation. 

In short, Magellan (Gael Garcia Bernal) is a calamity waiting to happen. He wreaks havoc in the Malaccas (where the local defense consisted mainly of near-naked men and women with their hands raised, pleading to the gods* while he mows them down en masse); watches his boss Governor Afonso de Albuquerque (Roger Alan Koza) deliver a rambling megalomanic rant before collapsing, then sips wine over the Governor's prone body. He loses half his men across Portugal's conquered territory and has to fend off their widows as they stand on a beach, demanding to know what became of their men; he acquires an indentured servant named Enrique (Amado Arjay Babon), a beautiful wife heavy with child named Beatriz (Angela Azevedo), a new patron in King Carlos (Victor Chesnais), and five ships to find a new path to the Spice Islands-- west as opposed to east, circumventing Africa, India, China, and his former patron King Manuel of Portugal (Daniel Viana).

*(The sight of these naked men and women arms upraised and visibly distressed is in itself unsettling, and you're not quite sure why. Their shouted words: "The promise of the gods of our ancestors is upon us!"-- what does that mean? Are they excited to see these visitors? Terrified? Is this a fulfillment of a long-promised prophecy or confirmation of an apocalyptic end? Maybe both? Enrique early in the film is seen caged; he cries out to Apo Laki for help and climbs and hangs from the bars moaning his despair. We're not just seeing the conquest and imprisonment of these men and women but the imminent destruction of their beliefs spirit souls)

And if you think Magellan was a brutal sonofabitch commanding troops on land you should see him on a boat. He metes out swift punishment to a sodomizing rapist, enforces discipline with a heavy whip, suppresses mutinies by forcing one conspirator to lop the head off the other (otherwise he'll lop off both), overall gives you the impression that a ship-- especially one making a crossing expected to last a few days that stretches out to three endless months-- is basically a vast bowl of concentrated misery, all shivers and sores and simmering anger, sicknesses physical and mental. Headed, mind you, slowly but inexorably west, to contaminate what we now call Southeast Asia. 

Magellan's arrival (skip the rest of this paragraph if you haven't seen the film!) comes with a surprise twist: the children of Cebu suffer from scurvy, which Magellan handily treats with a spoonful of quince. It's the rare touch of humanity that complicates an otherwise grim portrait, and for the first time you see Bernal's charismatic smile as he lifts an afflicted child to his arms; you're reminded that he already has a son, and knows-- somehow-- that his son has passed. You think 'maybe this man isn't so bad after all' and might even start rooting for him to succeed (you shouldn't, but you might).

Visually the film-- the rare recent Diaz in color-- is a striking example of heightened verite. Locked-down camera setups capture corners and intersections of Portuguese alleyways or Malaccan village trails, and the action (or if you like the slaughter) scatters accordingly; figures are lit sideways, edged with a warm sunset glow. The footage aboard the Trinidad is particularly extraordinary-- Diaz managed to snag himself a full-sized galleon, and you hear the creak of the planks, the wind whistling off the lines, the snap of filling sails; even the locked-down camera can't help but shudder a bit, as the ship goes into an especially hard roll. 

As for the film's climax (skip this paragraph again if you haven't seen!): Diaz puts forth the radical proposal that Lapu-Lapu wasn't an actual figure but an invention of Rajah Humabon (Ronnie Lazaro), ruler of Cebu, to distract Magellan and draw him to a specific location for ready ambush. Revisionist history, and officially Diaz says he did it in part because there's no credible record of a ruler named Lapu-Lapu outside that of Antonio Pigafetta's (Magellan's chronicler) account, in part to spark debate around the film. I do note that this deletion of Lapu-Lapu (not sure how Cebuanos feel about that) makes Humabon look more like a cunning strategist-- Magellan landing on the beaches of Mactan looking for a fight when it turns out his adversaries stood side-by-side with his own warriors-- and if that seems like less than honorable conduct, why one only need look at Magellan's own previous actions, the landscapes decorated with the consequences of his slaughter, to see that notions of honor and good conduct aren't a priority, on either side. Humabon was defending his territory the best he can-- and he succeeded, at least for a while.  

The film is such a ravishing experience it seems churlish to complain it's a mere 160 minutes-- a blink compared to Diaz's more marathon features. But I'd love to learn more of Enrique's story, more of his experiences being passed from one slavemaster to another, the possibility that he and not Magellan was the first person to actually circumnavigate the globe, and especially his thoughts and feelings about this latest owner. I'd also love to know the thoughts and feelings of Humabon, listening to this strange sickly-pale man from the distant realm of Spain go on and on and on about Christ and morality. 

Diaz did mention planning a sequel, focusing not on that military bore Ferdinand but on his mysterious wife Beatriz-- as Azevedo plays her she has a hushed presence that commands your attention, and her few scenes with Bernal have a palpable warmth. Diaz also mentions the sequel should run about nine hours-- nine hours! What does Beatriz have to say us that Magellan can't, or won't? What tea might she offer, or fling in our faces? I for one would like to know.  

First published in Businessworld 9.5.25