Afternoons of Solitude (Tardes de soledad)

 

Director Albert Serra

AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE (Tardes de soledad)                     B+                                Spain  France  Portugal  (125 mi)  2024  d: Albert Serra

The bullfighter was bent with the bull, he cimbred his waist on the exquisite brushstroke of the right, embarked the natural with velvet caress.  And the helper.  And the chest pass in amalgam of depth and art.  And the serenity of holding a break with the pythons in centimeters of the thighs.  And the knee on the ground to screw the bull in follow-up of the deception.  And the crutch on the left again for the natural deep.  And the trench again.  And the quiquiriquí.  And the signing pass.  And scarlet flame in change of hand.  And the bull returned to deceit, seized on his flights.  Harmony, cadence, bewitchment.                                                                          —Joaquín Vidal, Spanish journalist treating bullfighting not just as a spectacle, but as a fleeting art form to be described with intense sensory detail

Any way you want to look at it, this film is shocking in every respect, yet filmed with an unflinching eye by Catalan cinematographer Artur Tort, who also co-edits the film with the director, using three outstanding cameras and magnificent sound equipment, where the overall work is so much more impressive than in his subsequent work in Lav Diaz’s Magellan (Magalhães) (2025), and despite the devastatingly horrific nature of some of what we see, it’s presented with unmistakable elegance, brutal and poetic at the same time, begging the question, is it art or is it barbarism?  A formally minimalistic, documentary portrait of the legendary twenty-nine year old, still-active Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey (Home - Web oficial del torero Andrés Roca Rey), the equivalent of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo in the soccer world, this is the director’s first nonfiction film, listed at #1 from Cahiers du Cinéma: Top 10 Films of 2025, #6 from Film Comment: Best Films of 2025, and #6 from Richard Brody: New Yorker: The Best Films of 2025, and winner of the Golden Seashell for top prize at Spain’s 2024 San Sebastián Film Festival.  It’s a film about archaic rituals and tradition, about the people who know a lot about it, and are the specialists in their field.  The ornate and colorful style may remind viewers of Pedro Almodóvar’s Matador (1987), where Roca Rey is considered the world’s most famous matador, as the film immerses itself in the old-fashioned world of the bull ring, pitting one man alone against the immense power of a bull, where it’s a battle to the death, though the odds are stacked against the animal, bloodied by a series of lances into the spine or shoulders prior to the final few passes, eventually falling to their deaths, exposing the brutality of the sport, which is why bullfighting is illegal in most countries with the exception of specific regions of Spain, Portugal, France, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador, where it is viewed as an essential, historic cultural event, appealing more to those on the right wing, who view male virility and macho tradition as a form of nationalist expression.  No argument is made here, making no overt comment about bullfighting, with no talking heads promoting any of the various points of view, instead it is a pure cinematic exhibition playing out onscreen as it happens inside the ring, where you can hear but never see the crowd, using a repetitive style that allows viewers to enter the near hypnotic relationship between the matador and the bull, where the emphasis is on the developing psychological standoff, relying upon skill and agility in his maneuvers and his elegant use of the cape, typically killing the animal with a single sword-thrust that leads to its collapse.  The danger to the matador is equally intense, as bulls occasionally gore them, or flip them upside down, with the opportunity to stomp them to death, or pierce their hearts or lungs, even subjecting their faces to their horns, and while never mentioned in the film, there are famous matadors who died in the ring, one during a live television broadcast in Spain, Víctor Barrio, a 29-year old Spanish matador who was killed in 2016 when a bull’s horn pierced his chest in front of live spectators, dying just a few minutes later.  Balancing the graceful choreography with the brutality, exposing an extremely stylized ritual, and the insane courage that someone must have to stand face-to-face with such a massively powerful animal, this is a movie about looking death in the eye, knowing the risks, yet exposing themselves anyway while defying the possibility of dying.  When Roca Rey is badly injured by a bull, his first reflex is not to look for a doctor, but to go back into the arena bleeding hard to become victorious against that same bull in front of a delirious crowd.  Tradition and performance, also history and the present are so directly interwoven into the film, where the very different reactions indicate that Serra has in fact found the right balance, neither a clear glorification nor a strong condemnation, rather somewhere in the middle, offering an invitation to reflection.

