A daring thing to say in January but I’ll be surprised if we see a better pig sacrifice scene all year. Justin Chang compared this to Zama, but I dunno. This was less phantasmagorical, more of a bio/history pic than I wanted, and sitting up front at the digital screening felt like “TV in public.” Still some undeniable imagery here (with Serra’s DP, looking like Pacifiction) and Gael entering his Viggo era.

Lav in Slate:

It’s just one film for me—one whole thing. This is a continuing discourse. It’s all dealing with the suffering of other people, and not just particularly [that of] the Philippines.
…
I studied cinema as well, all the theories and everything. It’s very distracting, but it helps with discourse. Before you go into the process of filmmaking. It helps when you talk about the rigidness of Antonioni, the spirituality of Tarkovsky, and the humanism of Ozu. You mix all those perspectives and then just destroy them.