On the day I write this, Wikipedia describes Heremias in the following way:

"the story of a farmer who makes a pact with God to save a girl from rape"

I wouldn't call that inaccurate, because the most important narrative strand in the film is the rape plot. It is the point of the film. It is the thing which tests Heremias. However what Wikipedia does not mention is that this pact is made 8 hours and 20 minutes into Heremias. Furthermore, the main plot doesn't even start until 7 hours and 20 minutes into the film. Heremias has a 7 hour prologue which sets up all the context for its actual story. The first 2 hours and 30 minutes…

In 2002 the director joked that his next feature—Heremias—was going to be forty hours long, the audience, with their eyes wide and bloodshot, didn't for a minute think that Lav 'i do whatever the fuck i want' Diaz was joking. Fortunately for the weak bladdered the runtime dwindled into the considerably less ten hours, for better or worse.

Torment begins on a desolate road, Diaz's style promptly radiating from each carefully framed shot, as ox carts and their forever ambulating artisan workers steadily pace with them. Modernity and commercial filmmaking speed past them in the form of a speeding van, Diaz in comparison saunters and lingers and ends the take long after the intrigue has left the sequence, leaving the…

#70HoursOfDiaz

Hours 24-34

I take back every criticism I had with Evolution Of A Filipino Family. In retrospect it's runtime seems rather humble in it's modest reflection of its participants. It's runtime may have tested my patience on occasion but at least that movie had an overall goal: to represent an average family in the Philippines over a span of time. Did it meander? Sure but fur all intents and purposes in retrospect I think it (mostly) succeeded at it's simplistic aims.

I bring this up because Diaz's follow up, this film is maybe the single worst film I have ever seen in my life.

I am willing to accept a lot from a "long" film but I think your…

85/100

Heremias may be one of Diaz's more straightforward narratives and also one of his less (directly) political ones, yet it is nonetheless as much of an 'ordeal' as the greater part of his oeuvre, clocking a solid 9-hours runtime featuring multiple extended static shots, one of which runs for a formidable 62 minutes. And yet despite everything―as always―the ends seem to justify the means, no matter how punishing or gimmicky they may appear initially, with Diaz ensuring that his protagonist's prolonged torment (both physical and spiritual) and world-weariness soaks down to our very bones, in a way that might have been impossible through any film of conventional length.

The titular character Heremias, an impoverished wandering peddler selling wares from…

The way Diaz builds the worlds of his films is something to wonder and admire; he frames these characters in black and white against rugged backdrops of the Philippines, its jungles and roads that spread all around, under the sky that is full of tension. We hear that there's a typhoon coming, a storm that is speculated as band of travelling salesmen travel the days in their wagons and spend the nights by the roads, around the campfire, drinking, laughing and singing. We never get close to these people but we come to understand where they come from and where they are going. One of them, Heremias, takes a different path and ends up in ruins. Obsessed by the unfathomable…

With an intricately woven tapestry of faith, moral decay of the Filipino society and authoritarian corruption, Diaz throws the most arduous challenge to his audience in Heremias Book One. However the strenuous efforts that one must expend to patiently sit through this nine hour long epic without any sorts of grandiloquence is oddly rewarding in the most contemplative sense of the word.

At the centre we have the eponymous 'hero' Heremias, a travelling tradesman and the conflict that arises out of his psychological derailment. But it takes nearly two hours for this friction to arise, two long hours consisting of a series of static long takes that teleports you into the serene Filipino landscape where many of the nomadic crafts…

On the day I write this, Wikipedia describes Heremias in the following way:

"the story of a farmer who makes a pact with God to save a girl from rape"

I wouldn't call that inaccurate, because the most important narrative strand in the film is the rape plot. It is the point of the film. It is the thing which tests Heremias. However what Wikipedia does not mention is that this pact is made 8 hours and 20 minutes into Heremias. Furthermore, the main plot doesn't even start until 7 hours and 20 minutes into the film. Heremias has a 7 hour prologue which sets up all the context for its actual story. The first 2 hours and 30 minutes…

The way Diaz builds the worlds of his films is something to wonder and admire; he frames these characters in black and white against rugged backdrops of the Philippines, its jungles and roads that spread all around, under the sky that is full of tension. We hear that there's a typhoon coming, a storm that is speculated as band of travelling salesmen travel the days in their wagons and spend the nights by the roads, around the campfire, drinking, laughing and singing. We never get close to these people but we come to understand where they come from and where they are going. One of them, Heremias, takes a different path and ends up in ruins. Obsessed by the unfathomable…

Wishing to spend some time alone, a travelling handicrafts salesman decides to take his cow-pulled-cart and leave the safety of a wagon train, much to the bafflement of his wary colleagues. Before long, well off the beaten track, after spending a drunken night with a trio of strangers, their fears for him become reality, when he has his cow and wares stolen and his cart burnt to the ground. Finding the corrupt local police officer of no help, he stakes out the scene of the incident himself, hoping to catch the criminal (or criminals) red-handed. Instead, he overhears a group of teenaged boys planning to commit a horrendous crime, but struggles to find anyone willing to help him to prevent…