In the opening shot of Magellan (2025), an Indigenous Malaysian woman walks into a stream, filling a vessel. Suddenly, she spots a white man past the fourth wall of the proscenium and takes off running. She shouts through her village “The promise of the gods of our ancestors is upon us.” This latest film from director Lav Diaz (Norte, the End of History; From What Is Before) is a three-hour epic that places the audience in a role of divine or ghostly observation of historical events. And yet, Diaz strips away all myth and pretension to greatness and lays bare the idiocy and mental illness at the heart of colonial, white misogyny. It is his revenge on that herald of idiocy who pillaged and scarred his native Philippines: the Spanish “explorer” Ferdinand Magellan.
Gael Garcia Bernal in Lav Diaz’s 2025 Historical Epic MAGELLAN. Photo Courtesy of Janus Films.
Magellan, played by Gael Garcia Bernal (Coco; Y Tu Mamá Tambien), is a callow oaf with no morals traipsing around with his head held high in a dignified manner. There is no satire to Bernal’s performance, nor humor. It is a plain portrait of a wealthy man who thinks he’s smart and has had enough education to hide his idiocy from himself and strangers. When we meet Magellan, he has “won” a great battle in Malacca, Malaysia, as he is buried amongst a pile of corpses, the last man sitting after an Indigenous resistance group clashed with him and his Conquistadors.
“You are at the mercy of god and man’s dream.”
Time rushes by in great chunks, often jumping weeks, months, and years between lengthy scenes. After reconvening with his men, Magellan buys a slave from a Muslim merchant who has also landed on these shores. He then returns to Lisbon, Spain, where he comports himself as a coward, a pervert, and a racist. He meets his future 16-year-old wife, Maria, played at many ages by Ãngela Ramos (The Luminous Life; Bela Madil). As he prepares for his next voyage, he is confronted by a friend with a conversation about the soul of Spain, the inciting incident:
“We are killing so many…in the name of the Crown and God…we are even…selling people…in the name of the Crown and God. That is wrong, Ferdinand. Very wrong…”
Magellan is not quite a masterpiece; it is exhaustive past its purpose. You could eat off its cutting room floor. Sometimes it works and you can feel Diaz daring you not to look away. Other times, the handles of its scenes feel like fat on the rind. Much hay has also been made of the choice to shoot on a Panasonic GH7, a consumer-level digital camera with a micro-four-thirds sensor, the digital equivalent of 16 mm film. Indeed, the movie looks singular in locations like the boat (which it takes an hour to reach, beginning Act 2), but, for thematic reasons, Diaz largely rejects impressive image making. It’s a justified choice, but like the majority of films shot on any digital camera, the processing pipeline for the GH7 before color grading resulted in the film being inadequately developed, and the low-light naturalism of the film is often underserved.
Amado Arjay Babon in Lav Diaz’s 2025 Historical Epic MAGELLAN. Photo Courtesy of Janus Films.
The three great achievements of Magellan are its two central performances, its ending, and the nuance of its theme. There is no co-lead to Bernal in the film, and the supporting cast changes drastically several times. The supporting mainstay is the man whose slavery he purchases, Enrique de Malaca, played by exciting newcomer Amado Arjay Banon. He is impeccable, even in the background, and selfless as a performer. The ending is, of course, there for you on Wikipedia, but how Diaz renders it justifies the exhaustion of the film even if you expect the ending.
“They force us do things our hearts don’t want.”
Diaz sharply cuts and tears at the lie of “a different time,” highlighting that people have always known colonization and slavery were wrong, not the least the colonized and the enslaved! The explorers of western history were, of course, claiming discovery of land already occupied. Indeed, like the tech oligarchs of today, they simply rejected the morality of the governed. But Diaz takes his rebuttal a step further. The lie of “a different time” says that men of history are not responsible for their actions, and that times have changed. Instead of phrasing the truth as “People always knew,” Diaz has formed a film that screams “Today is the same!”
Where the film’s pace is strongest is on the ocean voyage where Magellan and the crew of his flotilla face challenge after challenge, sailing far past the breaking point of the minds. No wonder then, that these madmen wrecked and savaged the lands they visited. Their minds were tortured, maddened, and desperate to justify the sunk-cost fallacy from hell. Trauma never justifies evil, but its role in accelerating mania is plain. The Philippines remind us: they were colonized and brutalized because an idiot was ashamed that he would cum at just a woman’s touch. Many such cases continue past and present.
In select New York City and Los Angeles theaters January 9th, 2026.
Expanding into additional theaters each week, including February 6th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Janus Films Magellan webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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