Critics reviews

By weaving together all of these strands and then editing it into a complex, anti-teleological ‘national history’, a totality of the Filipino experience in the struggle for democracy and dignity, Diaz is in fact working on the evolution of political cinema itself.

“Evolution” justifies its extraordinary length with an approach that will recall... vestiges of Bela Tarr, Samuel Beckett, Frank Norris and William Faulkner... Rather, the story’s 16-year passage is organically used so cast members playing Diaz’s family grow older ever so gradually; it’s like slowly turning the pages of a photo album.