Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022)

Rated R for a lot of sex stuff.  It's got a lot of sex and nudity, but I don't ever get the vibe of it being exploitative.  The entire film is meant to represents what it means to live a full life.  Part of life is sex and that's the situation of the movie.  I will say, some of the sexuality gets weird.  It's graphic in such a specific way that I couldn't even really give it context. Being R, there tends to be some language.  But it is a gorgeous graphic film, at least. R.

DIRECTOR:  Alejandro G. Iñárritu

How?  How is this only up for cinematography?  This might be one of my favorite movies that I watched this year.  What I'm discovering as I power through the 2023 Academy Award nominations is that there are some weak choices with many of the nominees.  Maybe, just maybe, I'm putting too much stock into Bardo.  But I don't want that to be true.  Sure, Bardo fits into two of the categories of movies this year:  Overly long and overly sexual.  I've been griping that all of the Oscar noms this year are either too long, too sexual, or two depressing.  I guess Bardo, to a certain extent, fits into all three of those categories.  But I'll say, Bardo does those three traits better than its competition.

Let's go right for the jugular!  Absolutely, Bardo should win for cinematography.  I'm worried that it won't, but it is far and away the most gorgeous of the movies in the category this year. I'm not going to necessarily diss other movies that are up for cinematography.  But there are moments of genius in the other movies.  In the case of Bardo, every shot is perfect.  Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so taken aback as I have been with some of the visuals in this movie.  The same thing could have been said about Birdman.  But with Birdman, there's a certain gimmickiness (that I adore and don't want to downplay) that almost robs the importance of visuals.  Birdman can be accused of hiding behind its single take attempt at cinema and that seems to pull away from what I consider to be completely brilliant with this movie.  If you really wanted to make the argument (an argument that I probably wouldn't win), you could say that Bardo's vulnerability is lessened by its visual art style.  After all, there's a line in the movie that says as such.  Silverio is arguing with Luis on the roof and Silverio accuses himself of being too artsy to have any real message.  

But by pointing that out, the movie almost acts as a defense of art.  Silverio is a quasi-documentarian.  Points to the movie for openly embracing such a weirdly specific profession; one that mirrors the director while giving the filmmaker time to comment on verisimilitude and truth through visual storytelling.  Like, is anyone not convinced that this is an accusation that people have given the director over the course of his career?  His visual sense is a feast.  His use of colors and perspective?  Gorgeous.  The mise en scene, both digital and practical, are perfect.  It's so tempting to write off a movie that is that visually appealing because it's the director's wheelhouse. But I actually related to Bardo more than I ever thought possible.  Now, I'm not a successful artist in any stretch of the imagination.  Like every frustrated writer, I keep having to put off my dreams of creation.  Yeah, it's an excuse for not writing my book.  But also, there are some valid concerns in here.  Concerns that are echoed through the movie.  Silverio deals with the consequences of putting his artistic career first, a sacrifice I'm not willing to make.

But Bardo deals with mortality in the most head-on way imaginable.  I think only Inarritu is the only guy who can tell this story the way he did.  Bardo manipulates time in a way that is somehow tied to visual.  It takes you a minute to realize that this is about time passing and about maturation.  Silverio is always visibly older in the movie.  Colored grey, even when he's a child in his imagination, Silverio is fundamentally the same man, only prioritizing different things in his life.  I would be remiss if I didn't say that Silverio's story is a bit of a cautionary tale.  One thing that is almost just punching you in the face is that Silverio is never really all that happy.  There are moments of bliss, when he's dancing in complete ecstacy.  But his happiness is always about missing out on something.  At certain times, it's professional respect from all.  At other times, it is a lost child or a lack of love in his family.  One that got to me, among other thing, is the absence of a father.  It's seeing his mother slip away from dementia and not being able to do much about it, especially considering that there is something blunt and violent in the way she communicates with Silverio.