In a sport loved by Hemingway, Picasso, Dalí, Goya, Lorca, Gustave Doré, and Manet, recalling Hemingway’s 263-page 1932 essay Ernest Hemingway DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON (pdf), which likely influenced the title, all seeing the beauty, tragedy, and even mysticism in it, the film offers no history or backstory, but simply places us inside the spectacle of the ring, exposing the ceremonial splendor and devastating brutality from extremely close range, where the camerawork is simply outstanding, offering astonishing views of such a controversial sport, as we hear the groaning sounds of the matador encouraging the bull, and the exhaustive snorts of the animal, elevating what we see to performance art.  This sport goes back to Roman gladiator entertainment when slaves were forced to battle wild animals in a Colosseum ring surrounded by a hyped up and frenzied crowd, while bullfighting in Spain goes back to the 8th century, going through various iterations of banishment and public performance, revived in the 18th century, where Seville has been credited with founding modern Spanish-style bullfighting.  The great Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura made his feature movie debut in a film centered around bullfighting, LOS GOLFOS (The Delinquents) (1960), the first Spanish movie filmed entirely on location, while Italian filmmaker Francesco Rosi made THE MOMENT OF TRUTH (1965), an equally compelling elegy to a great bullfighter.  Remaining controversial throughout the centuries, most would probably find the sport abhorrent, where killing an animal for sport is the Spanish working class equivalent to the aristocratic tradition of British fox-hunting on horseback, or the pheasant and rabbit hunting seen in Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939), with hounds chasing after them until the animal is shot, effectively becoming a symbol of the callousness, moral decay, and frivolous nature of the upper class, while also paralleling the slaughter of the coming war (WWI).  But this is much more bloody and brutal, featuring massive animals weighing over 1000 pounds literally dripping with blood, where it can be seen as grotesque, but that’s where the aesthetic artistry of the filmmaker gives this a different sense, as it’s unflinchingly visceral, seductive and distancing at the same time, almost like a religious experience, a glimpse of the sacred and the profane, or a transcendent search for the sublime, always shown with a painterly gaze.  Seen through the eyes of the bullfighter, with his unusual posture, extravagant poses and facial expressions, where it’s all about agility, rhythm, and timing, much like a ballet dancer, we also hear the sounds of the spectacle, accentuating the intimate language between the matador and the bull, as well as the encouraging cries of his handlers nearby, who are themselves lesser-scale matadors and can be heard in a running dialogue contemptuously insulting the bull, using the most profane language, while also heaping the most effusive praise to the matador.  We hear the aura that still permeates around the figure of the bullfighter, as we follow his charismatic presence to his limousine, hotel room, and dressing room, exposing his many behind-the-scenes rituals, drinking water out of a silver cup on the sidelines that no one else touches, always surrounded by an exclusively male support staff, where he’s treated like a rock star.  Mostly eliminating the introductory ceremonial splendor of the processional sounds of the trumpets before entering the ring, instead Serra pays particular attention to the moments just before the death of the animal, who by this time is physically exhausted, where the camera just lingers, as the matador exhibits fearlessness and showmanship by turning his back to the animal to recognize the audience with a salute, literally standing just a few feet in front of the animal, then turning with the red cape behind him, the object the bull is charging, taking so many risks, but it’s all part of the operatic spectacle in this macabre dance of death.  The closeness the matador comes to the animal is nothing less than shocking, which is part of what makes this film so uniquely compelling.     

