Tears of the common people
At 227 minutes — less than four hours — Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left) is rather short by Lav Diaz’s standard. His previous film, Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis (A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery), runs at seven hours. And throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, the Filipino master made films ranging in length from nine to 13 hours, something unorthodox, anomalous, even transgressive in the…