An emotionally wrenching film based (loosely) on Crime and Punishment

It takes a lot of commitment to watch Lav Diaz's Norte, The End of History (and I still don't get the title, except maybe it takes place in a Philippine region called Norte, the North?), but the film has many rewards and once you adjust to the pace and, possibly, to the odd conglomeration of Tagalog (I assume, the Philippine native language?) and English you may find yourself completely absorbed, as I was - although I had to watch the film in several "takes" - who has 4 hours for anything? It's a highly original film but based loosely on Crime and Punishment - yet far more melodramatic and tragic. Diaz composes the entire film from long takes; there is virtually no editing with any take, just single shots of up to 5+ minutes - sometimes the camera tracks, sometimes pivots slightly, sometimes holds steady. (Taiwanese director Ming Liang Tsai uses a similar cinematic technique, and must have been a huge influence on Diaz, or on one another?) Often the perspective is waist-high or lower, as in an Ozu film In some of the scenes there is no dialog or little dialog; others are extremely violent and brutal - but more suggestive than shocking, and therefore even more powerful for that. Many of the scenes (including some from documentary footage of a typhoon aftermath) give is a vivid sense of Philippine daily life, especially in the crowded side streets of a small city, unnamed. The story is grand, even epic - yet focused on two men and their crossed lives. Brief summary: A young man, law-school dropout, generally considered the smartest in the who class, has several lengthy, abstract political discussions with his law-school friends; same time, we follow a young family getting by selling vegetables from a cart and saving to open an "eatery" who get deeply in debt to a nasty money-lender. The husband physically threatens the money lender. Shortly after, the law-school dropout (I forget exactly why he does this) kills the money lender (a la C&P) and her daughter (unlike C&P), reasoning that the world is better of without her. The husband of course gets charged w/ the murder, has horrible legal counsel (we see none of the legal back-and-forth), sentenced to life. From that point on we watch the horrors and later the adjustments to life in prison, while in other segments watch the killer - Fabian - struggle with his guilt and remorse. Clearly, in today's terms, we can see that he has serious mental illness, perhaps bi-polar or schizophrenic. He essentially disappears, and then returns and encourages his law-school friends, now attorneys, to take up the case. We never quite learn the outcome, but we see several lives ruined by these terrible events. It's an emotionally wrenching movie that probably could have been successful if it were half the length but that you have to take on its own terms or not at all.