(originally published Sept. 1, 2022)
The golden touch of filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, which brought him two consecutive Academy Awards as best director for Birdman and The Revenant, is very much on display in a long film that has the personal feel of lightly fictionalized autobiography. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is the rambling, dreamlike portrait of a famous Mexican journalist and documaker who is about to receive a major award from the gringos in Los Angeles. This event provides the protag with the occasion to ironically reexamine his life, loves, work, family, dreams and mercurial temperament at indulgent length (over three hours with the credits), but in breathtaking shots lit like a metaphysical fairgrounds by cinematographer Darius Khondji. Set for release by Netflix in December, with a limited theatrical run planned in Mexico and the U.S., it is a film whose often dazzling craftsmanship should really be admired on the big screen with a state-of-the-art sound system, where the director’s established fans will get the most joy. It bowed in Venice competition.
If several surreal scenes flash back to the master Bunuel, the concept of a celebrated artist revisiting his past without being able to order his future feels inspired by Fellini and his alter ego Marcello. That is how one reads the main character Silverio Gama (played by Daniel Gimenez Cacho, the egotistical matador in Blancanieves and the narrator of Y tu mamá también) — as a gray-bearded stand-in for the filmmaker, whose celebrity status rests heavily on his shoulders. Like Iñárritu, he lives in L.A. with his wife Lucia (Griselda Siciliani) and two kids, but for most of the story finds himself in Mexico City on a visit that will spark an existential crisis.
Bardo is the first film the director has shot in Mexico since Amores perros in 2000, and his POV on the country, along with the ways it has influenced his imagination, is one of the film’s most interesting aspects. Another attention-grabbing element is the recurring question of Mexican-American relations, brilliantly lampooned when Silverio is called to “the castle” by the American ambassador, a jovial capitalist who attempts to co-opt the famous man into supporting American foreign policy, in exchange for a one-on-one interview with the president in the Oval Office. It has been 175 years since the Mexican-American war in which, as Silverio caustically points out, Mexico lost half its territory to the victorious U.S. Army. It also suffered many more casualties than the Americans did, and a surreal scene is re-enacted outside the castle portraying the “Boy Heroes” massacre by costumed teenagers. Later, there are several beautifully composed traveling shots of hungry, desperate migrants heading for the U.S. border en masse while Silverio either interviews them or looks on helplessly.
Their horrific plight contrasts uncomfortably with his family of “deluxe migrants” who have lived and worked in the U.S. for twenty years and who have powerful visas to travel back and forth. This sense of privilege is why he loses it in the airport with a U.S. passport agent when he is admonished, “You’re not an American.” In answer to his daughter’s accusation that he’s never even ridden on the subway, he boards the Santa Monica Metro one day, initiating a mysterious scene that hovers between dream, reality and memory.
As for Mexico, his feelings are decidedly mixed there, too. In a gaudy TV studio full of showgirls, he allows himself to be roped into appearing on a talk show and then refuses to say a word, while the show’s host insults him and the studio audience boos in scorn. Later, at a rollicking dance party given in his honor to celebrate his upcoming award, he gives the TV host a piece of his mind, though by that time it seems irrelevant.
But politics remains on the sidelines of this multi-issue film. The bardo of the title may refer to the limbo state in which their first son Mateo, who lived only a day, is confined in their hearts. An amusingly outrageous visualization of this painful situation (this is only cleared up much later) is a hospital scene in which the baby is born and then reinserted into the womb by the doctor. Finally, the heartbreak of Silverio and Lucia is resolved in a deeply moving moment that brings the family together.
Though scenes tend to run on and on, there are stunning visuals and unexpected musical accompaniment to enjoy (marching bands, booming tubas, orchestral wonders). In an impressively detailed apocalyptic sequence on the streets of Mexico City, the bewildered Silverio finds passersby dropping to the pavement and dying all around him, as far as the eye can see, while Khondji’s wizardry eerily divides the streets into light and shadow. This vision of mortality is followed by an even more extraordinary one: against a brooding sky there appears a tall, gruesome mountain of arms and legs belonging to indigenous people. When Silverio proceeds to climb to the top, he finds it is a film set and the bodies he stepped over are extras.
“Mexico for me is a state of mind,” Iñárritu has said, and Bardo is his own idiosyncratic vision of it. It is a handsomely produced creation in which the director has clearly exercised great control and his stamp is to be found on almost every credit (in addition to cowriting the screenplay with Nicolas Giacobone and co-producing with Stacy Perskie Kaniss, he co-edited the film with Monica Salazar and composed the music with Bryce Dressner.)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Screenplay: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicola?s Giacobone
Cast: Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Iker Sanchez Solano, Andrés Almeida, Francisco Rubio
Producers: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Stacy Perskie Kaniss
Cinematography: Darius Khondji
Editing: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Monica Salazar
Production design: Eugenio Caballero
Costume design: Anna Terrazas
Music: Bryce Dessner, Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Sound: Nicolas Becker, Martin Hernandez
Production companies: M Producciones, Redrum
International distribution: Netflix
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In Spanish, English
185 minutes
