MAGELLAN – Review by Diane Carson

Magellan Expounds on Historical Portuguese Explorer’s Colonial Activity

Filipino writer/director Lav Diaz tackles the historical, controversial Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in his challenging but fascinating Magellan, (Magalhães). Renowned as the first European to circumnavigate the Pacific Ocean, setting sail in 1519 (58 years before English explorer Francis Drake), Magellan had already participated in colonizing expeditions. The first voyage presented in the film, led by Alfonso de Albuquerque in 1511, resulted in Magellan’s being wounded during the seizure of the port city Malacca, on the prized strait navigated by traders between China and India. Undeterred and determined to resume his imperialistic forays as soon as he secured financial patronage, Magellan (Gael Garcia Bernal) returns to Portugal with an indentured Cebuano slave he baptizes as Enrique (Amado Arjay Babon).

Thus begins Magellan’s determination to conquer and convert (or kill) any Indigenous inhabitants who have the misfortune to encounter Magellan on his voyages to the Spice Islands, Patagonia, and the Philippine island of Cebú. His plans rejected by King Manuel I of Portugal, Magellan pivots to and aligns with King Charles I of Spain. Meantime, Magellan’s wife Beatriz (Ângela Azevedo), who nursed Magellan to health after his injury, remains essentially abandoned in Portugal. Mutinies, beheading those caught in homosexual activity (called by Magellan a “crime against nature”), stranding insurrectionist crew members including a priest in Patagonia, executing shipmates for mutiny, burning natives’ idols after coercing conversion to Catholicism, brutal punishments, illness, loss of ships—all of this plagues Magellan’s endeavors. On Cebú, the chief Rajah Humabon (Ronnie Lazaro) and his wife Hara Amihan (Hazel Orencio), whom Magellan christens Juana, have Christianity thrust upon them in the figure of Santo Niño, a Child Jesus statuette. When Santo Niño’s power seems to heal the couple’s ill boy, Magellan becomes power crazed, destroying the Indigenous anitos, folk carved humanoid figures representing ancestral spirits. No spoilers, but dire consequences will follow.

This remarkable story is made more astonishing by the way director Diaz partnering with Artur Tort shot and edited the film. In several scenes the ship serves as a claustrophobic and oppressive environment, metaphors clearly invoked. Throughout events, a robust physical and symbolic yearning for freedom conveys emotional and logistical constraints. Most imaginative and impressive in that regard, running two hours 40 minutes (with a nine hour version entertained), Tort and Diaz’s Magellan inventively reinterprets Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s sixteenth century exploits. As Magellan, a bearded, barely recognizable Gael Garcia Bernal governs with cruel dictates, always refusing any compromise. All the clearly horrific violence takes place offscreen, cutting away as sound alone conveys the horror. The effect is devastating, inviting audiences to imagine the barbarity. In dramatic moments, after battles depicted only in the aftermath, corpses crowd the beach. After the final assault, Magellan’s headless body is carried in celebration by the natives who, as history records, achieved their revenge.

Lav Diaz and Artur Tort’s cinematography is dominated by long shots, suffocating (and yet beautiful) jungle environments, and often fog or haze. Several surprising historical events shift action from the incursions to Portugal and on to Spain, lavish in their art direction but understated in their presentation. The subservient assistance of the Cebuano slave and translator Enrique involves surprising subterfuge never sensationally amplified. Instead, quietly, methodically, tension increases as this haunting tragedy unfolds, implicitly denouncing brutal conquistadors intent on subduing populations and claiming territory. The Philippine submission for this past year’s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, Magellan is in Portuguese, Spanish, Cebuana, and French, all with English subtitles. It is streaming now.