Film Analysis: Norte, The End Of History
The film Norte, The End of History is a 250-minute film that is a loose adaptation on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1866 novel “Crime and Punishment. Directed by Lav Diaz, a Filipino director and one of the leads of “slow cinema” movement in the Philippines. It is about these two men, Fabian (Sid Lucero) and Joaquin (Archie Alemania), who seem to have nothing common in their personality, but they have their lives intertwined because of having debts from this arrogant moneylender, Magda (Mae Paner). And so, in the process of borrowing money from this evil woman, Fabian acts on his philosophical ideologies and kills Magda, thus putting an innocent man, Joaquin, to jail. This resulted in him leaving his wife, Eliza (Angeli Bayani), and two children on their own. You are probably wondering, why would you even want to expose yourself to this painstaking, slow-paced, humor-free experience? It is for the reason that “Norte” is a kind of film wherein it does much more than to entertain — it engages you in a world in which it deepens your standpoint on justice, fate, benevolence, and humanity. There is really a certain pleasure to watching this, the kind that sways you to undergo this four-hour screening, in pursuit of a new variety of cinematic epiphany.
The film opens with a group of friends chatting in a café shop. Fabian, a young, highly-educated, law-school dropout, point out and stresses the necessity for a new kind of moral philosophy in which evil is instantly dispatched. While explaining what the ideal society he has in mind, his friends challenged him on his beliefs. This resulted in him deciding to act and punish one of those he deems to be evil—Magda, to the extent of murdering her and her daughter for witnessing the crime. Unfortunately, earlier that day, Joaquin came to Magda requesting for her to give back an heirloom ring that was loaned by his wife, Eliza. He wanted to make it up to his wife for not being able to help financially and not being able to work because of his leg injury. So, he really pleaded into getting it back because he knows how important the ring is to his wife. Typical Magda, she refused to give it back. Out of frustration, he just snapped and choked Magda. As a result of him foolishly attacking her, it is Joaquin who is accused of the murder. Speechlessly, he just agrees to take a guilty plea for a crime we know he did not commit. Because of these unreasonable decisions of Fabian, innocent people have died and go to jail. For the remainder of the film, Fabian’s commitment to acting out his increasingly radical beliefs makes his righteous actions pointless. This first hour focuses on Fabian and him slowly losing all his moral bearings and eventually, his sanity.
The second hour of the film is actually the slowest one. It features almost no dialogue in it. This section is actually in focus to Joaquin and Eliza and the misfortunes they must withstand. It is, in fact, a visually-stunning section of the film. Fabian appears at some points, stripped of his pride and conviction. This part concludes with one of the most nerve-racking moments in this film — as Eliza envisions the miserable future she and her children has without Joaquin, she goes to a cliff with her children. It looked like she’s attempting to push both her kids off to the cliff, but in the last minute, her guilt kicks in and hugs her kids back to safety, regretting that she even thought of doing that. The third hour contains the most movement in any of the sections. Up unto this point, Diaz has barely moved his camera. But here, the camera starts to move more without restraint, in a sense that it is moving with its subjects. Characters begin to talk more. As opposed to the first half of the film, this is the lively section of it. This section also shows the real moving moment of the film as Joaquin begins to rise above an unjust world and find his peace through kindness and compassion. It is at this point that Fabian is missing-in-action.
Lastly, in the final hour, Fabian comes back. But this time, he breaks all the serene feeling that has been lodged into us by the last couple of hours that passed by. Although Fabian gives money to Eliza, because of the guilt he feels for letting her husband go to jail for the crimes he committed, he still sticks with his ideologies. Granting that he tries to do good with Eliza, he still gets into fights, into arguments, even rapes his own sister, Hoda (Angelina Kanapi) near the end. All the while, Eliza, using the money Fabian gave to her, went to Bilibid to see her husband. Having that moment with him, felt like everything is now going to be alright with their lives. But of course, not all the time people get to have their happy endings, so on her way back home, the bus that she is into burst into flames, killing all the passengers — including her. The feeling that was given to me by the past hours about the world and humanity being restored was instantly blown to pieces by the concluding section of the film. As you probably already know, this film features scenes of murder, rape, and brutality. It discloses a journey on what had happened to all of them down the path — their fight for righteousness and sanity, the process towards redemption, and the struggle for continuing to live. The director, Lav Diaz, has stated in one of his interviews that the movie “Norte” is actually an imagination of the life of young Ferdinand Marcos. He expressed that it is a direct reference to how fascism was born in our country. Within this film’s moral universe, nobody gets away with nothing. Even Fabian, who thinks that he is above the law and order, that he is a critic of this dirty system that he calls out, but ironically becomes the epitome of all its wrongdoings and disorders. Norte has a lot to say about morality and the origins of good and evil. It talks about the Philippines, about the state of our country right now, as an end product of all these centuries of history, struggles, betrayals, and injustice — crimes that were not punished, as early as from Aguinaldo’s generation. He has portrayed, again, a painstaking and realistic diagram of some of the social elements that sculpt the society we live in today: class, religion, law, justice, and money.