Filmed in the grandest arenas of Madrid, Seville, and Bilbao, where the sport is currently in freefall in Spain, with the number of fights cut in half in the last 20 years in a trend that is only continuing, essentially abolished in Catalonia where no fights have occurred since 2011.  In Barcelona, a cinema within a shopping center lies at the exact spot where one of its three bullrings once existed.  The Catalan filmmaker is a graduate of the University of Barcelona, whose style relies upon the acute powers of observation, where there are definitely a few moments in this film that are staggeringly difficult to watch, as the barbarous nature of how the animal is treated—and filmed—is openly on display, where the blood never stops flowing, literally becoming a ritualistic sacrifice and public spectacle, where especially chilling are those close-ups just after the animal has fallen, often going through convulsive twitches, as we literally see him put to death with a knife directly into the skull, severing his spinal cord while writhing in agony, as ropes are attached to the horns before he gets dragged out of the ring by a team of horses.  This is not for the faint of heart, completely defying conventional wisdom, as animals are definitely harmed in the making of this film, which is rarely seen anymore.  That, by itself, is grotesque, but that is not all we see, where you have to put the entire film in context, revolving more around the psychological mindset of the matador, including the rituals in preparation for the battle, crossing himself three times before he puts on his jacket, humbly kissing the rosary chain with the cross, addressing many prayers to God and the Virgin, while kissing a weeping Madonna portrait, but above all he exudes calmness and seclusion, never allowing us into his world of single-minded focus, accentuating his ability to read the bulls, knowing about them in great detail, including who their breeders are.  What stands out is his extraordinary concentration, as he has to please the crowd by making it a good fight to the finish, where despite the massive loss of blood, these bulls amazingly keep charging and never seem to give up, as they are bred and trained for this unique moment.  The title does say it all, as in the ring, while there are plenty of others around to distract the animal when necessary, it’s all about the bravery of one man alone, where he has to accentuate that fearlessness by coming so close to death himself, always viewed with elegance and grace, while at the same time the camera brings viewers closer than they could ever be in real life, a directness that only cinema can produce.  That’s the mesmerizing aspect of this, as it simply takes us where no one else has ever been.  As if to counterbalance the violence of what happens in the ring, there is a score by Barcelona-based composer Marc Verdaguer, but it’s heavily overshadowed by the calming elegance of the Valse Triste by Sibelius, Jean Sibelius, Valse Triste (orch.Herbert von Karajan) YouTube (6:21), which just sounds otherworldly in this environment, yet the pièce de résistance is the Jefferson Airplane from 1967, specifically guitarist Jorma Kaukonen’s solo piece Embryonic Journey YouTube (1:52), which plays as he’s getting dressed against a white backdrop in that tightly fitting, heavily embroidered, brightly colorful and extravagantly decorative, sequined costume, which is its own ritual, looking like something Goya might have painted.  Roca Rey has his own brushes with death, getting gored on one occasion, getting pinned against the boards in another, and nearly mauled, but he escapes with his life, saved by the quick actions of his team, where you wonder if this film would have been made if he hadn’t survived, where we’re left with this ominous feeling that something could always happen inside the ring.  So in a sense this is a snuff film, much like many National Geographic television episodes that routinely show animal killings in the wild, revealing the catastrophes of nature, but this accentuates the psychological interplay between the immense size of the bull and a lone matador who puts his life on the line every time he enters the ring.  Yes, it’s all stacked in his favor, and it’s a cruel exhibition, but there’s also extraordinary beauty to be found, where that stunning aspect alone is the highlight of this film.       

Note

In 2015-16, at the age of twenty, Andrés Roca Rey was listed as the worst matador of all time by the British tabloid The Sun, earning a reputation early in his career for an intense, high-risk style that resulted in a remarkable number of serious injuries and high-profile gorings.  In each of his first five bullfights, he was gored five times, with multiple, rapid-succession injuries including losing two teeth after a bull hit him in the mouth, while the next time his jaw shattered, suffering another goring in the mouth, and then sustaining a 10cm-long injury in the buttock region with a severed abdominal muscle, as he was catapulted into the air and transported to the hospital.  However, this only trajected him into eternal fame, as Roca Rey would later fight hundreds more bulls, and today he is known as the only matador who can fill Spanish stadiums on his own.  Capturing him at the peak of his powers is like filming Messi or Michael Jordan at the apex of their careers.  

Magellan (Magalhães)

 

Director Lav Diaz

director on the set

director with Sanny Joaquin and cinematographer Artur Tort

Diaz with assistant director Sanny Joaquin

Diaz with cast at Cannes

Gael García Bernal and Lav Diaz

Ferdinand Magellan at Naval Museum in Madrid

MAGELLAN (Magalhães)                 B                                                                         Philippines  Spain  Portugal  France  Taiwan  (163 mi)  2025  d: Lav Diaz

The promise of the Gods of the ancestors is upon us.                                                                   —Indigenous natives first reaction to seeing a white man

