Clocking in at just over four hours and shot in vivid color, Norte, the End of History stands not only as Filipino auteur Lav Diaz’s best work since his earliest films, but as the easiest entry point into his unique filmography. Told on a sweeping yet intimate scale, the film has all the trademarks of Diaz’s work: slow, lengthy shots; bursts of dense dialogue and philosophizing; and copious amounts of human despair and systemic corruption. As our three protagonists’ souls (who rarely share the screen, if at all) are pushed to the limit after a terrible crime is committed, everything heads toward universal truths—the perseverance of love, and the inevitability of divine justice.
It can be difficult to recommend any film of this length and deliberate pace, but Norte remains a masterful example of how to use time itself to build a monumental story.
"Detailed, rich, complex filmmaking."
— Adam Nayman
An embittered law student commits a brutal double murder; a family man takes the fall and is forced to take a harsh sentence; and a mother and her two children wander the countryside in search of some kind of redemption.
Cannes
1 nomination
Spirit Awards
1 nomination
"Any thought of Diaz as a director who makes it all up as he goes along is comprehensively belied by a tightly structured narrative that, for all its length and languid pacing, contains very little dead time."
— Jonathan Romney