I came to "Norte, the End of History" after reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment," for which this movie is a loose reworking. Honestly, I often found it a long slog to get through the book--with page after page, chapter after chapter, and book after book of Raskolnikov's sociopathic thoughts and tendencies examined ad infinitum as subplot after subplot arose--some to dwindle and die and others that would prove central. In that respect, this example of "slow cinema," which is to say a filmmaking style consisting of a series of long takes of long shots with minimal editing that goes on for too many excruciating hours, may seem an apt adaptation. In other respects, however, this style is antithetical to its source. Dostoevsky has been credited as a relatively early author to employ god-like third-person omniscient narration to look inside the minds of characters--to read their thoughts. Director Lav Diaz also takes the usual unrestricted narrative approach by floating between the stories of multiple characters and perspectives, but his commitment to long-shot framings always keeps the spectator at a great distance from the characters--and, for the most part, far away from their minds. Moreover, there are only a couple point-of-view shots in the entire some-four-hours-long picture and nary a close-up, with only a few brief medium ones at most. This is an almost total rejection of traditional cinematic techniques to coax the spectator into identification with characters by associating those characters with the camera's gaze.

Ultimately, Dostoevsky's text was also a reassertion of traditional religious values and a rebuke of certain modern and radical ways of thinking, including the violent politics of Russian nihilism. In the history of motion pictures, if there is a mainstream religion--a framework to pin one's existence upon like Dostoevsky's reactionary Orthodoxy--it's continuity editing. Almost every movie and certainly most mainstream Hollywood productions since as far back as the late 1910s has been built upon that foundation. Diaz, however, is a radical; there's hardly any continuity editing here. There is very little scene dissection, with most scenes being comprised of a single, often static, shot. No shot-reverse-shots. No match cuts. No crosscutting. And, again, few to no close-ups and POV shots or eyeline matches. On the other hand, there are a few jump cuts, which is a technique that has traditionally (especially before YouTube videos and the like adopted it) been considered an amateurish sin in violation of the 30-degree rule.

Thus, we're bombarded with shot-scene after shot-scene of characters in positions remote from a mostly un-moving camera view, with these static tableaux generally lingering long past the point of any action on screen or, often, consisting entirely of nothing of interest happening. Furthermore, many shots are from obfuscated positions. Some of these long takes remain obscure throughout (including some of the more violent episodes),while others feature a camera that follows characters to keep them within frame and to reveal previously hidden characters--usually leading to a two-shot for another pointless conversation. And for all of the quiet, uneventful tableaux here, it's hard to decide whether it's not preferable to the picture's inane dialogue. The worst of this occurs in the first part of the picture, where the Raskolnikov type (here, named "Fabian") drinks beer with his buddies as he rambles on regarding his sophomoric philosophizing--generally, a hodgepodge of Marxism, nihilism and hazy radicalism. It doesn't help, either, that the picture insists that this ranting fool is smart--you know, because everyone says he is, and they repeatedly point out what an excellent law student he was before he dropped out. But, I don't care; if in over four hours runtime I'm not shown one snippet, nor hear one insight proving otherwise, to counteract everything else indicating that a character is stupid, then, he's stupid, and all of his fawning friends are too. To claim otherwise is pretentious--as is a picture with a meaningless multilingual title such as "North" and "End of History." Compare that to the sly directness of Dostoevsky's title.

This style does remind of a precedent, though, before continuity editing became the norm. Some of the earliest feature-length films ever made consisted of long shot, long take and static shot-scenes and were essentially no more than filmed plays. The 1912 "Queen Elizabeth," for instance, was no more than a recording to showcase stage-star Sarah Bernhardt's histrionics. But, they introduced the longer film to audiences and, soon thereafter, continuity editing emerged, especially in Hollywood after WWI decimated Europe's and much of the rest of the world's industry. Moreover, some of these films did do some intriguing things with blocking, camera placement and mise-en-scène as an alternative to montage, which has continued a strong tradition in much of European cinema. Indeed, another loose reworking of "Crime and Punishment," Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket" (1959),also subverts traditional continuity editing, but does so to thematic and virtuosic effect in adapting the text. Diaz, on the other hand, seems to do it out of self-indulgence--not entirely unlike his villainous Fabian.

Diaz's digital framings are far less appealing and betray merely a general over-indulgence and a preposterous avoidance of editing. "Norte" is so ludicrously tedious that hours--I repeat, hours--should've been cut from the picture. And an average shot length (according to my count) of about 99 seconds, with many (such as an awful scene involving the stabbing of a dog) lasting over five minutes, is unacceptable when the spectator is offered so little to contemplate in those pauses. Despite the slow pace and lengthy amount of time spent, the plot is badly disordered. It's over three hours in before we learn that Fabian actually comes from a rather wealthy background, or before we learn some details about a trial that we're only ever told about but never see. Even the passage of time is poorly represented as characters rather inorganically are required to mention in conversation how many years have passed between scenes.

