The Zealous Voyagers of "Magellan" and "The Testament of Ann Lee"

"Where does such a charge leave Magellan, despoiler of every Eden he encounters? The film, to its credit, does not skimp on paradisiacal visions. Every shot of the tropics is a painterly study in lush foliage and golden-pink sunlight; the beauty of the natural world seems, if anything, magnified by Magellan's encroaching, annihilating threat. Such visual wonders will hardly surprise admirers of Diaz, whose work has encouraged contemplation, and at marathon lengths."

"His "Evolution of a Filipino Family" (2004) clocks in at nearly eleven hours, and he has spoken of a nine-hour cut of "Magellan," which purportedly gives a fuller account of the explorer's briefly seen wife, Beatriz (Ângela Azevedo). Presumably, it would dive even deeper into the conflicted soul of Enrique (Amado Arjay Babon), an enslaved man who serves as Magellan's interpreter, and who, in this telling, plays a role in his master's ignominious defeat, in 1521."

"By Diaz's standards, this abridged version is fairly smooth sailing. It has a movie star at the helm, after all, and runs a mere two hours and forty-three minutes. Truthfully, it doesn't run so much as flow, with hypnotic grace and a grim, sorrowful momentum, but it does build to a properly cacklesome finish, not long after Magellan's men attempt to force their Christianity on the Philippine island of Cebu, where the Indigenous would-be converts respond with force of their own."

"What are we to make of the season bringing us not one but two artful bio-pics, each centered on a boldly ambitious, stubbornly deluded visionary who sets out across the sea, bent on converting the masses to Christ? I'm not sure, but Ann Lee, the British-born evangelist who sailed to America in 1774 and led the Christian sect known as the Shakers, would scoff at the idea of coincidence."

The film portrays Magellan as a despoiler of paradisiacal lands and juxtaposes his destructive presence with lush, painterly tropical imagery. Tropical shots emphasize foliage and golden-pink light, heightening the contrast between natural beauty and imminent annihilation. The director's penchant for marathon runtimes surfaces in references to an eleven-hour film and a reportedly nine-hour Magellan cut that expands Beatriz's role and Enrique's inner conflict. The released cut runs two hours and forty-three minutes and moves with hypnotic grace toward a grim, ironic climax when attempts to convert Cebu provoke armed Indigenous resistance. The film sits alongside other artful biopics about zealous, deluded visionaries and conversion.

Read at The New Yorker