Lav Diaz retells Magellan story in Philippines’ Oscars entry
Lav Diaz is the most appropriate filmmaker to retell the story of Magellan (2025). After all, Diaz’s cinematic lens is about time: the slow, steady, lingering, and dispersing time, just like lolling waves.
The largest ocean is the Pacific, named for being peaceful, where at some point, Magellan’s ship was stranded as his men gave in to scurvy and despair. That peaceful ocean would mean limp sails and a seemingly unchanging view.
The Philippines’ official entry to the Oscars’ Best International Film, Magellan, is more of a portrait of translation rather than the “brave” explorer. Playing the titular character, Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal portrays a harried man desperately clinging to his power, to his phantoms of lost loves, and to his enthusiasm for his Catholic faith.
Diaz did not focus on spectacle with writhing piles of diseased bodies, but one must look at the cinematography. The way the movie is lit is a textured layer informed by European chiaroscuros. The most beautiful scenes are the ones set in the Iberian Peninsula. Those are painterly compared to the overhanging canopy of gloom and foreboding in the tropical islands.
The islands’ greyness conveys not just a metaphor but the enveloping mystery surrounding Magellan’s death. At the beginning of the movie is a tracking shot of a native village by a river. The houses on wooden stilts slowly disappear into a fog. This is a willful compression of the nature of history as a means of mythmaking.
This movie will rile many Filipinos over the absence of Lapu-Lapu. This is Lav Diaz’s approach to what history means to him, much like his filmography, which is an assembly of long moments and stillness, giving a chance for immersion and contemplation.
History’s stalwart supporters will decry this movie for its apparent artistic license. Diaz wrote in this movie that Lapu-Lapu is a manufactured phantom. It is a fact that Magellan, the person, has ample records of his life and exploits, whereas Lapu-Lapu has a few pages at best with the chronicler Pigafetta. Yet can we truly trust the written records of white men who looked at the natives as strange, and even less? After all, European records and indigenous magic are arguably the same, which is the leverage of recording; whether written or spoken, both are or have embellishments.
Diaz’s strongest imagery here is weeping women by the shore. The Iberian women crumpled in black as they found out their husbands, sons, and brothers who had joined Magellan in an earlier journey had perished. The black-clad grief of Iberian women echoes in the long-haired mourning of native women.
The most forceful scenes involve crashing waves and unbridled emotions with open wounds or screaming faces. The Sinulog festival of Cebu commemorates the encounter of the holy image of the Infant Jesus brought by Magellan and the conversion of the Cebuanos. The word “Sinulog” comes from “Sulog,” which means waves.
The Sinulog dance is two steps forward, one step back, just like encroaching waves swallowing the beach and the dead bodies strewn all over it.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
