After a successful journey into English-language cinema, Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths sees Alejandro González Iñárritu return to his Mexican roots for his most experimental and personal piece of work to date. Movies such as Birdman and The Revenant saw Iñárritu experiment with form and perfect his style as a director, earning him Oscar wins and worldwide acclaim. With his audience more prominent than ever, it feels like the right time for Iñárritu to return to his homeland and grapple with the meaning of his success.
The film, autobiographical in nature, follows Silverio (Daniel Gimenéz Cacho), a celebrated documentary filmmaker and award-winning journalist, through a series of surrealist memories and reflections upon life, love, loss, politics, class and anxieties. Silverio is set to receive a prestigious award for Journalism Ethics at a Los Angeles-based ceremony, being the first Mexican recipient to claim the prize. The award sparks a dilemma within Silverio, which has plagued him since he first left Mexico and relocated his family to America. He is compelled to return to his homeland, where he falls into a dreamscape existential crisis through time and memory, in which we see the man pushed and pulled, rewarded and punished, thrown backwards and forth between two homes and identities, belonging to neither and both simultaneously.
Bardo is lavishly self-indulgent, inviting the audience to leave what they expect of narrative form at the front door and instead embrace the experience of film. Here, Iñárritu allows his subconscious mind to spill forth upon the screen, and he bares it openly and shamelessly, allowing his audience to gaze upon his doubt, pain, misery and anxiety with untamed honesty. Like Fellini's 8½, the film is an expose of the inner workings of the creative mind, tumbling backwards and forwards into the fantastical. Though the piece is long, intrinsic and deeply narcissistic, it never allows itself to navel gaze too profoundly. Iñárritu maintains steady control throughout his epic, guiding it as it spirals, pulling it sharply in new directions when he exhausts a theme or spiralling idea. ‘Life is nothing more than a series of idiotic images,' he reminds his audience, occasionally using sharp musings on life to showcase his self-awareness and control as a filmmaker.
The central theme is Silverio's sprawling anxiety after having left Mexico and assimilated into American culture. Conversations with his contemporaries, friends and children reveal Silverio's distance from his homeland and growing personal privilege, having found success and belonging elsewhere. The film is littered with brilliant individual moments which come together to compose a larger narrative. For example, a scene within Mexico where Silverio's servant isn't allowed access to the beach where Silverio and his family are vacationing is juxtaposed smartly with a heated scene at US Immigration where Silverio is told he cannot call America his home. In experiencing these expertly crafted small moments in Silverio's life, we can understand the complexities of his anxiety and the potency of his confession that success is his biggest failure.
Yet, it isn't only the small moments that piece together to deliver Iñárritu's vision. Bardo is an unstoppable extravaganza, filled with dance sequences, extensive extended scenes and unorthodox imagery – a scene in which bodies fall to the floor upon the streets of Mexico to symbolise the dead and missing hits most profoundly. Opening up Iñárritu's vision is DP Darius Khondji, whose wide-angles and sweeping camera work open up the surrealist space Iñárritu works within. Khondji's camera makes the impossible possible, giving tangibility to dreamscapes, fantasy and memory. This, coupled with rich and dynamic performances from Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid and Íker Sánchez Solano, gift the film its undeniable soul. Cacho maintains a steady hand over Silverio, expertly depicting the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through his mind.
Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is a creative whirlwind of emotion, truth and meaning. What exists within the film is Iñárritu baring it all up on the screen; he's holding out his hand, pulling you onto his dance floor as Bowie plays in the background, inviting you to dance.
Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths screened at BFI London Film Festival and will release on Netflix on November 18th 2022
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