Lav Diaz is a pioneering Filipino auteur who re-examines history through his films which challenge conventional narratives, known for his long films and contemplative style, making films of moral complexity, often delving into the themes of history, suffering, and the human condition, whose earlier four-hour film Norte: The End of History (Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan) (2014) was an intimate character study loosely based upon Raskolnikov from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, while also covertly paralleling the political influence of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.  Writing and directing his own films, also sharing the cinematography and editing duties, while responsible for his own production design, most of his films are over five-hours in length, some of them pushing the nine and ten-hour mark, where six of his films are in the top 20 of the longest films of all time (List of longest films), offering an extensive exploration of the Filipino socio-political landscape through cinema, with Diaz indicating he is planning a nine-hour extended version of this film focusing more on the wife from about fifteen hours of footage shot but not used, releasing this more accessible shorter version under three hours for film festivals.  By retelling the tale of 16th century Age of Discovery explorer Ferdinand Magellan from a minimalist and modernist perspective, where he’s no swashbuckling hero of the seas, instead Diaz portrays him as radically antiheroic, depicting his voyage as a brutal, revisionist critique of colonialism, mythmaking, and religious zealotry driven by obsession, rejecting the typical “Great Man of History” narrative, conveying a stark vision of the brutality at the heart of European conquest and a haunting elegy for a lost precolonial past.  A meditation on the excesses of ambition and avarice, where we are forced to witness what colonialism looks like, with splashes of Native nudity, it’s a bit like John Huston’s THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975), with men developing a God-complex, versed in their own moral superiority, viewing themselves above the teeming throngs, continually downplaying the needs and interests of the Indigenous tribes who are simply not like them, and therefore don’t matter as much.  It’s a somber case study of colonialist expansion, where the rest of the world is seen only by how it can benefit the country of origin that financed the expedition, in this case Spain, as Portugal, the country of Magellan’s birth, turned down his original request, as Portugal already had a highly profitable eastern seaward trade route to the Spice Islands via Africa, making a costly, highly speculative new western route unnecessary.  

Working in color for the first time in a decade, making his first film not in the Tagalog language, primarily using Spanish and Portuguese, with the director sharing cinematography and editing duties with Artur Tort, the regular cameraman for Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra, who is a producer on this film, screening in the Cannes Premiere section, yet in some ways it resembles Lisandro Alonso’s period film Jauja (2014) or Lucrecia Martel’s Zama (2017) in its historical reach, while also treading on the same expansive territory as Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005).  The difference is there’s absolutely no interiority of Magellan, or anyone else for that matter, though this is more restrained and nuanced from his other films, as Magellan’s quest turns into an obsession with power, leading to men questioning his leadership, where there’s a lot of inflicted cruelty both towards his own men, some of whom openly mutiny and are left behind in some God forsaken place in Argentina’s Patagonia, yet also towards the natives he meets in this “new world” of the Philippines.  Despite his meticulous planning, Magellan is unprepared for the difficulties he encounters attempting to pass the Strait of Magellan in the southernmost tip of South America, taking over a month, much longer than expected, with one mutinied ship returning to Spain, while another was lost at sea on an exploring expedition, yet even afterwards, setting sail into the open expanse of the Pacific Ocean, he is shocked that it takes months, not days, without encountering food, leaving many men dying of malnourishment or sick with scurvy en route, where his fleet of five ships is whittled down to just a single ship.  Like most Europeans at the time, however, Magellan thought Asia was much closer to South America than it actually is.  Far from the courageous explorer depicted in the history books, according to Diaz, who spoke at the Cannes screening, “Magellan is no hero—he is a man facing his own oblivion.”  There’s a lot of screaming to the high heavens, and praying to the spirits for divine intervene, yet also an autocratic ruthlessness rarely seen in depictions of epic explorations, where brutal punishment and death go hand in hand with hunger and starvation.  Yet most of all, it’s a depiction of supreme arrogance that leads to a massive sea of deaths, which mirrors the rampant corruption and presumptive superiority of the current Trump administration, but also authoritarian Filipino leaders Ferdinand Marcos and Rodrigo Duterte (currently on trial for war crimes), belittling others and downplaying the influence of anyone who does not comply with their directives or disagrees with their actions of enriching themselves, reviving the imperialist spirit of colonialism in the modern era.

