Melancholia

Lav Diaz's 2008 Filipino film opens with three people who know each other attempting a strange therapy. They take other identities and live other lives in an unfamiliar town, in order to carry the grief for those they lost under the Marcos dictatorship by another route. The film runs close to seven and a half hours, and that length is not a display but the method itself. Scenes continue until they are finished, the camera does not move and the gaps between events are not cut; the time of mourning is conveyed that way. It was shot in black and white with natural sound. As the narrative goes on, whose identity is whose becomes uncertain; loss here is not an event but a continuing condition. Angeli Bayani and Perry Dizon lead. Who it's for: those who like slow cinema and Filipino independent film. Who it's not for: viewers expecting standard length and pace; the film deliberately refuses both.