Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths: Inarritu's self-indulgent saga is fitfully classy

Cast: Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Iker Sanchez Solano, Jay O. Sanders, Andres Almeida Director: Alejandro G. Inarritu Language: Spanish with English subtitles Alejandro G. Inarritu’s new film is scathing in its political comment, overflowing with sarcasm that often borders on self-deprecation. Inarritu chooses to train his guns at capitalist culture, particularly the United States — the land that gave him Oscars and fame— in a way that Americans might find it hard to like or accept the film. The tone is set at the outset. As the story begins, the protagonist Silverio Gama, a renowned Mexican journalist-turned-filmmaker bearing uncanny resemblance to Inarritu, is at his caustic best talking about US-Mexico relationships with the American ambassador to his country. Silverio snubs the ambassador’s mention of the Mexican-American war saying it was “not a war but an invasion” where Mexicans lost half of their country, and then adds a jibe about his nation’s tendency to glorify martyrs: “Only Mexicans can turn disgraceful defeat into mythic victory.” There’s more. The US is referred to as “the United Cartel of America” at one point. Sarcasm abounds as Silverio imagines the radio breaking news about Amazon purchasing of a piece of Mexico with full support of the US government. Clearly, Bardo, Inarritu’s quasi-autobiographical new film, presents a far from happy portrait of the auteur’s impression of Uncle Sam. The film, however, is not just about a critical view at the US, though the mood is a pervading one all through. Inarritu attempts a tour de force saga to introspect over his identity through a narrative that oscillates from reality to fantasy, brimming with sardonic wit and anger, lashing out as much at capitalism as “flag-waving nationalism” and at an online culture where “clicks tell us what to believe”. He is even critical of his native land Mexico, “a dead country where none of us die” and takes potshots at journalists, calling them “entertainers and opinion peddlers”. It is a surreal milieu that the film sets up, also a strange one. Bardo is Inarritu’s most personal piece, one that fitfully flits between signature virtuosity and self-indulgence. For Inarritu, his latest is also a homecoming manifesto spread out over a runtime of nearly 160 minutes. The film — bearing the substantially elaborate title Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths — is the first that he has completely shot in his homeland Mexico since his 2000 gem, Amores Perros, which propelled him to the global spotlight much before he would win Oscars for the Hollywood productions Birdman and The Revenant, as well as garner worldwide recognition with accomplishments as 21 Grams, Babel and Biutiful. It is interesting to note how Silverio echoes Inarritu’s international career trek. Like his creator, the film’s protagonist, too, returns to his roots after winning an American honour for his work. There are other similarities underlining Inarritu’s autobiographical intent. Like him, Silverio is also a filmmaker — although a documentarian. If Inarritu had a radio background before getting into direction in real life, the screenplay presents Silverio as a journalist who has taken to filmmaking. The suffix attached to the title of Inarritu’s film — False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths — is also the name of the film that Silverio makes within the film. Inarritu might have fictionalised a lot of what he has experienced as an international filmmaker to set up the narrative of Bardo, a term borrowed from Buddhism and denoting the transitional state in between death and rebirth. An attempt to grasp the film’s intent begins with understanding its title because both Silverio within the film and Inarritu as his creator seem to dwell in an intermediary state of mind, in between the end of a creative phase and a new artistic birth. Spanish-Mexican actor Daniel Gimenez Cacho plays Silverio Gama with a hairdo and beard that seem copy-pasted from Inarritu’s mugshot. As the story unfolds, we realise journalist turned documentary filmmaker Silverio’s cinematic vision is turning subjective just as his sense of reality is getting mired with surges of fantasy and dreams. Silverio and his wife Lucia (Griselda Siciliani), who live in Los Angeles with their teenage son Lorenzo (Iker Sanchez Solano), have a tragic past. They lost their first-born, Mateo, soon after birth and are yet to get over the loss. After Silverio wins an accolade in the United States, he returns to his hometown in Mexico. Then, he is gripped by an existential crisis and the question of identity starts to bother him. “Do you feel more Gringo or more Mexican?” a scribe asks him, underlining this leitmotif. As Silverio looks inwards for an answer, his waking hours are increasingly dominated by memories as well as dreams. He tries to find a deeper sense in everything that defines him — his work, his roots, his nation, marriage, fatherhood as well as the feeling of depression over his dead child that he was never able to shake off. “We think we are from several places when in fact we are from nowhere,” Silverio asserts, underlining Inarritu’s stand. Textually, this is a film with audacious moments. It is about a maestro immersed in his imaginative bursts without worrying too much about consequences. It is interesting to note how, besides openly being critical of capitalism, Inarritu shows little regard for the ongoing wave of sanitised realism that seems to be consuming creativity in cinema with its surges of political correctness. Bardo has nudity, a quota of cusses, and at least one fantastical scene right at the start involving a woman and the child she has just delivered, which could leave you uncomfortable. A lot of it is executed with a comedic whiff to blunt the impact. As veteran Darius Khondji’s cinematography brings alive the essential surrealism of the plot with visually striking nuances, Inarritu tries using the abstraction about Silverio’s fantasies and reality to strengthen the film’s political context. Inarritu sets the stage for captivating commentary early on but loses steam thereafter. As the minutes pass, you sense the film’s problem lies in its uneven storytelling. Inarritu has co-written Bardo with Nicolas Giacobone, and the duo had earlier collaborated on the scripts of Birdman and Biutiful. However, unlike those winners and despite their staggering ambition this time, Inarritu and Giacobone’s latest collaboration wobbles under the weight of its psychological excesses as the filmmaker tries to set up a complex personal saga. Bardo is positioned as a nostalgic black comedy drama but the film labours to find reasons to keep the audience involved all through its unnecessarily stretched runtime. You find the flashes of hallmark genius in individual frames but Inarritu’s obsession with writing a screenplay that lets him take his audience right into the tumultuous mind of an artiste leads to madness rather than magic. Crafting cinema that banks on psychological drama is always a complicated affair, and Inarritu has tried ensuring the film has abundant humour as well as melodrama as he goes about juggling Silverio’s memories and moods. Silverio’s political and personal dilemma could have universal significance in today’s world but Inarritu insists on narrating a deeply private journey. It would have worked at fostering a connection with his audience if the effort did not drown under self-centred vibes. The self-indulgent traits notable in script and directorial execution extend to other departments too, dampening the scope of what might have been great cinema. Perhaps driven by his enthusiasm to render a personal touch to every department of filmmaking, Inarritu has also chosen to edit the film and compose its music. Traditionally, it is never a wise move to edit one’s cinematic creation because the idea tends to hamper objectivity. As needless minutes inflate the film’s runtime you are constantly reminded of the axiom. Inarritu pitches in with the background score, too, alongside The Revenant collaborator Bryce Dessner. Fanciful in concept and visually stylish, Bardo is an outcome of a genius’ foray into an unusual imaginative space. The film is somewhat weighed down by its ambition and the inordinate time it takes to come to the point, which, you realise in the end, it never comfortably manages to do. Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars)

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .