Bardo

I enjoyed Alejandro G. Inarritu's Bardo a bit more than the critical consensus. It is certainly a pretentiously bloated and easily struck target for brickbats. The film's themes are overdetermined and over explained. It is certainly too Jungian for its own good. The premise is derivative of Fellini's 8 1/2: that of a successful filmmaker coming to middle-aged terms with his life and success. Hollywood has contributed variations on the theme: Alex in Wonderland, This is 40, and That's Life to name a few. As in Fellini's film, the lead actor, Daniel Gimenez Cacho, is a stand-in for the director himself. The film is a shaggy dog story with Cacho playing the shaggy dog.

The narrative is non-linear. The director's memories, dreams, and reflections give a us a surrealistic portrait of his mind; one impaired by a stroke. The film opens with the shot of the director's shadow as he alternately walks and flies through a desert. Inarritu is inviting his audience to take a leap of faith before viewing his dreamscape. Numerous surreal tracking shots and long shots of Olympian remove emphasize the departure from realism, we are on a fantastic journey through the labyrinth of the auteur's mind. Darius Khondji's cinematography gives us many magical moments,

Now whether one wants to indulge the director's whims is a matter of personal taste, but I found the film bracing in its attempt to take chances. I particularly enjoyed the film's evocation of Mexico's phantasmagoric culture in its television and dance sequences. The repetition of tropes from Inarritu's previous movies, such as the mountain of bodies underneath Cortes recalling the mount of buffalo skulls in The Revenant, however, seems stale. All in all, a mixed bag, but Inarritu's technical skills are very much in evidence. Streaming on Netflix.