Bardo: Oscar-winner Alejandro G Iñárritu returns with his most personal film

in his winning streak birdman John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz are the first directors since 1950. If the filmmaking business ever peaked, it might be it. But then Iñárritu disappeared — at least from Hollywood functions. He had some work to do about himself, his art, his family and his country. That six-year introspection brought him back to Mexico, where he produced Amores Perros, his first feature set since his 2000 debut.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Iñárritu said, “I needed to find a little peace and order in what was emotionally manifesting within me.” It was not the destination.”

As a result, “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” is a surreal journey into the subconscious of journalist and documentary filmmaker Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho). Silverio left Mexico City with his family about 20 years ago and found success. in Los Angeles. Attempting to write a speech accepting great honor in his adopted home country, he finds himself paralyzed under the weight of everything from Mexican history to his insecurities in his art.

The title informs various meanings of Bardo, both as the frontier between death and rebirth in Buddhism and bard in Spanish. The film is a vast, drawl dreamscape of emotions, families, homes, identities and myths. It hits theaters on Friday in limited release before being released on Netflix on December 16th.

“This is a story without a story,” he said. “It’s a very different structure than what I’ve done.”

Silverio’s story has many similarities to Iñárritu’s life. He also left Mexico 21 years ago and reached extraordinary heights in Los Angeles. In the film, a former colleague who was staying in Mexico criticizes Silverio’s work and life, criticizing the artist’s arrogance. It’s almost as if Iñárritu writes a negative review about himself, and he’s just one of many dense scenes in which the filmmakers can be seen dissecting themselves.

“I’ve included some thoughts I have about myself,” he said. I know what people think, and as[Silverio’s wife]Lucia said to Silverio in the film, “Sometimes we think people think about us. It will be like this.”

It was a humorous meta-exercise, but what’s important to Iñárritu is that people see Bardo as fiction. It has to be. For him, his autobiography is nothing but lies and hypocrisy.

“They claim truth and facts, but truth and facts don’t exist,” he said. “Fiction helps us reach higher truths and reveals what reality hides.”

Iñárritu likes to say that he created Bardo with his eyes closed in order to find a superior kind of reality or truth that is “infinite, chaotic, contradictory and terrifying.”

The cast also had their eyes closed. They weren’t able to read the script before joining in, but instead had extensive rehearsals starting six months before filming. I felt so close to the actor that I could simply exist.

For Ximena Ramadorid, who plays Silverio’s grown-up daughter Camila, the process allowed her not to think too much about structuring big-picture dreams.

“Oh, we were never part of this colossal dream or this Silverio conscience,” said Ramadrid.

Her character considers returning to Mexico, but her younger brother Lorenzo (Iker Sánchez Solano) questions his father’s romanticism towards Mexico and tells him he feels more at home in America.

“When we started rehearsing and connecting with each other, a lot of beautiful things came out, and they were really great tools to use when shooting,” says Solano. “The characters had some specific things that were really going on in our personal lives. It was a really crazy coincidence.”

I noticed that many of the key players were related to and influenced by different threads and themes. One scene in which Silverio talks to his deceased father had a profound effect on Cacho. He had lost his own father over ten years before him, but didn’t think much of his father until that moment.

“As we were filming, my father’s presence was suddenly there,” Cacho said. Until, I have a nice chat with him, which was very special to me.”

Bardo had its world premiere in competition at the Venice International Film Festival this fall. It was the first time Iñárritu had seen it with more than a few people. Thousands of people saw it and dozens of reviews were removed from the official festival cut. We made the bold decision to re-edit the film before its release on Netflix.

“Pain is temporary, but cinema is eternal,” Iñárritu said. “I knew I was dealing with the situation, not the problem.”

The resulting film, which runs in theaters and Netflix, is 22 minutes shorter, with some scenes cut entirely and others trimmed or replaced, giving an overall look to Silverio’s family spanning two countries and two identities. And he’s happy with it, whether it gets Oscar ratings or not.

“It will be interesting to see if this film can touch hearts in a truly universal way. But there’s really nothing we can do,” Iñárritu said. “I have a friend who says this line that I love: ‘Expectations are low, tranquility is high.’ And that’s how we’re navigating this. ”