Venice 2022: Bardo, False Chronicle of A Handful of Truths

VENICE / NETFLIX

Alejandro González Iñárritu is no stranger to controversy: with each new film, he pushes both his creativity and his cast and crew to the limits of what is allowed with contemporary movie laws. With his latest film, the Netflix production Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, he embraces his inner Fellini to make a semi-autobiographical exploration of life as a Mexican filmmaker who left his country to live in the United States.

Bardo is his Amarcord, his 8 ½, the most intimate and deeply personal movie of his career. Daniel Gimenez Cacho plays a journalist-turned-documentarian, haunted by his past, his history with Mexico, and his integrity that comes with turning his back to his country in order to be accepted by foreigners. It is easy to see pieces of the Mexican filmmaker in this character, as he was often derided by his countrymen because of his Hollywood productions, seemingly disinterested to go back to his motherland and make Spanish-language films.

As the protagonist says in a pivotal party scene halfway through the film, fiction can sometimes be more enlightening than reality to understand what is going on behind us. That is why, rather than taking a more somber, grounded approach like Cuaron’s beautiful Roma to look back at his life, Iñarritu creates a dreamlike, oneiric experience, as the journalist literally floats from scene to scene with seemingly no link between them. He finds himself in the center of historical reenactments of failures turned into victories, flooded buses with axolotls, mountains of cadavers on top of which the conquistador Cortes shouts monologues. These are just some of the surreal sequences that litter the three-hour comedy epic.

It is beautiful to look at, with Darius Khondji outdoing himself with the amount of care put in every single long take and carefully composed shot. Cacho is a terrific lead, bringing to life this complex character, at once in love and spiteful of his origins, to great success. Even the filmmaker’s direction is impeccable on paper, but for something this complex and playful, constantly changing location in a way reminiscent of Un Chien Andalou and classic surrealist cinema, it does become really tiring and exhausting. 

There are many scenes in Bardo that are truly brilliant and powerful, especially when it focuses on how easily a father can lose touch with his family because of his obsession with work, but its lack of focus and excessive runtime make it a trying viewing experience that would have benefited from losing an hour of fat. Worthwhile and thought-provoking, yet not easy to digest.