Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths - Review

I have been dreading having to watch Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths in the lead up to the Oscars as Alejandro G. Inarritu, the director of the film, is one of my most loathed filmmakers. Having seen some of his movies I found them to be convoluted, meandering and pretentious much in the vein of someone like Terry Gilliam, who I also despise. Many people seem to enjoy Inarritu’s movies and if you do that is perfectly fine I just have a different opinion. I have only seen two of his movies, those being The Revenant and Birdman and while I thought Birdman was pretty good I cannot stand The Revenant much for the same reasons I did not enjoy the film I am discussing here today. Both The Revenant and Bardo are well crafted films in terms of their formal qualities (i.e. cinematography, sound design, etc.) but both films fail to tell an entertaining and coherent story. Bardo is a film about a family that immigrated from Mexico to the United States several years ago and the consequences this has both on their personal relationships and how they reconcile their identity as both a Mexican and an American. The main character of the film is a documentary filmmaker named Silverio, played by Daniel Gimenez Cacho, who has returned to Mexico to receive an award. The film does a good job at showing how Silverio is seen as an outsider both in Mexico, where he was born but has since left and is thus seen as a traitor to the country, as well as in the United States where he is confronted by a border agent who states that Silverio cannot refer to America as his home even though he is legally obligated to do so. The film goes further still in investigating how one’s identity is entangled with the country one claims as their home by showing that Mexico was conquered by Hernan Cortes and is thus a land filled with the descendants of immigrants. While the film does a good job at bringing up these interesting ideas, especially at a time where immigration and the Mexico United States border is front and centre in the minds of many, the film ends up becoming bogged down by an extended runtime that too often strays from these more compelling topics to focus on the much less interesting interpersonal life of Silverio. The film is well made especially in terms of its great sound design that was utilized to focus on certain elements of scenes as opposed to others. This was most noticeable towards the end of the film where a crowd of people applaud Silverio’s accomplishments yet the only audible sound the viewer can hear are those that come from his daughter’s adoration of her father thus formally conveying the emptiness mentioned earlier in the film Silverio felt from the audiences he tried to please while allowing the viewer to see that his family’s approval was the only thing Silverio needed but could not understand. This is further conveyed in the film where Silverio’s son mentions to him a story about how when he was little he tried to take his pet fish with him across the border, something the father never noticed thus showing that the father was too busy with his own work, which did not bring him pleasure, and ended up ignoring his family such that his son cannot even remember whether or not his dad was with him at the time of this memory. There is a great film here it is just buried beneath hours of absurd and even at times graphic nonsense which is a shame because there is much that I enjoyed about this movie. I must caution potential viewers of the graphic nature of this film, especially in its first half where there is an extended sex scene that is both unnecessary and even creepy at times to watch due to the ridiculous elements Inarritu introduces which felt out of place. Another aspect of this film that I did not care for was the acting which felt wooden although this could have been a result of the absurdist style of the film which often overshadowed their performances through lavish displays of surreal filmmaking. The special effects here are good, especially in one sequence where Inarritu makes it appear as though the sun goes from high noon to having set in a few seconds. However, these exquisite displays of CGI and practical effects captured in great wide angle shots, as I mentioned above, serve as distractions from the larger ideas being contemplated in the movie rather than as a means to convey them. The movie also feels derivative in many sequences which I will layout in detail with a few examples below. Lastly, the film tries to negate any potential criticisms of it for being too bombastic and confusing by having a character levy these claims against Silverio which may have been interesting had this not been done before in several other movies most notably the great 2021 movie A Classic Horror Story, which is still top of mind for me, with its creative end credits which show potential negative reviews online of the film. In the end I gave Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths a 3/10.

I think the two pictures on the right best exemplify what I stated above, that being that some of the ideas in this film feel as if they were stolen. The top picture is a scene from Bardo where a house is shown on a beach with sand strewn throughout it. The bottom picture is from the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind where again a house is shown on a beach with sand covering much of the inside. Both movies have a surreal style and tell the story of one man trying to come to terms with their life by navigating through their memories.

Here is another example of an idea I feel was stolen in movie Bardo. The top image on the left is from Bardo where Silverio is shown talking to his dad with an adult head on a kid sized body. The bottom image is strikingly similar, it shows a scene where the main character in External Sunshine of a Spotless Mind has an adult head on a kid sized body. These seem to be more than a coincidence and informed my decision to give the film just 3/10 as much of it felt plagiarized.