Magellan

At 160 minutes, “Magellan” is one of the shortest and most accessible of Diaz’s films, which for the past decade have tended to fall between four and eight hours...But the scale of the film remains resolutely epic, in part because Diaz is patient and in part because he’s insistent on telling this story of conquest and domination on his terms.

The spirit of slow cinema is alive and languid in this stunningly mounted, politically rigorous work, which confronts any viewers hoping for a sweeping biographical romp with a frank post-colonial perspective, thoroughly and violently dismantling any romanticized legacy trailing the eponymous Portuguese navigator.

Diaz makes a mockery of Magellan in his depiction of the revered globetrotter, his take on the Age Of Discovery damning to say the least.

The most arresting way that Diaz telegraphs, though, is through the sheer beauty of his images. The movie is often visually intoxicating, at moments gasp-out-loud ravishing, especially in its presentation of the natural world, which can have a soft visual quality that deepens the sense of otherworldliness.

Everyone is doomed in Mr. Diaz’s account of European colonialism and exploratory naval history—not just the primitive Filipinos and Indonesians but the Portuguese on the mission from their silent God. And their covetous king.

A hypnotizing historical and spiritual epic that’s immersive in a way that few decades-spanning stories successfully pull off.

There’s much to like here, but I never felt I was seeing a fully-realized vision.