Fracturing Pride and Identity
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (hereinafter Bardo) explores the verses of the cinematic Alejandro González Iñárritu. It is a love poem about a homeland that is always incongruous while simultaneously exploring fractured identities and pride. Throughout the film’s nearly three-hour runtime, everything Iñárritu grapples with is a transcendent masterpiece with contradictions.
Rigorous historical scrutiny and painful self-awareness fragment its structure as if it were a dream in the viewer’s subconscious. A new fable initially reveals itself as a circular narrative. It’s about a violent political and secret personality entangled in the seismic effect. But what sets the director’s ambitious, introspective outing apart isn’t just the recent wave of projects that reflect on the past.
With a sharp mix of sharpness and nostalgia, it becomes a friend of the imagination. It dares to translate reality into a fantasy scenario. Much like Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, Bardo‘s artistic pilgrimage serves to understand people and places that no longer exist. It plays the role of a creator but never fully knows how the essence can remain unchanged. Sharing the expertise of building a world from a long freeze, the amalgamation of Iñárritu’s far-flung interests means that Mexican film constantly engages with the passion of its co-directors.
The Parade of Ideas
Those traveling north and those returning home talk about their hazy impressions of the director. Iñárritu plays an individual who “left” his country for the United States decades ago. As such, people perceive him as ignorant of the reality of what it means to live in Mexico today. The culmination of the fascination that defines the Bardo symphony is that it maximizes the down-to-earth existentialism of his previous works.
Amores Perros, Babel, Birdman, and The Revenant unite his persona in the film’s birth metropolis, Mexico City. With such a parade of ideas, the director reflects on himself as Silverio Gama, played by Daniel Giménez Cacho. Silverio is a well-known documentarian and journalist who will receive a prize in America. He decided to visit his native Mexico and reconnect with people who knew him before he appeared on the world stage.
Despite such heavy seriousness, the film is still a comedy. It ridicules the absurd yet self-evident self-interest and self-aggrandizement of any creative pursuit. When we juxtapose that with the immense suffering plaguing the world, Cacho has the director’s body type and hairstyle. He does it so convincingly that, for those who know the director’s performance, we can barely tell the difference.
Daniel Giménez Cacho
The famous actor brilliantly transforms into Iñárritu’s ideal alter ego while navigating the increasing realm of the kaleidoscopic vignette. Cacho exudes razor-sharp charisma in a roller coaster show, true to how subconscious vision operates. Taking the somewhat confusing title from Buddhist beliefs, the film explores humans spending time in a state of hiatus between death and existence.
Before the transfiguration is complete, spiritual teachings apply to Silverio. He became his and his wife’s missing child just hours after birth. In the current chaos in Mexico, the ideological connection is akin to that of the Holy Spirit. However, Iñárritu did not include a younger actor in certain film parts. Instead of shrinking Cacho’s body, he summoned a strange dream quality. He also took up the visionary musings of Federico Fellini’s 8½.
In the first scene, we see Silverio boarding a train bound for Santa Monica on the Metro Expo Line in Los Angeles. He carries a clear bag of salamander species, being exclusively such in symbolism. When the bag was torn, water flooded the entire train. At first, Iñárritu will not follow storytelling conventions like Birdman. However, he will follow the mandate of personal experience. While the term in the film refers to Buddhism, it also refers to a poet in Spanish.
First-class Immigrants
An ancient lyric writer or storyteller was in charge of reading the epics. He perpetuated the great achievements of their people. The double meaning, depending on the context, reads like a deliberate move on the director’s part. Both interpretations are based on the intent and scope of the film. On a show called Suppongamos, the host deemed Silverio a hypocrite for maintaining an anti-American attitude while living in Los Angeles.
He then humiliates Silverio by mentioning that Silverio’s skin excluded him from his own family. In addition to using his affinity, he provided further evidence of his lower status in racist and contemporary circles. Amidst visual splendor, this stunning shot of shadows fluttering across an arid landscape sequence was taken in an eerily quiet downtown Mexico City. The sequence plunges headlong into myth-making constructs that play a role in terms of an artist’s heritage and a nation’s patriotic imaginary.
Silverio could well have imagined what could happen when he agreed to a live televised interview with his former colleague. Silverio explains angrily to his son, Lorenzo, during the family breakfast scene. He told Silverio that they were “first-class immigrants” who would never know the suffering of those forced to leave Mexico in perilous circumstances.
The Saint and the Badlands
Later, Lorenzo confronts the filmmaker about his portrayal of the native Mexicans as part of a caravan bound for the American border. They decided to take a detour and worship a saint. There is an inherent power imbalance between what Silverio documents and what goes on behind the camera, regardless of whether he believes his work is important. His wife, Lucía, reminded him of how tenaciously he defended Mexico to the death from foreign insults.
However, it will turn around and criticize him from afar with just the right intensity. Such attacks reflect the collective guilt of Mexican society. They gained weight, however, as we learned more about Inárritu’s life. Over and over again, the director does not seem to be using the Silverio character to put himself at the forefront of his career path and privileges. However, he prefers to question himself.
When asked if he could understand Mexico after a long absence from the country’s violent crisis, Silverio told a member of the press that he couldn’t. The camera glides through space, exhibiting some dynamic vitality and adding to the enchantment of the sequence. Likewise, Silverio’s complicated bond with his homeland testifies to Iñárritu’s desire to acknowledge his path emotionally.
The Final Chapter
As many immigrants can attest, our longing to belong often manifests itself in patriotic sentiments. No one is prouder to be Mexican than a Mexican outside of Mexico, by necessity or choice. If one thematic line proves the director’s point, it becomes his belief that we construct ourselves from stories that are wholly or partially untrue. However, we still believe in functioning within the limits of our powerlessness.
In Bardo, it revels in sharp self-deprecation at its seriousness. The director’s fictional account further discusses America’s historical exploits against Mexico and its citizens with impassioned statements. Silverio imagined the exploits would, in turn, undermine one of the most ingrained legends of patriotic valor. A Mexican teenager wraps himself in a flag before jumping in to protect the nation’s honor.
The film becomes a goal that an artist realizes and would do well as a final chapter in Iñárritu’s filmography. It becomes a very memorable experience trying in vain to catch the words. His most thrilling yet contemplative accomplishment erased all failures and triumphs.
Bibliography
- Deleyto, C., & del Mar Azcona, M. (2010). Alejandro González Iñárritu. University of Illinois Press.
- Scott, A. O. (2022). ‘Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths’ Review: It’s a Stressful Afterlife. The New York Times.
- Smith, P. J. (2021). Behind the money: Alejandro González Iñárritu as career director. Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas, 18(1), 9-18.
