Gael Garcia Bernal

MAGELLAN: slower than the slowest slow boat

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Photo caption: Gael Garcia Bernal in MAGELLAN. Courtesy of Janus Films.

The historical epic Magellan tells the story of explorer/conquistador Ferdinand Magellan’s interactions with people of the Philippines, and most of the movie is set in the Philippines. Magellan begins in 1511, a decade before his most famous voyage, with Magellan serving a more senior Portuguese conquistador. Then the film touches briefly on his life back in Portugal before, again, briefly showing him leading a Spanish-sponsored voyage back to the Philippines.

The strongest element of Magellan is the depiction of historical events from the points of view of both Magellan and of the indigenous Filipinos. I also appreciated Magellan’s equating the superstitious qualities of the Spanish Catholic veneration of religious objects and the indigenous tribe’s idol worship.

Most of us know that Magellan commanded the first expedition to sail around the globe. As Magellan shows, Magellan himself didn’t survive to return home. As Magellan does not point out, a surviving Spanish crew led by one of Magellan’s subordinates did complete the groundbreaking voyage.

Magellan also gets credit for discovering what we know as the Strait of Magellan, the safest navigable route between Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This is essential history, but it is only possibly referenced in Magellan in a scene where the sailors are all terrified of stormy seas and Magellan isn’t doing anything about it.

Many of the stills from the movie illustrate Magellan on a sailing ship, but I chose to post the image above because very little of this movie about the world’s most famous sailor is at sea.

Magellan is played by Gael Garcia Bernal, a fine actor and a magnetic presence, who isn’t asked to do much here. I doubt that the real Magellan was as passive as the character is written here.

Renowned Filipino writer-director Lav Diaz tells this story in two hours and forty minutes of intermittently interesting action. Diaz is an intentional practitioner of a cinematic style called slow cinema, which I am coming to loathe. I actually enjoy much longer shots and much more deliberate pacing than do most, but I just can’t take slow cinema, which feels to me like it is violating the rhythm of storytelling for no reason.

Magellan seemed longer than 140 minutes to me. I found the pace to range between insufferable and excruciating.

Magellan was the Philippines submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. It is streaming on the Criterion Channel.

DVD/Stream of the Week: No

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In No, Gael Garcia Bernal stars as an ad man brainstorming the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet in a 1988 plebiscite.  It turns out that the key was not to rehash the atrocities of the repressive Pinochet dictatorship, but to get his audience to picture the alternative democratic future.  The ad man’s biggest challenge is to pitch his soft sell campaign to Pinochet’s ideologically driven opponents.

No has a grainy look and was shot in the same aspect as is television (i.e., not widescreen).  This allows the transition between the filmed scenes and the inserted historical footage (including the original Yes and No campaign commercials) to be seamless.

I visited Chile in the last days of the Pinochet dictatorship, after the October 1988 plebiscite but before the new democratic government took office fifteen months later.  No ably captures both the scariness of the authoritarian regime and the culture of the period.  As always, Garcia Bernal is excellent.  No was nominated for the 2013 Foreign Language Oscar. No is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Vudu.

No: when the soft sell is the most subversive

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In No, Gael Garcia Bernal stars as an ad man brainstorming the guerrilla advertising campaign that dethroned Chilean dictator Pinochet in a 1988 plebiscite.  It turns out that the key was not to rehash the atrocities of the repressive Pinochet dictatorship, but to get his audience to picture the alternative democratic future.  The ad man’s biggest challenge is to pitch his soft sell campaign to Pinochet’s ideologically driven opponents.

No has a grainy look and was shot in the same aspect as is television (i.e., not widescreen).  This allows the transition between the filmed scenes and the inserted historical footage (including the original Yes and No campaign commercials) to be seamless.

I visited Chile in the last days of the Pinochet dictatorship, after the October 1988 plebiscite but before the new democratic government took office fifteen months later.  No ably captures both the scariness of the authoritarian regime and the culture of the period.  As always, Garcia Bernal is excellent.  No was nominated for the 2013 Foreign Language Oscar.