Timothée Chalamet, who was received like a lost fifth Beatle on the Lido this Friday, has Stans. That is known. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu may be greeted with less teenage shouting, but there are Iñárritu ultras in the world of cinephiles who worship the director of The Revenant and Birdman as a great master who is fortunately among us. I do not belong to it. So it was all the stranger to see his new film Bardo at the Venice Film Festival, kinda like it and then realize that the rest of the world will rip him off.
The Netflix film Bardo is dividing audiences with its navel gazing
Bardo, or Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, may be even pretentious than its title, writes the Variety . The film would celebrate itself and especially its filmmaker, Vanity Fair thinks. Terms such as “incoherent”, “excessive” and “insatiable” can be found in the reactions. They are meant negatively, it should be said.
In fact: The Bardo runs for 174 minutes and the story sets the stage for navel-gazing from Iñárritu. His film alter ego is the journalist and documentary filmmaker Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho from Zama). On the film’s bright red poster, he looks like his director on his way to the next festival press conference.
Silverio started his career in Mexico, but after the big success he swished to the USA. Sort of like Alejandro González Iñárritu. The breakthrough with Amores Perros was followed by 21 Grams with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn and then Babel with Brad Pitt. More USA than Brad Pitt is not possible.
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bardo
Since then, the director has soared to the highest heights of The Dream Factory with Birdman and The Revenant. Side note: In his English Wikipedia entry, in the first paragraph his “Most Significant Films” listed and there are all previous feature films by Iñárritu. Biutiful too.
Does this Netflix movie really have to be 174 minutes long?
Silverio strays from one “meaningless” episode to the next in Bardo, like a dreamer unable to awaken. They are taken from his life and work: he films huge flows of migrants headed for the United States, spends a summer day with his family in a discriminatory resort or meets the conquistador Hernán Cortés on the deserted Independence Square in Mexico City. He sits on a mountain of corpses from the Aztecs he murdered and invites them to talk.
Partly difficult to understand references to the Mexican history and politics feed the dreams of our hero, who finds himself in a state of limbo: between dream and reality, between the USA and Mexico, between commerce and ideals. Or, if you will, between the 500 million hit The Revenant and Amores Perros.
It takes 174 minutes to do this autobiographical gauntlet to join? As a proponent of short films, of course I have to answer no. On the other hand, it seems to me that discipline is the wrong requirement for a film of this nature. Bardo is uncomfortably 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.
Bardo may be one of the last of its kind on Netflix
Of Iñárritu’s imagery Of course, there is also a lot to admire in Bardo, captured by cameraman Darius Khondji, who, after Armageddon Time in Cannes, is becoming the MVP of the 2022 festival season.
In any case, Bardo could be one of the last of its kind for Netflix. Far too long, self-absorbed, thematically niche and, as the cinephile muscle god Vin Diesel would say, extremely “felliniesk” – it is doubtful whether the streaming service, which is under austerity, will be able to do something like this in the future.
Not that I want to see three other bardos. But when one of the most respected directors of our time shoots freely until his insides are turned inside out, I applaud it. Other directors can bait bears on Leonardo DiCaprio. But only Iñárritu could turn that bardo, for better or for worse.