Norte, the End of History

Norte, the End of History is an epic moral tale that subtly eviscerates the society of the Philippines while dealing with universal dilemmas of justice, providence and belief.

Director Lav Diaz has stood at the centre of Filipino arthouse since the late 1990s, yet his films – due to their abstraction, complexity and length – are seldom screened outside his homeland. Norte, at just over four hours long, is his most accessible work yet. And with shades of Godard, Bresson and Thai visionary Apichatpong Weerasethakul, it might just be his masterpiece.

Norte is a loose reworking of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , probing the impact of a crime on the perpetuator. Diverting the Russian master, though, the screenplay chooses to extend its focus to the man falsely imprisoned for the crime, leading to a meditative prison drama side-plot. There’s little of the Russian master’s phantasmagoria and grotesquery, but rather a naturalist quietude. And while the novel offers spiritual redemption for the tortured Raskolnikov, Diaz’s Philippines offer only worldly truths. Nonetheless, Norte continues to weave in elements of the novel in surprising ways in a sympathetic process of adaptation.

The film centres on a trio of characters whose lives converge with the murder of a moneylender and her daughter. Fabian (Sid Lucero), a nihilistic ex-law student disillusioned with his country, is the murderer. Joaquin (Archie Alemania) is the perennially unlucky labourer charged with the crime, leaving his wife Eliza (Angeli Bayani) to provide for their children. All three perform well in their largely independent narratives, though Bayani deserves particular acclaim for her subdued depiction of a mother sacrificing herself for the future of her family.

The cinematography throughout is astounding, a lushly radiant departure from the director’s usual greyscale. Even the shots of careworn domestic interiors are saturated with detail. Towards the film’s conclusion, panning shots across mudflats and desiccated landscapes begin to become as important as the dialogue in conveying Diaz’s ideas. Once can sense the influence of Bela Tarr and Theodoros Angelopoulos in these scenes of languid beauty, but Diaz is equally interested in intimate conversation and realist detail. Human lives, rather than human thought, are always at the centre of his vision.