“BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”: A Mocking But Loving Tribute to Cinema

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest feature is a maximalist, charming, and incisive film that is always one step ahead of its audience

The cameras of BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths capture almost too much in each shot. The camera’s wide angle is both nauseating and relieving, feeling vulnerable and exposed while also being a breath of fresh air. And like the cinematography, BARDO is a film that’s scope is deafeningly broad, loud, and complex. Like Silverio, the controversial subject of the movie, BARDO never pins itself to a specific perspective without taking a step backward to openly and explicitly examine itself, and then taking another step to examine its self-examination.

Renowned journalist and documentarian Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez-Cacho) grapples with his ethnic and national identity constantly, both personally and publically through his work. After living in Los Angeles for over a decade, he returns to his home country of Mexico to after being named the winner of a journalistic award. However, the trip becomes more surreal than it is physical as Silverio ponders on the historical and personal value of his work in the public eye.

I have never seen a film so explicitly aware of its own audience’s mentality as BARDO. The movie almost reacts to the viewer rather than the other way around. It keenly displays a non-linear magical realist spectacle and just as the audience begins to question the narrative, BARDO pulls back the curtain and explains itself metatextually, clarifying and then further confusing the viewer once more. Any time a segment feels overlong, self-indulgent, or insidious, the film’s intensely meticulous structure becomes explicitly self-aware and scrutinizes itself through its protagonist. 

But BARDO doesn’t excuse its audience from this scrutiny either. An Oscar-winning veteran, writer and director Alejandro González Iñárritu never ceases to mock a significant part of his audience, namely high-profile critics and awards organizations. He condemns the constant new trend of wealthy artists mocking themselves and then awarding themselves for it. Iñárritu also meditates on consumers and creators, and the audience’s choice to carefully analyzing every detail of a piece of art or to close our eyes and trust the work to carry us to its destination. 

BARDO constantly, but considerately, undermines, redefines, and convolutes itself while retaining its remarkable clarity. Though it mocks and indicts itself and its audience, it is a loving tribute to the relationships between people and art, reality and fiction, and past and present. 

OVERALL SCORE: 9/10

BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths was released on December 16 and is currently streaming on Netflix.