JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Not one of these film professionals seemed terribly compelled to spend four hours in the dark after sitting for 110 minutes looking at a sunless Midwest. It was a warm, sunny day. Best, perhaps, to explore that, instead. But I found myself drifting toward the lobby, anyway, past a woman in a gold-and-cream ball gown who was having her photo taken, and into the theater. Doing this was entirely involuntary in a way that’s never happened to me. The festival director, Thierry Frémaux, brought the cast to the stage, including the woman in the dress, then the director, a small stylish veteran named Lav Diaz. I was hoping they wouldn’t notice that the house was maybe half-full.

They took their seats, the lights went down, the movie came up, and I sat there. Two-hundred-fifty minutes later, the lights came up, I stood with tears in my eyes, and clapped as loudly as I ever have for any movie in my life. (Note: I’ve actually never clapped for a movie before.) When Diaz made his way back inside the theater to join the cast, the applause grew, and the whistling and cheering commenced. You always hear Cannes stories of 20-minute standing ovations, but I always seem to miss them. This didn’t last 20 minutes, but it was long and special, yet didn’t feel remotely adequate thanks for what had just been given to us.

Norte, the End of History has the title of a war epic and the soul and scope of a Great Novel. It’s set right now and opens in rather mundane fashion: three friends talking in a café. One is a lapsed law student named Fabian (Sid Lucero) who casually goes on about how he’s opposed to everything, including nationality and capitalism, then proceeds to borrow money for his rent. The movie spins out from that banal hypocrisy into a series of moral crises that ruin lives. A double murder is committed that sends an innocent man (Archie Alemania) to prison, leaving behind a wife (Angeli Bayani) and two small children. The killer continues with his life but not without descending into guilt, misery, remorse, then something altogether more shocking.

For about 45 minutes, I thought about whether to leave, not because the film was bad but because I was unsure about whether to commit, in the same way that you spend the first 50 to 100 pages of a novel unsure about whether to keep going. There are people who get off on boasting about having endured a long movie. I’m not among them. It’s just that the same feeling that led me to my seat also kept me in it (excusing a 10-minute break for a sandwich). But, really, the force compelling us all to stay was the audacity of Diaz’s filmmaking. His scenes go on, though not for the sake of their longevity. The extended takes, at every range (wide shots, close-ups, a flying digital camera that approximates dreams), allow your eye to study the details of the prison cell or the vastness of a woman’s farm. They’re not long takes so much as deep breaths.

The movie takes you to the brink of despair over and over without ever venturing into the cosmic cruelty of certain, very good European directors. And the actors, especially Lucero and Bayani, are feeling what’s being asked of them. There are no mannequins here. Whether its a wife’s overwhelming joy to be hugging her husband or a man unable to harness his inner psycho, these are full, live-in performances. The brutality and sense of futility come straight from the characters, as do the moments of optimism. Diaz believes in cinematic free will. When one character stands on the edge of the cliff and contemplates leaping off it, you feel unspeakable suspense. When another perishes in an unexplained accident, you feel unspeakable heartbreak. Diaz is 54, and he matches his tremendous artistry with both quiet spiritualism and a rare wisdom of the ways of the world.

He’s made movies more than double the length of this. His Evolution of a Filipino Family lasts for nine hours. Norte was my first experience with him, but I was told by a couple of colleagues, whom I saw clapping on the other side of the theater, that it was his best. “It’s tough being good,” someone in Norte says. Not for Diaz.