Norte, The End Of History 

Directed by Lav Diaz

2/5

LAV DIAZ’S film purports to provide a significant exploration of crime, class and family in the Philippines. But it’s a four-hour marathon that fails to deliver.

In something of a Filipino take on Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment, we’re introduced to smug layabout Fabian (Sid Lucerio) — a promising law student until dropping out — who now delivers lectures on his sub-Nietzschian theories of the world to former classmates before borrowing money from them. 

His poverty-stricken friend Joaquin (Archie Alemania), with a loving wife Eliza (Angeli Bayani) and two children, sees his dream of opening a cafe threatened when a bad leg injury takes its toll on his savings. It turns out that both men are in serious arrears to the local money lender. 

One night, deciding to put his solipsistic theories into practice and eliminating his debt at the same time, Fabian brutally murders a local woman and her young daughter. 

While he flees town, Joaquin is arrested for the murders and, let down by an expensive legal system, is sentenced to life. Over the next four years, he tries to make the best of his situation while Eliza struggles to provide for her children by running a vegetable stall. 

Fabian is consumed by guilt at getting away with murder and it drives him to the point of madness. Not even his attempts to make amends are able to stop his descent into the abyss. 

Director Lav Diaz employs long takes and slow tracking shots rather than frenetic montage as a way of portraying the sometimes monotonous rhythms of daily life. 

The slow pace is trying enough and if you don’t know Philippine society well, the story and the political relevance will hardly resonate. 

While the dialogue often raises vital issues in relation to that country’s society and history — one of  revolution, betrayal and loss of hope — it remains abstract and stilted. Despite its title, this is a film which doesn’t really know where it wants to go.