One of the last films of its kind, from the master director who sent Leonardo DiCaprio through hell

As the title suggests, Bardo, the Fictional Chronicle of a Fistful of Truths is no ordinary Netflix launch. But that was hardly to be expected from director Alejandro González Iñárritu. The Mexican Oscar winner was previously responsible for the one-shot orgy Birdman or the unexpected force of ignorance and chased Leonardo DiCaprio through shooting hell in The Revenant.

As of today, his new film is streaming in Germany on Netflix. Those who like eccentric directing experiments should enjoy the opportunity while they still can.

Bardo is the director’s most personal film

Bardo doesn’t follow a conventional plot but rather resembles one Concatenation of dreams and memories. Why we see what we see is hinted at later in the film, but it doesn’t really matter for much of the runtime.

We follow documentary filmmaker Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho) through surreal, funny and frightening episodes of his life, who lose their realistic grip on reality rather quickly. Silverio has a lot in common with its director. He started his career in Mexico, enjoyed international success and then moved to the United States. The divided relationship to his homeland is therefore an important theme in Bardo and that applies to Silverio as well as to director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

My conclusion for the premiere at the Venice Film Festival was:

bardo is uncomfortable personal, torn between pride in what has been achieved and sadness at the loss of home. You weren’t that close to Iñárritu as a person in any film. That’s a commendable advancement for a director so obsessed with his own smoke and mirrors.

At that time, however, Bardo was still 174 minutes long. After the mediocre reviews, Iñárritu approved the film shortened by 22 minutes. This version is coming to Netflix.

The Netflix film may be one of the last of its kind

We probably owe the fact that Netflix spent any money on this film at all to a bygone era of the streaming service. In recent years, Ted Sarandos and his content team have funded the completion of an Orson Welles film, given Martin Scorsese tens of millions for The Irishman, and also helped release Andrew Dominik’s Blond.

In the meantime However, Netflix is ​​operating under pressure to cut coststo counter falling subscription numbers and stock market prices. The time, “where Netflix does everything it can to attract talent and give them carte blanche is over” according to a report by the Hollywood Reporter in June. Movies like Bardo could become rare in the service’s catalog in the future.

Podcast: The 11 best streaming films of 2022 on Netflix, Amazon and Co.

Netflix, Amazon and Co. released numerous film originals again in 2022. You can find out which of these are the best of the year in the new episode of Streamgegefuehl.

In the podcast we go through the individual places and justify our choice – of course without spoilers. At the end we also give our top 5 lists again if you want to reserve a title.