Yet, it never feels like Inarritu is speeding through these moments in life.  (I apologize for not writing his name with the proper accents.  I don't know how to, which may show my imposter syndrome, despite having written this movie blog for the better part of a decade.)  Instead, it all feels like a well-executed balancing act.  If I told you that this was a movie about losing a child and subsequent loss of potential, that would be an accurate descriptor of the movie.  But it would also underserve so much more than that.  Each one of Silverio's issues are at a 10 and I don't know how the director pulls that off effectively.  I do want to talk about the role of parenthood plays out in this movie, mainly because I'm a parent who has dealt with loss.  Now, before some of the people in my life start freaking out that one of my four children died, slow down.  They're fine.  I'm talking about what it means to lose a child through miscarriage.  I'm going to choose my next words very carefully, because I have an intention that may not be communicated properly.  Miscarriage is potentially one of the most emotionally crushing thing for women.  Their bodies physically suffer from any pregnancy.  Then there is the bond that happens from the physical presence of another person inside you is something that I will never be able to completely understand.

But Bardo deals with what I deal with.  The miscarriages we dealt with were, in the grand scheme of things, fairly early on.  First trimester.  Bardo had the child come to term, only to die in the first 30 hours.  Okay.  But those weeks and months after a miscarriage move painfully slow.  It's in those moments that we think of potential.  Yes, there's something silly about the way that Bardo approaches the metaphor of a child trying to escape inside of a mother, ill-equipped to deal with the harsh realities of the real world.  But it also is a great image.  We still pray for the lost children that have been miscarried.  Part of the pain of the father of a lost child is not only the death of a child (one that must be buried because you have to be strong for a spouse), but also the fading away of one's wife.  Bardo uses metaphor through imagery of what it means to lose the notion of self.  Silverio, for all of his faults, is obsessed with his wife.  As angry as she gets with him often through the movie, he loves his wife and she seems to love him.  Silverio doesn't often comment on the child that retreats inside of her.  He doesn't make demands of her to move on from that pain that is constantly surrounding her. 

It's why the beach scene is so good.  Golly, that was the thing that my wife and I took away from this movie. I don't know if I'll ever forget it.  (Until I write this for another year).  There's this image of a tragically small naked child swimming out to sea.  The whole thing is a metaphor for moving on and making peace with one's trauma.  But it's this cool shot where a human child (who, at that age, would be unable to crawl, so you know, art), mirrors a turtle safely escaping into the ocean.  I like the idea of an unborn child be a turtle escaping into the ocean. There's something about releasing that child to be what it is or what it was meant to do without us.  We'll never be able to affect that kid.  My fandoms and personality will never come into play into that kid's life.  I am very confused what an afterlife will look like with this kid.  But then again, I also struggle to figure out what an afterlife will look like, period.  But a baby turtle is asked too much of it from the moment it is hatched.  It's a gorgeous shot and on that merit alone, there's beauty in the storytelling.

Am I going to get every bit of this movie?  I don't think that's possible yet.  Do you know what Bardo almost requires?  It requires watching every few years.  Silverio's journey through maturity until his death speaks to men (if not everyone) at different times in their lives.  It's not like sections of this movie didn't work for me.  They all worked for me.  From beginning to end, even with the long run time, I found it fascinating.  Of course I latched onto the baby leaving the family.  That's where I'm right now.  My kids are not at the age that they will hate me yet.  Right now, I'm Dad, the unconquerable.  But Silverio's kids grow rapidly.  It's why the three hours are needed for this film. It's entire lifetimes squeezed and analyzed.  Maybe Bardo is Silverio's entire life flashing in front of his eyes told in the medium that he helped create. 

I don't know.  It's one of the better movies I've seen this year and I don't know why it doesn't get way more attention than just cinematography.  Couldn't we at least give it Foreign Film?  Sure, All Quiet on the Western Front is going to win that.  But it doesn't mean that I won't huff.