Not to diminish the validity of anyone's appraisal of the movie, but I suspect that after enduring such a punishing runtime and lethargic pacing, one may be inclined to validate that experience as somehow a positive reflection of the quality of the picture. At least, I know I desired as much. Some critics justify it by seeing a supposed "humanism" here. Indeed, I see a peculiar over-reverence for poverty in it, which rather runs contrary to Dostoevsky and undermines the rationale behind Fabian's behavior. Besides, it's not as though the lower-class characters of Joaquin, who strangles a woman, and his wife, Eliza, who contemplates murdering their children, are exactly the beacons of sainthood that Diaz sometimes seems to want to make them out to be. They're no Dostoevsky's Sonya, that's for sure. Furthermore, it seems as though DIaz somehow manages to perhaps be even more moralistic than Dostoevsky, and there's certainly more specific socio-political commentary here, while Raskolnikov's admiration for Napoleon is fittingly replaced by Fabian's comments on former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The story here is even vastly less complex than that of the book (or even other cinematic adaptations). The crime and the punishment is split between the guilty Fabian, who murders a pawnbroker and her daughter as per Raskolnikov, and the innocent Joaquin. The latter also receives the adaptation's redemption and romance, as much of the picture focuses on his wife, Eliza, as well. Others have suggested that Joaquin's plight more resembles a work from another great Russian author, Leo Tolstoy's short story "God Sees the Truth, But Waits." And everything I've said here regarding a comparison to Dostoevsky's style could about as well apply to the writer of "War and Peace." To end on a more positive note, however, I will say that the film obstinately establishes place to rival that of Raskolnikov's wanderings of Saint Petersburg, with some of the long gazes being at least momentarily striking (the disjunction of a modern highway next to a community of shacks, for instance). Diaz, too, briefly comes close to approximating something pictorially transcendent with a series of aerial views suggested to be dream-like visions of Joaquin. It's the closest "Norte" gets to god's eye view.

Anyone who has sat through the epic four hour plus "Norte, The End of History," deserves a medal. "Norte" is the product of Lav Diaz, the Filipino auteur who has already completed seven films that are even LONGER than this one! When he wishes to introduce each new scene, Diaz has a penchant for holding establishing shots for a minute or two, which can be infuriating. Be forewarned: there is some interesting material here but one has to be extremely patient to appreciate any of it!

Diaz's "Norte" is set in the Phillipines and revolves around three interconnected characters. The prime mover (and perhaps most interesting of the three) is the antagonist, Fabian, a law school dropout who seeks to punish anyone who transgresses his personal moral code. Fabian's idea is to eliminate the "bad elements" in Filipino society. While his friends agree that society must change, Fabian, the bitter psychopath and reactionary, berates all those who believe in "all talk and no action."

In contrast, husband and wife Eliza and Joaquin, come from a poor background and are dependent on a local moneylender, Magda, for their sustenance. When Eliza pawns a precious family ring, Joaquin tries to convince Magda to sell it back to him. When he can't pay her price, Joaquin impulsively chokes Magda and runs off after a housekeeper witnesses the event. Later, Fabian is passing by on the street and sees Magda turn Eliza away at her door, after requesting another loan. Magda's rough treatment of Eliza is enough justification for Fabian to later enter Magda's home and kill the moneylender along with her innocent teenage daughter.

Joaquin is later implicated in Magda's murder (due to the circumstantial evidence against him) and is forced to accept a plea bargain of life in prison. Eliza is forced to sell vegetables on the street for a living, in order to take care of her children, who are in the care of a family friend. Meanwhile, Joaquin must adjust to prison life and survives a brutal attack by a predatory inmate. Later that inmate falls sick and Joaquin, in true Christian fashion, ministers to him, in a great act of forgiveness.

Echoing Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment," Fabian is haunted by the memory of committing the two murders and eventually digs up money he had stolen and later buried from Magda's house and gives it to Eliza. Fabian, however, remains deeply troubled and on a visit to his sister, who owns a large farm, ends up raping her.

Now with a little money, Eliza is finally able to visit her beloved Joaquin. On the way back, she tragically dies in a plane crash. We see Joaquin (apparently now deceased) levitating, as if he's moving closer to God, attaining some kind of sainthood. Can we assume that Joaquin killed himself or died from grief, following the death of Eliza in the plane crash? Possibly but it's not entirely clear.

The randomness of the death of two good people, Eliza and Joaquin, is contrasted with Fabian, an evildoer, who very much continues to live. Perhaps Diaz is saying sometimes there is no justice in this world and perhaps no God. Diaz hints that perhaps there is still hope as one of the concluding shots focuses on the innocent children of Eliza and Joaquin, who survive, along with the farm animals, who also represent innocence.

