The best thing that can be said about this movie is it doesn't glorify Magellan at all. If that's your concern, then you can strike that out.
This ain't no Jerrold Tarog brainrot where the white supremacist is invoked to blame the victim and gaslight the masses with.
Here, he's portrayed as a regular schmuck, a basic scumbag who is not only a product of his time, but a willing conscript of the greedy and corrupt since he doesn't know better.
Circumnavigated the globe not out of a sense of adventure or as a feat of human accomplishment, but because he was trying to avoid the business rivals of the powers-that-be that he was trying to suck up to. Spreading Christianity not out of faith but to win himself favors in the end. He's more of a salesman than a crusader who behaves like a gangster along with his posse the way he shook up the locals and marked the terrain.
He's also not above implementing the medieval backwardness of his country in his own ship, bringing in an executioner in case he needs to deal with sinners at sea.
His smallness is played to perfection by Gael Garcia Bernal who disappears into the role due to a genuine synthesis and collaboration between him and writer & director Lav Diaz, both of whom share a post-colonial point of view. You can tell they had the Global South in mind when they made this.
The rest of the whites would get this same treatment, including a maniacal Portuguese soldier who wants to use Malacca to 'choke the world'.
Hard-nosed realism the way I always knew our cinema is capable of doing since its harsh, documentarian turn when digital indies became a thing. Mixed results, yes, but it has brought a kind of ruthless Third World cinema that's specific to us. For all intents and purposes, we aren't afraid of searing discourse in our works.
You can see this in the pared down way with which it approaches its European period settings. A random corner on a street. No CGI and costume parties here.
Film is not always like this. The last 1/5th of the film is a bit shoddy and undercooked. But when it's superb, it truly feels like a PH filmmaker is standing alongside the likes of Wim Wenders & Akira Kurosawa.
Stuff's legit.
