It is a dream not all directors can afford to make their own 8½. Even though I wouldn’t say that Iñárritu fully succeeded—nor that his has really much to do with Fellini apart from the common introspective intentions—Bardo is a rather admirable attempt at exploring one own roots and frailties using cinema in its purest form. ‘I put everything that I have into Bardo,’ he revealed at the London Film Festival. ‘I have nothing more to give at this moment. I gave everything, in terms of heart, in terms of soul, in terms of attention. I didn’t want to make Bardo, I needed to make it.’ And it definitely shows. Walking on a squiggly line between reality and metaphor, present and memories, personal and national nightmares—but also brilliance and self-indulgence—Iñárritu finds in the anguished Silverio Gama the fulcrum of a fascinating, if perhaps too ambitious, embroidery of themes. An intimate journey into paternity, grief, and fame, is intersected by a tormented reflection on Mexican history, spirituality, and identity. Either way, chasing truths that are nothing but emotional. It is hard not to picture the bearded Silverio pointing a finger at Iñárritu himself, and Bardo, his first Mexican film since Amores perros, as a way to reconnect to his home country, give it voice and justice, maybe ask forgiveness for having long neglected it.
Many scenes made my jaw drop, others touched me deeply, some didn’t quite convince me. One in particular—a preposterous conversation with Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés on a pile of slaughtered bodies and a gloomy artificial sky—felt overly mannered, both in narrative and symbolic intentions. The same comment I am tempted to extend to the categorical use of wide lenses. I actually wonder if the film was shot like Birdman on a single lens, and whether this extreme choice is maybe too apparent to serve the narrative without stealing, so to speak, the show.
Altogether, I have a feeling that Iñárritu’s cinema is starting to be too visually refined, contrived, post-produced—perhaps expensive—and that this overly manipulative work on the image is only coating the creative intuitions with unnecessary cosmetics. Insofar as I’d rather watch a film that takes the risk to be called pretentious than one that doesn’t even try to take me elsewhere, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy or appreciate it. Bardo does have a great soul and each of its photograms screams to let it through, but really, I am still in love with the brutal aesthetics of Amores perros and the nerve of the early Iñárritu.
On a due wiki note, bardo, in Buddhism, is the liminal state of existence between death and rebirth. Makes more sense than it seems.