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A Filipino poet hearkens back to his village after spending years in Europe. Horrified to discover that the community has been buried under landslides, he begins wandering through the countryside, reconnecting with friends, lovers and family members whose lives teeter on the brink of destruction.Read More »
The latest effort from a slow-cinema auteur known for his epic running times, “From What Is Before” is a longer sit than “Norte” (250 minutes) but a brisk jaunt compared with the likes of “Melancholia” (450 minutes), “Death in the Land of Encantos” (538 minutes) and “Evolution of a Filipino Family” (593 minutes). As ever, the effectiveness of Diaz’s approach depends on his finding a subject worthy of sustained rumination, and in this film, which he aptly describes as “a memory of a cataclysm,” it is the very act of remembering, of recalling the specific texture and atmosphere of his lost childhood, that seems to determine the duration of every shot and the placement of every cut. A poet-historian of longform cinema, Diaz seeks not merely to relay a series of events, but to draw us into a fully inhabited world.Read More »