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.
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.