The story is told in three sections, with the dates imprinted on the lower left side of the screen, the first is set in Malacca, Malaysia in 1511, commonly known as the Spice Islands, where Magellan (Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, the first international star Diaz has ever worked with), under someone else’s command, Afonso de Albuquerque (Argentinean film critic and programmer Roger Alan Koza), participates in the capture of Malacca, leaving him wounded and injured in the leg, eventually limping from the onset of gangrene, yet they are victorious, with bloodied bodies seen strewn across the landscape, acquiring a Malay slave named Enrique (Amado Arjay Babon), who is initially seen caged but becomes his own personal interpreter.  Little more than a footnote in history, Enrique is often omitted entirely, but in some ways he is the true protagonist of the film, patiently getting his revenge in obtaining his freedom, a near silent observer who has the last and final words of the film.  The second follows his recovery in Portugal where he has a controversial falling out with King Manuel I of Portugal, who rejected his plans for exploration and grew furious when he aligned himself with King Charles V of Spain, taking an oath of allegiance, which was paramount to treason in Portugal, as the two countries were arch rivals who were not only competing for dominance in the spice industry, but also for influence in colonies around the world.  It’s here that he takes a wife, Beatriz (Ângela Azevedo), who grows pregnant before his departure in 1519, and is seen as an angelic counterpart to his ruthless ambition, Magellan new clip official from Cannes Film Festival 2025 (1/3) YouTube (1:45), surrealistically appearing in his dreams during the long voyage.  The proposed longer version supposedly revolves around Beatriz, where virtually nothing is known about her.  Once he sets sail, his 265 men all-Portuguese crew is mostly comprised of criminals, because many experienced sailors refused to support Magellan, unraveling in a long, slow section where time appears to stop, 'Magellan' Lav DIAZ Official Clip starring Gael Garcia Bernal ... YouTube (50 seconds), losing all that initial eager anticipation of what they may encounter, where the prolonged voyage severely weakens the crew, becoming a test of hunger and allegiance, exposing questions of loyalty, where Magellan’s behavior is markedly different than when they began, as he started treating his officers in a cruel way, growing very angry and indignant that some of them mutinied, forcing one to behead the other, subjecting men to lashes while executing crew members who engaged in homosexuality, according to a journal kept by Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian navigator whom Magellan hired to keep detailed documents of the voyage.  Diaz apparently spent seven years researching Magellan, aided by Filipino historian Ambeth Ocampo, using a replicated reconstruction of the actual ship Victoria, historically accurate costumes, with no battle scenes, only the devastating aftermath is shown, and no actual violence other than what he forces his own sailors to endure on the ship, ultimately shifting the focus from the European perspective to that of the Indigenous tribes, becoming a revisionist work that goes against the grain of conventional historical accounts, much of which is little more than victorious mythmaking.

The third section shows Magellan arriving in the Philippines in 1521, a loose collection of kingdoms living in uneasy truce, comprised of more than 7000 islands, though fewer than 2000 are inhabited, 'Magellan' Lav DIAZ Official Clip starring Gael Garcia Bernal ... YouTube (1:32), which they thought to be the Spice Islands, but they didn’t find any spices, discovering instead a developed society, one not at all isolated from the outside world, possessing a written language, and already having some knowledge of Europeans through traders.  They are met by local leader Rajah Humabon (Ronnie Lazaro), with Magellan offering sweet jam to his sick son, who may have been suffering from scurvy, while also presenting him with a statuette of Santo Niño to watch over him.  When the boy recovers, many attribute his miraculous recovery to God, quickly converting the island to Catholicism and baptizing the inhabitants, but in their zealous rush for complete domination, they destroy all remnants of the local anitos, viewing them as sacrilegious idolatry figures, an act that emboldens resistance, as their island way of life is being destroyed.  With obsessive delusions of grandeur and undisputed power, most of the tribes capitulate, but there are holdouts, with Humabon leading Magellan into the wrath of one of his foes, another chief named Lapu-Lapu who refuses to convert, instead mobilizing his forces against the foreign leader, with Magellan profoundly underestimating the strength of the natives, believing superior European weaponry would scare off the “barbarian” forces, but due to shallow waters, his ships remained at too great a distance to inflict harm, so he takes a small landing party of only about 60 half-armed men, burning the grass homes, which only helps mobilize the resistance, where the overwhelming counterattack by 2000 natives wipes out the European forces in what amounts to a massacre, killing Magellan on the spot, like Custer’s last stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn, leaving no survivors, turning tragically dark and morbid, a fate surprisingly narrated by Enrique, conveyed through an ultra-realistic approach to colonial violence.  The dead bodies on the beach paint a dire picture of human slaughter, with the remaining 18 men on the ship, one of whom is Enrique, quickly making a hasty exit and returning to Spain, becoming the only ship to completely circumnavigate the globe.  In the Philippines, Lapu-Lapu is a celebrated national hero for having withstood the initial European invasion, remaining a mythic cultural figure that remains embedded in the national consciousness, even warranting a national holiday, but Diaz subverts this image with provocative suggestions that Humabon, in an attempt to overcome his rival, may have invented Lapu-Lapu, who is never seen, and may not have ever existed in human form, cleverly planted in the mind’s eye as a myth to deceive Magellan and his men, which then leads to their downfall in an ambush, using the power of mythmaking as a political weapon.  Questioning whose version of history gets remembered, Diaz suggests history is not always used for truth, but for manipulation.