I loved how raw and genuine the actors were in portraying their characters. Sid Lucero’s Fabian is a type of person who just woke up one day realizing that he wanted to test the system, and he did, he tried, and he got away with everything he did. But that’s the thing, he may be free, but he is not acutally guilt-free. All this remorse ate him up inside. His character is like the discovery of guilt, of whether there is still a fine line between moral and immoral deeds. I think he serves to be the representation of Ferdinand Marcos in Diaz’s mind. He is the embodiment of a complex perversity, with this backstory revealed in the final stretch of the film — the hole in his life that he got back from his childhood, the things he went through. It only proves that he’s far more messed up than we would have even anticipated. Archie Alemania’s portrayal of Joaquin looked natural to him. Joaquin is a good man — responsible father and a loving husband. But even amidst his worst points in life, he never forgot how to be good to those that surrounds him, even if they don’t deserve it. Though there were bullies inside prison like Wakwak (Soliman Cruz), he stayed to be the kind and understanding man that he was. There was this time where Wakwak got very sick, and being the bully that he is, no one really wanted to take care of him except Joaquin. He tirelessly took care of Wakwak, fed him, bathe him, and put him to sleep. As a result, Wakwak’s guilt hit him and he felt bad for all the things he did to him and to the others, and asked Joaquin for his forgiveness. He is kind of a saint, not wanting to participate in all of the abuse and exploitation that is happening around him. And for that fact, he happens to make and leave an impact to the prisoners that surround him. All the other actors, including Mae Paner, Angeli Bayani, Angelina Kanapi, and Soliman Cruz, have executed their characters very well. They made it all come to life. They made it convincing, exhilarating, and mind-blowing to watch these characters and let us get hooked to see all their developments throughout the movie.
The direction of Lav Diaz in this movie is excellent. Diaz deals with primitive emotions in an introspective, visually-stunning way. Compared to other Diaz’s films, “Norte” is actually a short one judging by his film standards, mostly stretching from 6-10 hours. As we know, he is one of the heroes of the “slow cinema” movement here in the Philippines, so the pacing of his movies tends to be slow. He doesn’t care about the lengths of his films, he just makes it organically. But for me, that’s actually the beauty of it. The length — it gives you time to breathe, time to rest, and time to let all the scenes sink in to your mind. This is his first time doing a colored movie, as opposed to his first ones in black and white. As for the storytelling, it came off as a little complex, with a lot of clips between the main ones that are hard to understand what their context was, sometimes. The film’s elements were not so much exceptional. If anything, this film wasn’t really that artsy: there are conversations that are in long shots going round and round which sometimes seem to go nowhere, some of the scenes just drain away, the atmospheric sounds are unexpressive most of the time, and many situations (such as characters sitting somewhere or walking down roads) are repeated again and again without significant difference or development.
There are lots of individual shots that are held for minutes at a time, the framings are often tilted, most of the dramatic scenes tend to happen off-camera, or concealed by something, or are shown through half-open doors. He favors holding his shots endlessly, just waiting for the movements inside it to settle. There was no musical scoring — no film soundtrack, or any non-diegetic sounds from the beginning of the film until the credits. But that’s what makes it what it is, that it doesn’t want or even need any of these things. Norte has this naturalistic style in which it used only diegetic elements in its entirety. It shows us what really happens in reality, in which we certainly don’t encounter non-diegetic elements in real life. It also allowed us to focus into the story itself, to linger into it, to absorb all the emotions that are portrayed, and averted us from any distractions. In the film’s world, it doesn’t reflect the reality — it really is the reality. That’s what the film wanted for us to experience, to become part of their world and to make sure that we feel like we are truly with them. The patience and perseverance of the parted couple, Joaquin and Eliza, seems to be the very virtue of the film itself. That patience and perseverance are the greatest virtues in this film — the patience to let the happenings reveal at their own pace, to allow the conversations to naturally begin and end in their own time, for the characters to move and feel in their own way. Long takes and slow camera movements, the revelation of the details and the incidents occur genuinely.
The perseverance to experience this whole 250-minute slow-paced film, and in the end, taking every lesson with you and realizing that it was all worth it. Even though a lot of people have reservations and resentments with Diaz’s processes and techniques in making a film, all of it are what make him stand out. His works are what represent the true meaning of “free cinema”, the freedom to do anything you want to express and present your message to the people in your own, interesting way.
What got into me is how the symbolisms were shown. First is when Joaquin went into jail and Fabian left the Norte and went to Manila. Fabian rented and occupied a small, tight apartment and at one point, put blankets on the window with bar patterns, making it actually look like he is in a cell. There’s also the picture of his dog displayed in his first apartment, showing his love for animals but haves this despise for people. The same picture was also seen hanging above his head after he just killed Magda, showing that his inhuman nature just got over him. I also believe that the death of Eliza is the illustration of hell, that even a good person cannot get away with all the absurdities of life. And in Eliza’s death, Joaquin gets his own one. In his dreams, he looked like a dead body floating outside of his confinement, mourning the loss of his wife and wanting to be with her, thus dying too, kind of like a Romeo and Juliet situation.
This film is a portrayal of the Philippines that we live in today, the people that go through these struggles and the people that put them there. It’s the matter of displacement, and how Philippines is a very displaced country. The fascists, the lack of justice, our own system that couldn’t do anything for our masses, the criminality — brutality, rapes, and a lot of killings, these are all happening, every day. The normal people being victimized by these twisted ideologies of the ones above them. The disappointing part of being here in this country, where the real good people are the ones being wronged and persecuted. The ones that cannot escape this never-ending cycle because they are the ones on the bottom of the class pyramid. The film Norte, The End of History used our society as a muse — the struggles of our country and our people, the humanity per se and the loss of it, as an inspiration.
