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…

I'm dreading the couple of Diaz films I have left (unseen) after watching this. While one could make the excuse that Diaz was still exploring and "finding his style" with this picture - it's way too much of a mixed bag for me not to say that while his eye is certainly here in spots, there are many times he lets otherwise extremely bland shots go on for too. fucking. long. Hell, his eye for good shots doesn't even begin to show itself until about 2 hours into this film - and really, why should anyone have to sit through 2 hours of anything before you decide you wanna get to the good stuff?

In addition to that, the narrative…

This may be the slowest film I have ever seen.

There were certainly sections during which I considered, "does it REALLY have to be this long?". is diaz against me here?

I was thinking how even in Tarr's films, Costa's films, and Tsai-Ming Liang's films, I get this feeling that they're demanding much from me, but giving back just as much in return.

And here, there were times when I felt that Diaz was not interested whatsoever, in giving me anything back in return.

One particular shot constitutes an 8th of the film. Yeah, it's an hour-long shot, from an oscillating (but for all intents and purposes stationary) perspective, that observes an act occurring with extremely minimal development over the…

I'm still new to the products of slow cinema but after watching a handful of masterpieces by Lav Diaz, I could finally dwell in his great contributions as one of the best Filipino filmmakers. The strange tale of Heremias spurred my curiosity, though it takes a lot of patience due to its long duration. The way he used dialectical approach in dealing with injustice is somewhat appealing to me. He conveys his ideas through metaphors connected to spiritual growth which is prominent in his works, as what I have observed in Butterflies Have No Memories. Yet, I can still recall some defining moments that distinguish it from the others. The stories of Colonel Oshima, Castro family and other folks of…

Il primo, vero capolavoro firmato Lav Diaz, una poesia di 9 ore per celebrare la morte definitiva della fiducia nel genere umano. Se è vera, in generale, la massima latina "homo homini lupus", lo è ancor di più in questo film.
L'essere umano è una creatura malvagia, nata solo per scopi egoistici e per fare del male all'altro. Questo altro è, nel film, l'eponimo venditore che, alla ricerca di chi gli abbia rubato il bue e distrutto il carro, uniche sue fonti di guadagno (impossibile non ripensare, in questo caso, a Ladri di Biciclette di Vittorio De Sica), si ritrova sperduto in un mondo senza speranza e, soprattutto, senza giustizia.
La polizia gli volta le spalle; i suoi amici vogliono…

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…

Right, we all know this film is long: it's Lav Diaz, and events will unfold as they will. Once you get over that, the movement of time isn't really an issue, and there's necessarily a sort of documentary effect to the extreme length, as we watch our protagonist trudge along endless roads with a group of vendors selling their wares from ox-drawn carts. Heremias at length peels off on his own, and, at length, gets caught in a typhoon, from which he takes shelter. When he wakes, his cow has gone and his cart is burnt. This is around hour 4 and this is the mystery he's trying to unravel (after a fashion), but things go off track again and…

This may be the slowest film I have ever seen.

There were certainly sections during which I considered, "does it REALLY have to be this long?". is diaz against me here?

I was thinking how even in Tarr's films, Costa's films, and Tsai-Ming Liang's films, I get this feeling that they're demanding much from me, but giving back just as much in return.

And here, there were times when I felt that Diaz was not interested whatsoever, in giving me anything back in return.

One particular shot constitutes an 8th of the film. Yeah, it's an hour-long shot, from an oscillating (but for all intents and purposes stationary) perspective, that observes an act occurring with extremely minimal development over the…

Heremias: Unang aklat - Ang alamat ng prinsesang bayawak (2006)

8/10

The wandering Filipino.

The struggle of the Philippines conformed into a Christ-like figure that suffers the ravaging of all his possessions and thus understands the corrupt nature of the government, the police, and those who listen to rock music loudly. At times it seems like an old man yelling at a cloud, specially weird considering the age of Lav compared to the age of Heremias, but in a way he is starting experimenting with the extreme lengths of his films, and he finds that those lengths serve more as an exploration of pain than one of gaze (there's an hour-long shot that is the POV of Heremias watching a…