Neil Young writing in the "Hollywood Reporter," finds Diaz's characters lacking in complexity: "Fabian's transition from preening bohemian chatterbox to bestial psychotic is seldom convincing, but at least his character gets to change a little over the course of the years. Joaquin and Eliza are little more than plaster saints from beginning to end in a film which simplistically equates poverty with spiritual purity and fortitude."

Peter Sobcynski of "RogerEbert.com," notes that there "are moments of staggering beauty and power on display here," but also notes there are numerous scenes which are quite lugubrious or gratuitous: "The trouble is that there are also extended sequences in which so little happens that the effect is more tedious than hypnotic…This is mostly due to a screenplay that grows less and less psychologically sound the further it drifts from its inspiration—there is a long sequence when Eliza contemplates killing herself and her children that feels like a cheap shot and some of the cruelties on display in the final hour feel like attempts to jolt viewers that may have inevitably drifted off during the slower parts. For these moments to fully work, a filmmaker has to have earned them, and there are times in which Diaz hasn't completely done that."

A.O. Scott, writing in the "New York Times,"holds that "Norte's" value is connected to Diaz's social critique: "Mr. Diaz, patiently surveying the social and physical landscape with his beautiful, asymmetrical wide-screen compositions, makes inequality seem like an aspect of the local climate. The cruelty of laws and economic arrangements is obvious and intolerable, and yet there is no real sense that anything can be done."

"Norte, The End of History," does indeed highlight the tragedy of poverty and its attendant sense of class inequalities. Again, if you're patient enough to ignore some of the more tedious moments in the film, you'll be rewarded by scenes of what A.O. Scott terms, the film's "inexhaustible humanism."

Finally! Today, I can now say that I have seen a Lav Diaz film. Since his multi-awarded "Batang West Side" in 2001, Mr. Diaz has built a name directing artistic opuses that run much much longer than usual feature films, usually more than five hours. His longest was "Evolution of a Filipino Family" in 2004, which clocked at a whopping 11 and a half hours! Running for about 4 hours, "Norte" is fondly referred to as Mr. Diaz's "short" film, and therefore the most accessible of all his films.

"Norte" is set in the northern province of Ilocos Norte. Fabian Viduya (Sid Lucero) was a topnotch law student who quit law school because of his highfalutin philosophical ideas of a society beyond existentialism and anarchy. Joaquin (Archie Alemania) and Eliza (Agnes Bayani) were a poor couple whose dreams of building their own eatery business are dashed when Joaquin suffers a leg injury and they fell deep into debt.

The fates of these three people intersected when a heinous crime was committed in their small town. Since then, these three lives were thrown into a major maelstrom. These events happened in just in the first hour, the rest of the next three hours follows what happens to each of these three characters following that cruelly fateful day.

I will not pretend and say that I did not feel the four hours. I did feel the length of the film with those static shots that seemed to be showing nothing in particular or the very slow telling of events with several details that seemed like they would have been edited out in usual film. However, each of these scenes would usually precede a scene of big importance, building up the suspense very effectively.

If we complain that there is no character development in mainstream film, in this film, there is not shortage of that. We will get to see how the events shaped Fabian, Joaquin and Eliza as they were caught in their consequences. However, for a super-complex character like Fabian, the four hours was not even enough to get to know his innermost core that drove him to do the things he did. Fabian is a big question mark up to his very last scene.

Sid Lucero got wrung through the wringer for his role as Fabian. You'll admire him. You'll pity him. You'll hate him. This is such a complex role and Lucero was more than up to the task. "Norte" is his film. It was his actions that throw the other characters' lives around.

Angeli Bayani has taken over roles that would probably been given to younger Ms. Nora Aunor. Even if her character barely talked, it was her eyes, her face that talked to us. Her scenes with Archie Alemania are tearjerkers without words nor music to build up the moment. Her back was even turned to us. Yet the emotion was so deeply felt. There was also that scene where she was walking with her kids at the crossroads, and following that, a scene with her kids over a ledge -- she can really convey tension that her director requires.

Archie Alemania's character development was rather straight-forward and he played the character very sympathetically. Mae Paner was the usurer Magda, such a hateful character you will feel her effect even if she was only seen in the first hour. Soliman Cruz was another hateful character Wakwak seen in the third hour. That scene where he was singing "O Holy Night" was so insidiously sinister.

This film is not for everyone. Not everyone will have the patience for it. Not everyone will have the time for it. However, for those who do invest their time with this, you will see that this was a film of artistic excellence. The innovative camera angles make mundane household items and rustic scenes look and feel different. This could be your best chance to watch a Lav Diaz film and immerse yourself in the work of a director whose name is already lined up with National Artists for film Brocka and Bernal.