Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths : Iñárritu's surrealistic viewpoint on Mexican-American culture.

In 2022, I came across a plethora of films : action, comedy, drama, romance. thriller. When the trailer of Bardo arrived, the genre of this movie seemed very different than the movies I watched in 2022. The artistic weird images in the trailer hyped me when the movie arrives in Netflix. I finally managed to watch this masterpiece developed by the man behind Birdman and The Revenant. This movie made me fall in love with magical realism and surrealism again.

The movie revolves around Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a Mexican journalist who turned into documentary filmmaker who is about to recieve an American award for journalism. It is a movie which dives into the trauma of Silverio's life inspite of all his fame and having a lavish lifestyle.  As being a journalist, it also explores the Mexican American conflict (especially the battle at Chapultpec castle in 1847), the formation of Mainland Mexico by Hernán Cortés  and many others. The movie manages to capture various viewpoints on Mexican-American culture and juxtaposes with personal conflicts of Silverio's life which includes the loss of his son Mateo and him trying to mend his mind in various issues as his life comes to a limbo. 

The plot of movie is not linear as it involves mixing past and present in a purely artistic way with camera angles of which Iñárritu is known for. The long one-take shorts of Silverio entering to attend a talk show, his dance with his family on the success of the documentary, his conversation with Hernán are some of the long shot scenes that I cherish a lot.  Iñárritu paints all this grief and trauma with a surrealistic touch. This is shown already from the first shot of the movie where we encounter a shadow of a person leaping across a deserted island as the camera pans out showing the bright sky. The scene moves on to a symbolic representation of birth of his Mateo which we later realize that he passed away only a day after his birth. In the middle of the movie, we come across his deceased father and his mother which then leads into a pure surrealistic description of how people are often missing leading to a surrealistic shot of him moving along a pile of bodies leading to the the corpse of Aztec God where he encounters the conqueror Hernán Cortés above a pile of dead bodies. This all turns out to be a part of his documentary on discussing the Mexican history. 

Even though the first half of the movie is pretty inconsistent, the movie gets clearer as we approach to the end of the movie. It turns out that Silverio on his way to visit his children suffers a stroke which leads into a coma. The whole movie can be possibly interpreted as him contemplating on his life, his family, loss of Mateo,  his ideology, his complicated love for Mexico to name a few. He finally tries to move on with all the mistakes in his life and learns to fly and  be free which is a continuation to the first scene of the movie. 

I am in loss of words of the genius of Iñárritu. This movie seems a very semi-autobiographical take on his life of living in USA and Mexico. With the amazing cinematography and vibrant colours, he really shows the shadows of Silverio's character and how people around him of think about him. Daniel himself did a fantastic job in portraying this role. Ironically, the looks of him are awfully similar to Iñárritu hinting at the semi-autobiographical take. The background music hinting at the black comedy take makes the scenes even more impactful. 

To conclude, Bardo is a rollercoaster ride of emotions and feelings which a soul possibly realizes after death and rebirth (hence the word Bardo which originated from Buddhist idea of "the between"). It is a must watch if you are into black comedy with sprinkles of surrealistic touch.